Innovative ideas for Architecture Hackathon, ARCHON powered by TechSharp - t# conducted across Bangalore, Pune and Russia - Prashanth B Panduranga

1. Comfort above all for a traveler
LightSuitCase
Travel with ease
TechSharp

2. LightSuitCase is one of the world’s largest multinational travel and Tourism Company. LightSuitCase has over 3000 travel agencies and have collaborated with many third party agencies in over 30 countries. . Over 100 Tour operators in about 20 countries. It also owns 100+ aircrafts and 300 + hotels. Over the years LightSuitCase has merged with many companies and does not have common system across. A new CEO has taken over and is looking at means to optimize costs and improve operational efficiency across the company. Operating in over 30 countries and overall 1000+ destinations combined. The new CEO has considered consolidating systems, with different countries having different rules and regulations and each of the destinations following different processes, this is a huge challenge. Each country has different privacy regulations, different payment regulations, usage of credit, debit cards vs Net banking and charging customers need to comply with the bank regulations and also with the policies of the respective countries that the customer is billed. LightSuitCase is looking for a solution for this.
LightSuitCase has always been a customer centric organization. They organize a variety of tours packaged for the comfort of customers. Each tour is coupled with a concierge service. There are also premium tours which includes pick up services, steward services, private jets, drop off to destinations, guided tours and more.
Premium customers are usually very happy with the services and remain loyal to LightSuitCase, hence they want to extend the similar services to everybody. The idea is to provide a digital assistant to every customer and make their journey easy and comfortable. They believe that this application will take the hospitality industry to the next level.
The application flow to be implemented is as follows:
A customer wants to book a packaged tour. They can either go to LightSuitCase website, download an application on the mobile device or go to one of their tour operators located nearby. The application will provide all the information necessary to plan the tour. If the user selects a packaged tour, the application will take the user through virtual tours which includes a complete experience for the user. The application also helps with additional planning such as air timings, weather information, events in the area, mode of transport, etc. Customer books the tour.
The application has all the details of the tour, provides notification to the customer if there are any changes, be it due to weather or any events in the area etc. The application also has a package assistant, based on the chosen location the application provides a check list of items that are generally needed. The customer can add more items to it or remove a few and personalize the list. The application provides the information regarding the weight allowed in the flights booked and also provides tips to pack the items. The customer can check off the items in the list while packing. Application sends notification to the customer to check-in in advance and block the seats when the airline opens the same. Provides the user with the flight delay information etc.
When the customer reaches the destination, they have the option to use their SIM if it works in the destination or can use the SIM provided by LightSuitCase, which can be collected from booths in the airport.
When customers reach the destination, LightSuitCase arranges for the customer to be dropped at their hotels either through a bus for group tours or through taxis for families/individuals. Application will provide the direction to this facility either from the exit gates or from the LightSuitCase booths. The application will provide the wait times for the buses along with the information on a map indicating the location/distance of the bus. The customer can choose to opt for a taxi without having to wait for the bus. Additional expenses for the same can be paid right from the application, and hence they need not pay the cab. Application generates a code which the cab driver checks for. The cabs are provided with a scanner to record this transaction.

