Global vacation ownership company

Interactive portal drove customer interactions and delivered brand promise

Developed SaaS portal to increase customer and social engagement while streamlining application interactions

Challenge

To improve brand loyalty and execute on its mission to transform the travel experience, the global vacation ownership company needed to evolve its vacation network site from a digital brochure to an interactive portal that promotes engagement between owners, vacation renters and third-party vendors.

Outcome

Surge – a Catalyte company assembled a team with the right skills, knowledge and experience o effectively develop and deliver a digital portal. Adoption and use of the portal exceeded client expectations.

An established global vacation ownership resorts and fractional-residential properties company, that provides privileged access to over 1,100 hotels and resorts in nearly 100 countries, embraced technology to transform how its owners travel and to deliver personal and unique travel experiences.

To reinforce its brand promise, and in response to customer demand, the company decided to evolve its vacation network website from a digital brochure to a portal that provides an interactive and meaningful experience for property owners, members and third-party vendors.

Building trust with ongoing relationships

Surge had already delivered many strategic projects to the client, including an agile transformation for its parent company.

For this project, the company engaged Surge to build the vacation network portal to include new capabilities that would promote better engagement and serve multiple constituents.

Surge deployed a team which included a business analyst who collaborated with customer stakeholders to identify and prioritize requirements for the new portal. The team identified a need to first build an online reservation system for properties that would also route visitors to the appropriate brand site.

Cloud infrastructure ensures data integrity and streamlined user interactions

After completing the online reservation capabilities, Surge expanded the portal to integrate with the client’s personalization engine.

This engine allows guests to sign in, establish accounts, set preferences and receive a personalized experience that includes special offers, insight into future/upcoming offers and availability notices for properties of interest. In addition to building the integration, the client engaged Surge to help maintain and enhance that app.

Similarly, Surge integrated the SaaS portal to the company’s online account management tool. This provided account management capabilities like viewing and confirming reservations, making maintenance fee and mortgage payments and checking account balances. The customer engaged Surge to help improve this tool as well.

To improve user experience with the portal and eliminate individual logins for each of the connected services, Surge developed a single sign-on (SSO) capability. Because of the need to integrate multiple services and implement SSO, Surge assembled a team that included developers with experience building on cloud computing platforms and navigating the multiple divides that exist in cloud applications. This experience was critical in ensuring the integrity of data stored on premise and the availability of that data to worldwide users via a cloud infrastructure.

Iterative development created instant value and increased engagement

The client also asked Surge to draw upon its experience in developing and delivering engaging social experiences, as the company wanted to grow and nurture a community of property owners and renters. The first part of the social effort, a photo upload capability for visitors to different properties, was successfully completed. The client’s internal goal was to achieve 10,000 photo uploads in the first year this capability was available. Once delivered, it recorded 10,000 uploads in just two months.

Rapid response

Fast resource deployment and ramp up resulted in rapid delivery of the portal, enabling client to quickly deliver an enhanced digital experience.c

High levels of quality and productivity supported by metrics

Iterative delivery of working product quickly met customer needs and built loyalty.

Increased brand engagement

Portal brought a new level of brand/user interaction that far exceeded client’s expectations.