Overview
VIDEC partnered with Ajackus to build a data platform that monitors COVID-19 traveler safety updates and measures implemented by travel companies and destinations worldwide.
Problem
VIDEC, a boutique advisory and analytics firm focusing on the travel, tourism, and hospitality industry, wanted to build a data platform called the Safe Travel Barometer that monitors Covid-19 traveler safety updates and measures implemented by travel companies and destinations worldwide.
Process
There were three focus areas to work on,
For the admin panel, we chose the Backpack for the agility it can provide. The backpack is a collection of Laravel packages that help you build custom administration panels for anything from presentation websites to complex web applications. It did prove to be a great decision as it allowed us to build an admin panel in less than four weeks and have it production-ready.
For API purposes, we chose to use GraphQL. Instead of working with rigid server-defined endpoints in REST APIs, with GraphQL, you can send queries to get exactly the data you’re looking for in one request. It provides a complete and understandable description of your API’s data, gives clients the power to ask for exactly what they need, and nothing more. It is important to note that both technologies involve a similar methodology of sending an HTTP request and receiving some results. To make API developer-friendly, we deployed a GraphQL API playground. It is available on this link.
Initially, we rolled out the data platform to the VIDEC content & QC team before directly giving travel companies access. Once enough data started flowing in, we focused on building a proprietary algorithm that can take into account the data collected and use it to come up with a score indicator for the level of commitment a travel company has shown with their safety initiative. It was a critical exercise as the benchmark was going to be monitored closely by the industry & hence it required to be error-free to reflect the fair process of evaluation further. We worked with data scientists to transfer this algorithm from Excel to the platform. It was also constantly taking into account new data coming in. giving agility to the process impossible with an excel or any offline tool.
Results
We successfully integrated the data platform into the content & QC team processes & numerous companies have been claimed already by the representatives. It helped with the launch of the Safe Travel Score initiative, creating significant buzz in the travel industry.
What’s next
We will be focusing on building an intelligence dashboard that can leverage platform data to showcase industry trends & create new insights.
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