We spoke with Petter Amlie, the tech lead in OceanAir’s project to turn their PHP-based site into a modern booking app for purchasing tours, activities, and holiday packages in the Middle East. Amlie and his team used Bubble's no-code web app platform to replace a mixture of third-party tools, helping OceanAir organize their everyday teamwork and streamline their tourism operations.
Tell us about your app and what it does.
Our app’s front-end is of course the online representation of our brand, as well as a channel for our customers to browse and book tours and holidays with us. As part of a big and complex industry, we also have a great collaboration with other sales channels, such as online travel agents and local companies, and we will be investing in technology to strengthen those relationships even more by automating tasks and communication, understanding trends and ensuring that our shared processes are efficient and mutually beneficial. We’re really proud of our new profile, but a huge part of the upgrade goes on under the hood.
Our customers are always our main focus – we really believe that they deserve to have a fantastic experience during their travels, and it’s very clear to us that the key to reach that goal lies in attracting great people to work for us, form great relationships with our business partners and leverage technology to keep it all streamlined and data-driven. Bubble has proven to be a vital part of that.
Tell us a little about your background and how you discovered no-code tools like Bubble.
OceanAir at its core is a company of ideas and execution. We work in an exciting industry that requires a constant flow of ideas to stay fresh and ahead, but those ideas matter little if we can’t execute on them. As many companies will recognize, it’s challenging for the tech side of the company to keep up with the pace of change in the rest of the organization. Design and coding are time-consuming tasks, and we frequently needed to cut good ideas because their implementation would take too long or wouldn’t be worth the investment.
Why did you build your app on Bubble?
The decision to switch to the Bubble platform was a major one, considering we had already invested in existing technology over many years. But in the end, Bubble’s philosophy of allowing quick experimentation and iteration was so well-aligned with our values that when the decision was made, we never looked back.
What have been your successes or milestones so far?
The launch of the site itself was of course a big milestone for us, but months prior to that we have seen how the new tools can make the job our staff is doing a lot more efficient. It’s one thing to build these tools, and another to see them in action and collect feedback from the staff members who use it every day.
OceanAir, whose Bubble site went live a few months ago, has now won four global awards in TripAdvisor Best of the Best 2020, beating out old timers like the Colosseum, Louvre and the Eiffel Tower, including in #1 Experience Global and #1, #2, and #3 Experience in the Middle East.
What are your next steps or future plans for your app?
We still have a lot of work ahead of us, and our goal is to keep improving the customer experience on the front-end, while taking advantage of Bubble's rapid pace development to continue automating manual tasks, learn and take action from data and grow as the "digital hub" of the organization.
We also want to work closely with our business partners and find ways to make the work that we do together more streamlined, transparent and dynamic. We’re excited to see Bubble helps us achieve the technology side of that.
Learn more about OceanAir: Website | Facebook | Instagram | YouTube
About Bubble
Bubble is a leader in the no-code movement. Bubble offers a powerful point-and-click web editor and cloud hosting platform that allows users to build fully customizable web applications and workflows, ranging from simple prototypes to complex marketplaces, SaaS products, and more. Over 400,000 users are currently building and launching businesses on Bubble - many have gone on to participate in top accelerator programs, such as Y Combinator, and even raise $365M in venture funding. Bubble is more than just a product. We are a strong community of builders and entrepreneurs that are united by the belief that everyone should be able to create technology.
Do you want your app featured by Bubble? Reach out to us and tell us about your app. In addition to this series, we sometimes select our best apps to showcase on our website.
