How ‘Lipstick on a Pig’ Legacy Systems Are Holding Your Travel Business Back from Growth.

The leisure travel industry’s major technology platforms have evolved over decades, with many originally developed as desktop applications that were later adapted to web-based solutions. While these platforms may look modern on the surface, they are often underpinned by ageing database structures and complex stored procedures that have accumulated over the years. This dated architecture brings several notable challenges – it’s difficult and expensive to maintain, labour-intensive to develop and increasingly costly to host, especially as customer demand and data volumes grow.

Refactoring or re-engineering these legacy platforms to bring them up to current technological standards is often prohibitively expensive. To mitigate this, many providers opt to develop attractive, user-friendly interfaces that mask the older underlying systems, a strategy sometimes referred to as ‘putting lipstick on a pig’. This approach creates the appearance of a modern, agile platform but fails to address fundamental issues within the software’s core architecture.

The inherent complexity of travel products and processes only adds to these challenges. As a result, when systems built on such fragile foundations are tasked with managing increasingly sophisticated travel demands, they can create significant issues for vendors and customers alike. These problems commonly include:

• High hosting costs: Legacy systems are expensive to host, especially at scale.
• Increased maintenance costs: The complexity of the underlying code, often described as “spaghetti code,” makes ongoing support labour-intensive and costly.
• Developer dependency: These systems typically rely on a limited number of developers familiar with the outdated codebase, creating significant resource constraints.
• Limited innovation: Adding new features is slow, costly and prone to errors due to the underlying system’s complexity.
• Quality and delivery concerns: The fragile foundations often lead to inconsistencies in quality and difficulty meeting delivery timelines.

In response to these challenges, Travel Technology Systems has developed Erin, an advanced travel management and reservations platform designed from the ground up with modern requirements in mind. Erin is built to streamline and support the entire booking journey- from dynamic packaging and bespoke tour creation to reservations, quotes & bookings, workflows, customer documentation, content consolidation and post-sales management. Erin’s API-first architecture and scalable AWS hosting ensure it’s fast, secure and future-proof, offering seamless integration with payment gateways, CRM systems and third-party APIs, such as bedbanks, Global Distribution Systems (GDSs) etc.

With Erin, we’ve created a solution that allows travel providers to move beyond outdated, costly systems and instead leverage a platform that’s genuinely built for today’s travel industry demands.

Frequently Asked Questions

1- Why are legacy systems in the travel industry often compared to ‘lipstick on a pig’?

Legacy systems may have updated, attractive front-end interfaces but they rely on outdated and complex backend structures. This can mask the underlying issues without addressing the limitations of the core architecture, leading to performance, maintenance and scalability challenges.

2- What makes legacy travel platforms so costly to maintain?

These platforms often contain complex ‘spaghetti code’ built up over decades, making ongoing support and maintenance labour-intensive and costly. Additionally, they typically require specialised developers familiar with outdated code, further increasing costs and dependency on a small pool of experts.

3- How do outdated travel systems hold back business growth?

Legacy systems are often difficult to scale, expensive to host and slow to adapt to new market demands. This limits a business’s ability to innovate quickly, respond to customer needs and compete effectively in a fast-paced travel industry.

4- What are some specific drawbacks of using an older travel platform?

Key drawbacks include high hosting costs, increased maintenance expenses, dependency on limited developers, slow and expensive feature development and quality or delivery inconsistencies.

5- How does Erin address these issues differently?

Erin is built from the ground up with a modern, API-first architecture, hosted on AWS for optimal speed, scalability and security. By eliminating legacy dependencies, Erin allows travel providers to scale seamlessly, integrate with key tools and systems (like payment gateways, CRM systems and GDSs) and innovate without the limitations of outdated technology.

6- What advantages does an API-first architecture provide for travel businesses?

An API-first architecture enables Erin to integrate smoothly with other platforms, such as Global Distribution Systems (GDSs), bedbanks, ground transfers, payment gateways and CRM systems.  This allows for a more flexible, scalable and secure system that can evolve as the business’s needs change.

7- How does Erin support the end-to-end travel booking process?

Erin supports the entire booking journey, from dynamic packaging and custom tour creation to handling quotes, bookings, reservations, workflows, customer documentation and post-sales management- all within one platform. This streamlines operations and enhances customer experience.

8- How can switching to Erin reduce long-term operational costs?

Erin’s modern architecture reduces the need for ongoing maintenance and hosting expenses associated with legacy systems. By eliminating outdated code and complexity, Erin requires less specialised support, which reduces both maintenance costs and developer dependency.

9- Why is moving away from legacy systems important for staying competitive in travel?

Modern travel demands require agility, scalability and integration capabilities that legacy systems struggle to deliver. Erin’s advanced platform enables travel businesses to offer more responsive, efficient and innovative services, giving them a competitive edge in the market.

10- How does Erin future-proof travel businesses compared to traditional systems?

With its API-first, cloud-hosted design on AWS, Erin provides a secure and scalable infrastructure that adapts to technological advancements and growing customer demands, ensuring travel businesses remain resilient and competitive as the industry evolves.