Wellness Traveller

The Brief A marketplace, not just a booking site

Wellness Traveller approached us — via branding and design agency Skipper & Skipper — as a start-up with an ambitious vision: a curated wellness marketplace focused exclusively on Mallorca. Rather than a conventional OTA, the platform was conceived as a hybrid of Booking.com and Airbnb — combining direct API-powered hotel bookings with a provider messaging and negotiation layer for retreats, experiences, and select accommodation.

Our role was purely technical. Skipper & Skipper handled brand and design; we handled architecture and build.

Live site

The homepage search widget with check-in/out and guests/rooms — the API integration entirely invisible to the end user.

The Challenge Two booking models, one seamless experience

The platform needed to support two fundamentally different booking models simultaneously, and make them feel like one seamless experience to the end user.

For hotels connected via the Travelgate API, the flow was transactional: live inventory, real-time pricing, straight to checkout. For retreats, experiences, and direct-listed accommodation, the flow was conversational: the customer could message the provider directly, the provider could accept, counter with alternative dates or adjusted pricing, and only once both parties agreed would the booking proceed to payment.

This negotiation layer was the most architecturally complex part of the build. It required a real-time messaging system between customers and providers, a booking state machine that could move through enquiry → provider response → customer acceptance → checkout, and enough flexibility to handle price and date amendments mid-flow without breaking the cart or the payment process.

On top of this, the Travelgate API listings presented its own significant challenges. Pricing was dynamic and availability-dependent, with multiple rate tiers, room configurations, and supplier-specific data shapes — all of which needed careful normalisation to sit cleanly alongside the CMS-driven content. From the customer's perspective, the entire platform felt like a single Wellness Traveller product. The underlying complexity — external API, third-party providers, two-track booking flows — was entirely invisible.

What We Built Full-stack, front to back

• A Next.js frontend with Strapi as the CMS, giving the client full editorial control over listings, retreats, and content without touching code
• Travelgate API integration for live hotel availability, dynamic pricing, and direct checkout across 51 properties
• A provider messaging system allowing customers to enquire, negotiate, and confirm bookings conversationally
• A booking state machine managing the full lifecycle: enquiry → negotiation → confirmation → payment
• A unified cart supporting both instant API bookings and negotiation-based bookings in a single checkout flow
• A customer dashboard for managing upcoming and past bookings, with clear status visibility across both booking types
• A provider-side interface for managing enquiries, responding to customers, and accepting or amending booking requests
• Six distinct content types — Stays, Experiences, Retreats, Packages, Practitioners, and Stories — all fully manageable through Strapi

Date picker, guests/rooms selector, real-time availability from Travelgate, and a Booking Assistance fallback — all in a single panel.

This was a solo development project, two years in the making — designed and built entirely by one developer, without AI-assisted tooling or development co-pilots. From the Travelgate API integration to the provider messaging system, the booking state machine to the customer dashboard, every line of code was written by hand. The platform launched in April 2022 with 51 hotels, 21 experiences, retreats, packages, and practitioner listings across six content types — all manageable by the client through Strapi without developer involvement.