Stuttgart Airport: b13 helps Stuttgart Airport make connections
In Germany, the Stuttgart Airport provides tours as part of their services; up to 41,000 people on 1,600 tours a year. These tours are not primarily offered for economic reasons, but rather for the purpose of cultivating and maintaining relationships with the airport neighborhood.
Therefore, an update of the booking portal, which had been used for many years, was necessary to meet new requirements.
The Stuttgart Airport needed a modern and user-friendly website for airport fans and an administration tool where employees and tour guides could easily find their way around.
The Stuttgart Airport chose us for our TYPO3 expertise. Using TYPO3, we overhauled the tour booking portal to create a user-friendly front- and backend. The result supports the Stuttgart Airport’s customized workflows, and is easily extensible for future additions— all within one system.
Creating a clear user experience for all
The booking portal acts as the connective tissue between the public and the airport. In addition to a more pleasant, uncluttered user experience, the airport had several other requirements for the new portal.
The portal needed to support workflows for three groups of users.
- Public guests — to book tours.
- Internal staff — to allocate tours to guides based on availability.
- Tour guides — to enter their availability into the system, and accept or reject tour requests.
Whilst the airport’s current system took care of these existing workflows, we didn’t want to implement the new website with the same outdated system.
Further requirements
There were complex combinations of parameters that determined which tours were available for which customers. Some tours, for example, were only bookable for groups above a certain size. These parameters went beyond standard solutions available on the market; none of the off-the-shelf tools for city or hotel tours could automate all of the airport’s workflows in one package.
The airport also planned to implement other functionalities down the line, such as different payment structures and ways to interface with Systems Applications and Products (SAP), so they needed an extensible system. Finally, the airport wanted the simplicity of a single system; too many different systems would be difficult for them to maintain.
TYPO3 experts b13 are the top choice
The IT department of Stuttgart Airport recommended TYPO3 as a solution to create user-friendly websites. In addition, TYPO3 also convinces as a CMS that can map the many different requirements due to its flexibility without having to switch to multiple systems.
The airport’s choice of TYPO3 led them to us — we are not only their neighbors in Germany but also highly experienced with TYPO3. Our initial mockup of a sample booking process cemented the decision. “It was really easy to visualize how the process would look,” said Anne Betten, Digital Communications Manager for Corporate Website at Stuttgart Airport.
Once the Stuttgart Airport specified their requirements and end goal, we collaborated during several intensive sessions to workshop ideas on process and workflow, and cement their details. The design process went on in parallel, led by Desi, our project lead.
“She gave rapid feedback on what would work and always suggested alternatives,” said Anne. Our expertise and TYPO3’s flexibility helped create a website capable of modeling and implementing the airport’s complex workflows without compromising them. To round it out, as a future-proof standards-compliant CMS, TYPO3 guarantees further extensibility.
Delivering a modern, future-proof website
We updated the Stuttgart Airport’s website to be more modern, attractive, and user-friendly. The complex workflows were presented to customers, tour guides, and internal staff.
"We got great feedback from the testers - clear, modern and attractive were their words," says Anne. "And the users of the backend were impressed by the easy-to-use administration tool."
The Stuttgart Airport approved of their experience with us through all phases of the project; workshops, requirements discovery, and implementation.The Stuttgart Airport is looking forward to debuting their revamped website and booking portal once in-person tours can resume.
Additionally, the Airport is on a solid footing to make changes in the future, such as the integration of online payments, vouchers and discount codes, or special promotions with the extensible website.