B2B ticketing portal for travel agencies

The problem

Travel agencies bought group tickets at the box office, in the queue and often with hand-kept lists. Agency licences were checked by hand and reconciling sales with actual use took time.

My role

Sole developer: analysis, backend and database design, the TÜRSAB integration, a mobile app for agencies and go-live.

The solution

Agencies register through TÜRSAB verification, so only licensed agencies can open an account. Tickets are bought in bulk and each one is issued with a QR code. They work directly at turnstiles and handhelds, because the portal uses the central ticketing API too.

Agency-specific campaigns can be defined, and each agency follows its own sales and ticket usage in reports. The same operations are available in the mobile app I built for agencies.

Outcome

• Group entries left the box-office queue; agency verification and reconciliation are no longer manual.

The hard parts and the decisions I made

Establishing trust at sign-up

Checking an agency's licence by hand on every order wastes time and invites mistakes. I moved the check to sign-up through the TÜRSAB integration, so no further check is needed on later transactions.

No new kind of ticket

Portal tickets are issued by the central ticketing API, not by a separate system. No extra rules were needed for turnstiles or handhelds; adding a new sales channel changed nothing at the gate.

Showing agencies their own data

Reconciliation questions are usually “what did I buy and how much of it was used?”. Sales and usage reports are on the agency's own screen, so answering them does not require contacting the institution.

What I learned

What wins business users over is not just speed but predictability: the same action should always end the same way, and users should be able to see the result themselves.

Technologies

• Backend: C#, .NET, REST API
• Database: SQL Server
• Integrations: TÜRSAB agency verification, central ticketing platform, turnstiles and handhelds
• Features: Bulk sales, QR tickets, campaign management, sales and usage reports
• Interfaces: Web portal and Android app