3. For the customers who choose to travel with the group, there have been incidents of missing luggage’s etc. Customers are usually concerned about the same. To make this process seamless and easy, tags have been created. These tags are placed on to the bags which can be tracked by the application. The bus drivers also have the tags mapped to their device on the bus which are in turn mapped to the customers. When the respective customer’s hotel arrive, the driver scans the bag tag, which are then removed. This ensures that the customer can watch where their bags are located via the application and hence are very comfortable.
The application notifies the customer with the timings, to be ready, the pickup point etc. The customers can choose between hop on hop off or non-stop buses. The application offers the next bus timings, location of boarding etc. for the hop on hop off customers.
The application implements augmented reality, where in they can point the device to the place they are visiting such as Eiffel tower, Sears Towers, Taj Mahal, Saint Basils Cathedral, Vidhana Soudha etc. and it provides information about the place in the language chosen by the customer. Lot of data and audio messages need to be loaded real time in the language of choice, this is pretty challenging to implement.
Application can also be used to know nearby places of interest. This is maintained as a list of places to cover, and can be checked off. When the customer takes pictures etc, they can directly be posted to facebook, twitters etc based on customers preference. It also pops up other images that the customer’s friends had taken in the same location. The application provides a 360 degree image capture facility by not only providing horizontal panaromic view but also up and down vertical view. The application indicates how the customer needs to move to capture the image. The application stitches a 3D view, to provide exact sense of how and where the picture was taken. The application also comes with a video module where in video of the entire journey is taken. Every place the customer goes, this module is turned on in the background, and video is captured. This is a setting that will be pre-approved by the user. User can choose NOT to use any of the features. The video recorded will be saved to the cloud directly. At the end of the journey, it will create a shorter video, covering all the places. The user can choose to make that module run on the foreground and take the video manually, and all of this will be converted into one complete video.
2. Short and sweet video to be shared.
For Tech savvy users this can also be modified/edited according to their comfort.
Application offers tickets to cruise, boat rides, etc and the user can purchase and apply discount coupons on the fly.
For Premium users:
LightSuitCase has taken it literally. Users do not need to travel with anything with them. When the users are on the LightSuitCase flights they are provided with tablets or alternatively the user can use their own, which offers catalog of well-known brands. This is also available when the users book the flights through the application. The user can choose which dress, which accessory they want to use and everything that they choose will be readily available in the suite.

4. The application extends to helping not just this holiday but also advising next holiday.
Web Mobile/Tablet
CHANNELS
Affiliates
Parametric Holiday
Search
Guided Navigation Free Text Search
EXPLORE & SEARCH
Non-Semantic
Search
Product
Comparison
Predictive Search
Landing Pages Saved Search
Book Flow Wishlist/Favourites
COMMERCE
Basket Duty Free Purchase
Registration Manage Profile
ACCOUNT
Manage
Preferences
Login
Modify/Cancel
Booking
Travel Itinerary On-line Checkin Boarding Pass
BOOKING MANAGEMENT
Payment Tracker
Feedback
Travel Holiday
checklists
VALUE ADDED CONTENT/TOOLS
Destination Guides Tips & Tricks Contact Centre
Retail
Customer Call Center Agent
USERS
Retail Agent Marketer Merchandiser Content Mgr
Call Center Social
Payment Group Booking
Split Payment
Document wallet
FAQ Budget Tracking Journal
Anonymous
Content targeting
Profile based
Content targeting
Dynamic
Recommendation
Search based
Personalisation
Personalisation & Recommendation
Personalised offers
Behaviour based
personalisation
Moderated
Forums
Social Widgets Points accruals Loyalty redemption
SOCIAL
Reviews Registration/Opt-in
LOYALTY
Caase/Complaint
Mgmt
Booking Mgmt
Holiday Search
Rules
Multi-variate
testing
CUSTOMER SERVICE
Single Customer
View
Cross-sell/Up-sell
MERCHANDISING
Product Content
Web Content
mgmt
Temporal
Attributes
Preview
CONTENT MANAGEMENT
Digital Asset Mgmt Auditing
Customer
Segmentation
Web Campaign
mgmt/delivery
MARKETING
Cross channel
campaign
Email Campaign
Customer
behaviour
Web Analytics Contracting Pricing
ANALYTICS & REPORTING
Operational
reporting
Yield Mgmt
BACK OFFICE FUNCTIONS
Figure 1: Features to be implemented

5. The application needs to integrate with other applications to extract the right information from destinations etc. So a service layer needs to be planned out. This is their biggest challenge. Please note, apart from the digital assistant application, there will be field agents etc, who can help the travelers when needed. They will be provided with devices which carries the itinerary, information of each customers(medical, food preference) and will help the customers on their journey. All of this information need to be real time and accurate to provide timely help.
Additions:
Use of disruptive technology: How do we size it?
Methodology to use and reasons for the same
What are the steps to be taken for Project architectural governance, monitoring?
Define Application performance benchmarks!