Booking engines
Direct booking for tours, lodges and multi-day packages, with allotments, release dates, deposits, mixed currencies and supplier holds handled properly.
Services · Custom Travel Software Development
Custom travel software that doesn't start from a blank page
We build booking engines, trip planners, advisor tools and traveler apps on Nova's tested components for routing, availability, supplier confirmations and AI evaluation. Your budget goes into what makes your product different.
The hard parts of travel software don’t show up in a demo
A booking engine looks finished the day it can sell a room. Then the edge cases arrive. A lodge releases its allotment 21 days out. A child under five rides free but still needs a seat on the shuttle. The deposit is in euros and the balance in dollars. A supplier confirms by fax-to-email, and the confirmation says “OK, but 9:30 not 9:00.”
Generic agencies meet these the way you’d expect: one at a time, in production, on your budget. A year in, the product handles the happy path, and your operations team keeps a spreadsheet beside it for everything else.
Start with travel logic you don’t pay for twice
We start from the components we built for the Nova platform: constraint-based routing, a travel-shaped availability and supplier model, confirmation parsing, evaluation harnesses for AI features, and an MCP interface for agents. Your build adds what is genuinely yours, such as the brand, the packaging logic and the workflow your advisors swear by.
It also treats the itinerary as a living plan rather than a document that’s out of date the moment it’s sent. That idea runs through the itinerary is a constraint problem, and it’s why our builds tend to suit tour operators and DMCs, corporate travel and events teams and destination organizations whose workflows have outgrown off-the-shelf tools.
What we build
Trip planners
Visitor-facing planners for destinations and operators, grounded in your own inventory and routed so every suggested day is possible.
Advisor and operator tools
Proposal builders, supplier workbenches and operations dashboards shaped around how your team already works. AI drafts; people approve.
Traveler and guide apps
Itineraries that work offline, live updates and messaging for travelers, plus day sheets and incident reports for guides.
Partner and supplier portals
A place for suppliers to update availability, accept requests and see payments, so confirmations stop living in inboxes.
Integrations and middleware
The glue between reservation systems, PMS, channel managers, payment providers and CRMs, over REST APIs, webhooks, CSV/SFTP or MCP.
What's already in the box
Every build can draw on the components behind the Nova platform. You pay to configure and extend them, not to reinvent them.
- Route Engine: opening windows, travel times, pacing, accessibility and weather exposure
- Booking Flow: supplier requests, confirmation parsing, vouchers and reconciliation
- Itinerary Studio: intent capture and proposal drafting, with an advisor review step
- Agent Gateway: an MCP interface, so the product is agent-ready at launch
- Evaluation harness: test sets and scoring for every AI feature before travelers see it
Timeline
A milestone-based build
Build partnerships are scoped and paid by milestone. Each one ends with working software in your hands and a decision about the next.
- Milestone 0 · 2–3 weeks
Shape
Product brief, architecture, data and integration map, risk list, and a milestone plan you can take to your board.
- Milestone 1 · 4–6 weeks
Walking skeleton
A thin slice, deployed end to end: one product, one booking path, one integration. The riskiest assumptions get tested first.
- Milestone 2 · 6–10 weeks
Core flows
The workflows that carry the business: search, routing, booking, changes, confirmations and the exception queue. Weekly demos, with your team testing in staging.
- Milestone 3 · 4–8 weeks
Pilot with real travelers
A limited launch with real bookings, instrumented and monitored. We fix what the real world finds.
- After launch
Hand-over or ongoing care
Your team takes the keys, with documentation and pairing sessions. Or we keep it running under Managed AI Operations.
Side by side
Two ways to start a build
AspectStarting from zeroStarting from Nova components
First usable releaseAfter months of foundationsA walking skeleton in the first milestone
Travel edge casesFound in production, one at a timeAllotments, holds, deposits and supplier quirks already modeled
AI featuresPrompted, demoed and hoped forEvaluated against test sets before launch
Agent distributionA later project, if everAn MCP interface from day one
Your operations teamKeeps a spreadsheet beside the productWorks in the product, with exceptions routed to them
The first milestone was plain to look at, and it booked a real hut-to-hut trek end to end. That told us more than three months of design reviews would have.
Checklist
Outcomes and commitments
0 of 9 ready
Useful next reading
- DevelopersAPI and MCP overview, authentication, webhooks, and sandbox access by request.
- IntegrationsThe categories of systems we connect and the patterns we use.
- ConciergeAn in-trip assistant on web chat, WhatsApp and SMS, with hand-off to your staff.
- Security & trustHow we handle data, access, encryption and incident response.
Questions
Frequently asked questions
Who owns the code?
You own the code we write for you. Nova platform components used inside your product are licensed through a platform subscription, and the contract draws that line clearly before work starts.
Can you work alongside our in-house developers?
Yes, and we prefer it. We pair with your engineers, work in your repositories and follow your review process, so the hand-over is a non-event.
Do we have to subscribe to the Nova platform?
Only for the components you use. Some builds use none (a supplier portal, say) and some use several. We'll show you the trade-off during Shape.
Do you build native mobile apps?
We build traveler and guide apps as installable web apps or cross-platform native apps, depending on whether you need offline maps, background location or app-store distribution. We'll recommend one during Shape and explain why.
How do you handle AI features in a custom build?
The same way we do on our platform: every AI feature gets an evaluation set, human approval where decisions matter, and monitoring after launch. Our article on evaluating an itinerary generator shows the method.
Related
Keep exploring
- ResourcesDevelopersREST API, webhooks and MCP access to itineraries, routes, quotes, bookings and signals. OAuth 2.0, environment-scoped keys, sandbox access by request.
- CompanyEngagement modelsHow we engage: Discovery Sprint, Pilot, Platform subscription, Build partnership and Managed AI operations, each scoped and quoted after a discovery call.
- WorkCorporate offsite planning firmHow a corporate offsite planning firm cut shuttle-plan builds from six hours to 70 minutes and got approved storm-day re-plans to attendees in under 20 minutes.
- Field Notes · Route & Itinerary ScienceThe Itinerary Is a Constraint ProblemWhy multi-stop itineraries fail in the field, and how to model them as constraint problems: time windows, door-to-door travel times, slots, slack and weights.
- Field Notes · Operations & AutomationWhere the Hours Go: An Anatomy of Booking OperationsA two-week time study of a booking desk: where 360 hours went, why touches per confirmed service matter, and how to sort tasks into automate, assist or keep.
Bring the product you've been sketching
Tell us what you want to build and what's stopped you so far. We'll come back with a view on scope, components and a sensible first milestone.