Integrating Global Transport Operators with a Carpooling Platform

Business challenge

Our client is a French online carpooling marketplace with 100 million users that connects travelers with drivers of private cars as well as transportation service providers in 22 countries around the globe. The marketplace has scaled their transportation services by making buses available for trips. They’ve also started growing their business in the Central and Eastern European and Latin American markets. To successfully cover these new markets, the client needed to integrate local transport operators into their Global Distribution System (GDS) platform for carpooling and bus trips.

At the start, when the platform was solely for car drivers, things were much easier. Private vehicle owners downloaded the app or used the website to offer a vehicle for rides. The same flow worked for travelers: they used the app or website to find a convenient car for a trip. But challenges arose when the client started to connect bus service providers to their GDS platform.

The most difficult part was integrating various bus operators into the platform. Bus service providers often lack technology solutions in their own operations, so our client had to take responsibility for all technological alignment and for integrating data in a variety of types with varying levels of quality and from a broad variety of sources. Our client required a trusted technology partner in transportation software development services to integrate transport operators and enter new markets with their platform.

Solution delivered

With their plan to cover the Central and Eastern European and Latin American markets, the online carpooling marketplace needed to integrate over 40,000 transport operators into their GDS platform. Our first step was to start integrating transportation service aggregators from the Latin American region. The client’s goal was to establish six core integrations per month, each of which included around 10 operators with 150 buses and 30 routes. Our engineers specializing in platform API integrations finished the first scope of work ahead of schedule, leading the client to trust us to cover further integrations, including testing of newly added operators and deployment to production.

We continue integrating various protocols for bus operators from the CEE and LATAM regions, developing new APIs, and testing all newly added operators within the testing environment. With our client’s marketplace, users can conveniently enter a departure time, destination, and preferable transport option and get access to relevant schedules, prices, routes, stations, and trip planning tools across all operators integrated with the platform.

We integrate all new operators using a microservices architecture for faster response times and scalability. When travelers use the platform, they access data from all operators connected via APIs. Each search query instantly gets a synchronized response from all operators to match the traveler with a transport provider based on requested parameters.

Business outcome

The client previously had a monolithic platform, which was the main obstacle for fast and effortless integration of new transport service providers. After successful migration to microservices, the client can add new bus operators ten times faster with fewer resources and less effort. In addition, the response time of the platform to users’ search requests was also reduced, improving customer satisfaction.

After integrating bus operators, buses now represent 20% of seats booked through the client’s platform. Expansion to new markets in the CEE and LATAM regions also gave the client tangible results. The number of users from previously less active regions has grown by 80%, while users outside Europe, the client’s main market, now account for 60% of total travelers.

Today, travelers can use the client’s platform to find the best route for their trip and choose the most convenient transport option. The client plans to continue increasing the platform’s coverage, adding Spain to their target markets. Intellias continues to support the carpooling marketplace, covering all core integrations of new transport operators with the client’s GDS platform.