Yachtbooker

Description : With Yachtbooker Brainshore had one of the largest, if not the largest projects to date, to develop. The work is for one of the largest internet databases for yacht charters and it implied a lot of work from various employees on different fields, from programming to designing and implementing new modules. The idea behind this project was to create a one-stop site where both yacht charter tourists and providers would find a common place to trade offers and find the best deals that suit them from across the Globe while also helping with information regarding locations, itineraries, infrastructure and weather patterns.

Objective

Challenge – key challenges

The challenge was to create a reservation platform with an integrated online booking engine (YachtFinder®) that can be accessed and updated in real time, giving the user the latest offers and also being able to make an offer or a booking on any boat on the site.
The other part of the website revolves around giving travelling suggestions to sailing enthusiasts, all centered around an interactive map embedded within the page and offering additional information to the user. For each country, destination, location or marina there is an article page with a picture gallery and a text description.

Solution

Brainshore provided a web-based solution using Microsoft Technology (Microsoft .NET and SQL Server, Active Reports) with following features.

1.    Administration Module:
o    Creation of New Agents, Users and Advertisers
o    Manage the CMS data
o    Manage all the uploaded units with authorization facility
o    View different reports
o    View logs and statistics of properties
o    XML upload service

2.    Agency's Admin Module:
o    Manage charter fleet providers
o    Manage all the uploaded offers
o    Manage inquiry and feedback on all yachts and offers
o    View logs and statistics of offers

3.    Member Module:
o    Manage all the uploaded units
o    Manage inquiry and feedback on yachts
o    View logs and statistics of yachts and offers
o    Manage short listed offers

4.    Front User Module:

Result

This complex application was introduced successfully to the client resulting in greater numbers of bookings as well as larger traffic and a reduced bounce rate.

Technology

Server – Windows Server 2003
Web Server –  IIS 6.0
Programming Language(s) – ASP.NET, C#, ADO.NET, SQL, HTML, CSS, AJAX, JQUERY, JAVASCRIPT
DataBase – SQL Server 2005
Development Tool – Microsoft Visual Studio 2008/2010, Sql Server Management Studio

Team size

Project Leader - 2
Developers - 3
Web Designers - 1
Content Editors - 1
SQA - 1