BBA-RÉSA

About BBA

Created in 2000, BBA is a hotel booking agency with the particularity of working exclusively in B2B. In this sense, it guarantees the reservations of its customers. This is precisely why, according to its director Antoine Clapeau, trust is a fundamental value of the agency. “ We make reservations only for companies under contract with our agency because we guarantee the rooms with the hotels. This simplifies the process for our customers who do not need to use their own means of payment. That's why we limit access to our platform. As guarantors, we bear the risk of late cancelation. We need the certainty that we will be paid in all circumstances. »

A necessary alignment with “online” competition

In 2018, after experiencing different versions and evolutions, it became a must for BBA align its platform with the model and performance of other “booking” providers. However, Antoine Clapeau firmly wanted to preserve the bond of trust and human contact with his customers. This is how the idea of offering an agency-specific “online” booking service was born, in addition to the pre-existing “offline” service. Today, after these past five years, the feedback from customers is very positive and confirms a real success of the project. Beyond that, Antoine Clapeau is pleased to have left everyone the choice of their booking method and to have made a smooth change. To have, in other words, preserved service and listening. " We have found that our customers, even when they have the opportunity to be completely autonomous, are still looking for service. They like that BBA The offline service is a comfort for our customers because they know that our booking agents, who know them well, are there, and that, in 99% of cases, they will offer them the hotel that suits them. »

« The right provider had to be found »

To carry out this ambitious evolution of the platform, it was necessary for Antoine Clapeau to find the right provider, the one with the skills and abilities to give substance to his ambitions and it is through word of mouth that he came closer to téïcée. « I talked about this project around me and a relative advised me to contact téïcée. Thus, in September 2018 we established a set of specifications for the téïcée develops a new version of our platform incorporating the possibility to book online on the content of our partner HRS. ” Customers of BBA had for a long time the possibility to book directly in the catalog of HRS. For teams of téïcée the first challenge was then to design an online service in the colors of the agency, which is more intuitive, more ergonomic and even more efficient than the platform proposed by HRS. The second challenge, from a technical point of view, was to meet the optimal conditions to be able to connect to HRS Web Services, that is to say to be able to transmit to HRS the requests of BBA and get back and quickly the booking offers available in their catalog.

Free tools mastered and adapted

For téïcée, consequently, it was necessary to make the most judicious technical choices: Vue.js, the OpenSource framework, for the frontend part which manages the display, conforming to the values of the free téïcée and capable of providing the display with the expected dynamism, and Symfony for the backend, for its ability to process the many requests from the different forms of the application. The challenge, in the end, was to be able to offer the same quality of service online as the major players in the world of booking.

Agile method for a successful project

But this bubbling project cannot be reduced to its visual, ergonomic or technical aspects because it provokes a lot of reflection, ideas and evolutions. And it was precisely in this complexity and proliferation that the main difficulties lay. As Antoine Clapeau explains, the first stages of the project were, in fact, marked by trial and error. At first, the project was moving forward without verifying the relevance of the technical choices for us ».

It is indeed difficult to draw up an exhaustive specification for such an ambitious project, because, as Antoine Clapeau points out, “ it's not easy to think about all the interactions when considering new tools ». It is through dialog and exchange that agile project management has been implemented. Since then, collaboration between BBA and téïcée has reached cruising speed. " Already, in agile we are more involved, even before the developments are finalized. Deliveries really meet our expectations and we save time. The same applies to téïcée, the adoption of the agile method has really been very beneficial in the success of the project. ». In the end, what counts for BBA, it is the reception of this new service and Antoine Clapeau welcomes this platform which is " […] very well accepted by our customers for whom the change is important […]. Our new platform offers them a unique environment, more ergonomic than that of HRS which has borrowed some ideas from our latest version ” he concluded with a smile.

“The reason for your trust” a shared value!

Ultimately, the success of this project is also the sharing of values between BBA and téïcée dont le slogan « la raison de votre confiance » montre que, l’écoute, le service et l’humain sont au coeur de nos métiers.