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about the client
Dreamlines is the fastest-growing cruise portal worldwide. Founded in 2012, the company quickly became a leader in the European market, with Europe’s most extensive portfolio of global cruises. The company operates in 12 countries on 5 continents and offers more than 30,000 products as a cruise aggregator, including round-the-world trips and short cruises.
long story short
Two Rebbix teams joined Dreamlines in June 2022. Like the rest of the travel industry, the company was recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic. Our primary task was to stabilize their system and streamline engineering practices.
Today, our teams continue driving product management, technical decision-making, R&D, feature development, and more. Along with Dreamlines, we support the company's subsidiary brands, CruiseAway and Cruise1st, within four markets: Germany, the Netherlands, Australia, and Great Britain.
key outcomes
99.9%
system uptime compared to 95% before
major
technical debt reduction
<1 minute
site loading speed
stop-loss
to keep data safe
seamless
software migration
client testimonial
Bret Kelly
Co-Managing Director & CTO at Dreamlines
I have brought on Rebbix multiple times at different companies throughout my career. Honestly, it has been an easy decision. They deliver. I know I can trust them. I know they will be great colleagues. I know the business will be rewarded.
They start with the most critical element: talented, committed people across all functions, no exceptions. The team is well led, looked after as you’d hope it would be. They take 100% ownership of both the technology as well as understand its importance and impact in our business. With that in place, it was possible to build, change or improve whatever is needed. And, over the years, I have challenged them with bringing shiny new things to life as well as breathing new life into a legacy nightmare. They made it happen. Always.
If you are looking for a team, your team, a team that makes those 1000 decisions a week, good decisions because they are talented and care, go with them.
team setup
2
Engineering Managers
2
Front-End Engineers
3
Back-End Engineers
1
Full-Stack Engineer
1
Product Manager
1
Product Designer
1
SEO Specialist
meet the team
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what we did
Legaсy modernization. The project architecture was overcomplicated by a mix of technologies (such as Node.js, Scala, Python, Amazon, .NET, Angular, etc.), different approaches, and numerous databases. This slowed down the system and created vulnerabilities we needed to fix.
Our team rewrote a big tech part from scratch and simplified the infrastructure, making the system easier to maintain, support, and expand. We changed two old hard-to-support databases to more performant ones and upgraded the rest. The team migrated the core Scala price formation service to Node.js to ensure the ETL process ran quickly and smoothly. This has resulted in reduced maintenance costs and significant system optimization. But most importantly, this change helped us run the price updates more frequently, which resulted in the "more live" fares and offers on the website. We also ran AB tests and improved the analytics to monitor the website's real-time performance.
Technology migration. The Cruise1st’s system was written on legacy technologies, the data depended on a third-party service, and the website was slow, loading up to a minute.
Our task was to migrate Cruise1st’s data to our own data platform and create a brand-new UI. The biggest challenge was that we needed to achieve this without access to the original code.
We eliminated unnecessary third-party services and ported nearly 30 integrations to our data platform. Now, websites work several times faster than before, and we have complete control over the prices displayed there.
API’s integration. Dreamlines is a cruise aggregator that works with numerous cruise providers. Cruises are an old business that often uses outdated software. New technologies are implemented very slowly, so most APIs are very limited. Integration with old APIs was complicated — we needed to create a solution to manage all the necessary integrations. But in the end, we received a fast and maintainable system that seamlessly integrated all required APIs.
Online booking. Before, the only way to book a cruise was by phone — namely, by talking to salespeople. We gradually automated the process by creating online booking functionality to make more bookings without human intervention.
We created a software wizard where users fill in names, addresses, required cruise configurations, etc. Then, the system automatically books a cruise with a cruise line. Salespeople still have to contact users to confirm booking and receive payment. However, our service significantly reduces the routine work for salespeople and fastens the booking process.
Market support. Our client’s products operate in five markets: Germany, the Netherlands, and Australia (as Dreamlines); Great Britain and Australia (as CruiseAway and Cruise1st). We support the systems due to the laws and regulations of each country.
Data monitoring and control. Our client faced constant data loss due to the lack of monitoring options and unreliable external cruise data APIs. Our team fixed that by adding validation steps so we could control how much data we received and check if any was missing. We also added the ability to control, operate, and keep server data. Now, we can roll back our system to any data version at any time.
Search catalog rebuilding. The search catalog is an admin panel for salespeople to work with cruise information. It was built using two paid third-party services. Our team switched the system to one of them. This allowed us to reduce maintenance costs, optimize the system architecture, and make the system easier to maintain.
Packages. When choosing cruises, people often need hotels, flights, etc. We improved the existing functionality to allow custom services to be added directly to cruises. Now, we are working on improving and expanding this functionality. We are building auto-created packages with drinks and other services that can be added to cruises.
UX/UI. We improved the quality of pictures and maps that show cruise routes. We also updated the design to achieve a modern look and better UX.
results
- 99.9% system uptime compared to 95% before
- major technical debt reduction
- cost-efficient and less complex system infrastructure
- boosted site loading speed compared to <1 minute before
- expansion into new markets — support of 4 countries
- 2 websites seamless migrations
- stop-loss to keep data safe
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