Travel platform · IndiaLive
Trip On TrailA fast travel site that brings travellers in
For Trip On Trail, an experience-led travel community, we built two platforms: the travel guides and news site live at tripontrail.in, a single fast Go service with an hourly news aggregator and its own editorial CMS, and a Django booking platform for trips, departures and staff operations.
- Sector
- Travel & Experiences
- Live since
- 31 Oct 2026
- Response time
- ~1 ms (cached)
- Public site
- One Go binary
- Status
- Live
What we did: Web Platform Engineering · Editorial CMS & SEO · Booking Engine
The brief
Before
Trips were advertised through a legacy catalogue and a link-in-bio page, with enquiries on WhatsApp.
- No search traffic of the brand's own
- No way to hold seats or take a booking online
- Departures, bookings and customers in no single system
Trip On Trail's trips were advertised through a legacy catalogue site and a link-in-bio page, with enquiries handled on WhatsApp. The brand needed search traffic of its own, and a way to hold seats, take bookings and run departures from one system.
What we built
The public site is one Go binary with SQLite: a travel blog, an hourly travel-news aggregator that shows headlines and links out to the source, partner listings, and corporate, visa and partner enquiry paths. Pages are server-rendered and served from an in-memory cache, images are converted to WebP and stored on S3, and SEO is built in. Editors get a Wagtail-style CMS with a WYSIWYG editor and live preview. Separately we built a Django and Wagtail booking platform with seat holds, checkout, phone-OTP accounts and staff workspaces, built and tested for launch.
How a traveller finds Trip On Trail
- 1
Search
Guides, itineraries and travel tips rank for what travellers look up.
- 2
Read
Pages load from cache in about a millisecond, on any phone.
- 3
Stay current
Travel news, refreshed hourly, links out to the source.
- 4
Enquire
Stays and tours, visa help, or a corporate group quote.
- 5
Book
Seat holds and checkout on the booking platform, built for launch.
Inside the product
8 screens from the working application. Names and figures are demo data.
Customer ops board. Departures in the next week, bookings awaiting action and holds about to expire.
Collections desk. Balances due, payments awaiting reconciliation and today's collections.
Content health. Which trips are missing an itinerary, price, images or SEO before they go live.
Role workspaces. Each role lands on its own workspace: ops, leads, collections or content.
Trip enquiry. Travellers enquire from the trip page; the trip comes with the message.
Customise a trip. Dates, budget and who's travelling, for a trip built to order.
My trips. Travellers see their upcoming trips and booking status.
The system
6 parts, built as one product.
- Go
- SQLite (FTS5)
- WebP + S3
- Docker
- Django + Wagtail (booking)
- 01
Travel blog
Guides by category: destinations, tours, itineraries, stays, food and budget travel.
- 02
News aggregator
Hourly headlines with excerpts, linking to the original publication.
- 03
Editorial CMS
WYSIWYG editor, live device preview, drafts, per-post SEO and WebP media on S3.
- 04
Enquiries and listings
Corporate, visa and partner enquiries, and a listings marketplace for stays and tours.
- 05
Mobile UI
Instagram-style stories rail and a bottom tab bar.
- 06
Booking platform
Django + Wagtail: seat holds, checkout, phone-OTP accounts and staff workspaces.
- tripontrail.in (opens the live site in a new tab)
Trip On Trail live site, desktop. tripontrail.in as it looks today on a laptop.
- tripontrail.in (opens the live site in a new tab)
Trip On Trail live site, phone. The same page on a phone, with app-style navigation.
- tripontrail.in (opens the live site in a new tab)
Travel news on a phone. Headlines from travel publications, refreshed hourly; each one opens on the original site.
What changed
- Live at tripontrail.in since 31 October 2026
- Server-rendered pages from a pre-gzipped in-memory cache, around 1 ms per response
- Hourly travel-news aggregator that links out to the original source and never republishes articles
- Editorial CMS with a WYSIWYG editor, live device preview and WebP images on S3
- SEO built in: JSON-LD, sitemap, RSS feed and full-text search, ready for AdSense
- Instagram-style mobile UI with stories and a bottom tab bar
- A separate Django booking platform with seat holds, checkout, phone-OTP accounts and staff workspaces, built and tested (315 automated tests)
More work
All case studies
Want travellers to find you before they find a marketplace?
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Related: Web development · SEO and content marketing