youtravel.com Optimise Performance and Reduce Response Times by 90%

A leading accommodation-only supplier who works with travel agents and tour operators to supply them with the very best quality hotels and resorts around the world.

The Challenge

Project Overview

YouTravel.com are committed to customer satisfaction, so their aim was to improve their response times to deliver an even faster service. They were also interested in reducing infrastructure costs.
xTEN helped by performing a two-phased review:
Phase One was a Database Review to identify areas we could make more efficient.
Phase Two employed our Database Optimisation Service where we improved existing queries, resulting in performance gains without the need for additional infrastructure.
As a result, YouTravel reduced their response times by 90%, improving their ‘look to book ratio’ significantly, improving customer service and helping to boost YouTravel.com sales.

The Customer

YouTravel

YouTravel.com is a leading accommodation-only supplier who works with travel agents and tour operators to supply them with the very best quality hotels and resorts around the world. The company operates out of eight countries across Europe as well as having a presence in Russia and has over 8,000 accommodations under their portfolio.

Getting More From Existing Infrastructure

Our main project goal was to help YouTravel get more from their existing infrastructure by improving performance and identifying areas to optimise.

We also wanted to support the in-house team. By reducing inefficiencies, YouTravel would have time to focus on more meaningful projects.

Simplify, Then Tune

The solution was clear: simplify, then tune. Our two-phased approach first saw the xTEN team carry out a Database Review which garnered a detailed report of issues and steps needed for remediation. From there, we worked with their inhouse team to create a plan of action for the simplification process, which, once complete, created a reliable, strong foundation for the next phase: tuning.

Phase two saw the isolation and remediation of the biggest offenders when it came to business impact. This allowed us to make a huge difference in the smallest amount of time, and the business began to see the benefits of our relationship after just days of working together.

Faster Search Results and Cost Savings

YouTravel hugely improved their golden ‘look to book’ ratio, a standard in the travel industry which pins the number of customers visiting a site against the level of conversions.

This was a result of reducing the key response times by 90% producing drastically faster search results.

YouTravel also made savings in server costs. New-found efficiencies in database management meant they could spend much less on hosting. A 95% reduction of SQL Server instances delivered a significant return on investment.

The YouTravel.com IT team have said goodbye to constant firefighting and are now free to work on more interesting projects to further innovate the company’s offering and win new business.

We first contacted xTEN with the goal of improving our customer's experience and reducing our estate costs. The efficiencies made brought our operations right back into a controllable state and garnered tangible business results fast. Thanks to these improvements, we now have the peace of mind to push the boundaries of what we can do with the company and the services we can offer our clients.

Quintin Oliver
CTO / youtravel.com