Toursoft Systems
Designing scalable operational workflows for modern tour operators.
Lead Designer
3+ years (Dec 2021 – Jan 2025)
End-to-end product design
Enterprise SaaS
Highlights
My design work shaped Toursoft's core platform — eight modules, 160+ screens, a unified design system, and a product now used by 12K+ travel agencies worldwide to build and ship itineraries faster.
One platform for tour operator operations
TourSoft Systems is a SaaS platform for tour operators to manage bookings, quotations, itineraries, customer workflows, payments, and operational processes across travel businesses.
The product grew module by module — not as a single redesign. As scope expanded, the design work centered on keeping workflows legible, content reusable, and interaction patterns consistent across an increasingly complex operational surface.
- Bookings & tours — pipeline visibility and trip lifecycle management
- Quotations — speed-to-quote and revision control tied to itinerary output
- Itineraries — block-based building, library reuse, client-ready delivery
- Library & content — shared supplier, day, and media models across modules
- CRM, procurement, payments, reports — supporting workflows connected to the core
Scaling operational clarity across a growing platform
Tour operators manage high volumes of interconnected work — bookings, quotations, itineraries, supplier coordination, payments, and client delivery — often across tools that were never designed to work together. As TourSoft expanded across modules and workflows over several years, the product challenge was not a visual refresh. It was maintaining clarity, consistency, and operational efficiency while the platform evolved to support more business requirements, more users, and more daily decision-making under time pressure.
Understanding how agencies actually work
Understand the business
I spoke with founders and product leads to understand how travel agencies run day to day — where quotes stall, how supplier knowledge is stored, and what operators need from a single platform.
Platform vision & constraints
- Agencies repeat roughly 80% of itinerary structure across trips — reusable content was the highest-leverage design opportunity.
- Speed-to-quote was the strongest competitive signal; operators who respond first win the booking.
- Destination expertise lives in people's heads, not in software — the library had to capture tacit knowledge before AI could amplify it.
One platform, modular growth
Vision
Replace fragmented tooling with a modular platform that could grow without breaking the core itinerary workflow — giving global operators one system for building, quoting, and delivering itineraries.
Value proposition
Keep content, suppliers, and pricing synchronized across modules; reduce manual handoffs from quote to itinerary; design experiences operators can trust every day.
High-level roadmap
Day-by-day builder, maps & client-ready quote output
Days, activities, suppliers & reuse across modules
Pipeline, plans, supplier workflows & integrations
Systems thinking over surface polish
The work prioritized workflow clarity, information hierarchy, and repeatable interaction patterns — so each new module felt like part of the same operational system, not an isolated feature.
That meant designing for scanability in data-heavy screens, reducing repetitive actions through reusable structures, and aligning navigation and form behavior so operators could move between modules without relearning basics.
- Hierarchy first — operators scan before they act; dense tables and multi-step flows needed clear primary paths.
- Reuse as infrastructure — library-backed templates reduced repetitive setup in high-volume quotation work.
- Pattern consistency — shared tables, forms, and navigation behaviors lowered cognitive load across modules.
- Frontend-aware design — components and spacing were documented for implementation, not just presentation.
Structuring complexity without overwhelming operators
With product and engineering, I mapped task flows per module and validated the library taxonomy through IA work with internal stakeholders and power users. A key focus was synchronizing content, suppliers, and pricing so reuse worked across the platform — not just within a single screen.
Blocks beat documents for itinerary building
The highest-stakes UX decision in the platform was how operators assemble multi-day trips. Early concepts followed familiar document patterns; field research pushed us toward a different model.
Operators described building trips piece by piece — one day, one supplier, one price check at a time — not writing a single long document. We pressure-tested both models in prototypes before committing engineering.
Document-style editorExplored, not shipped
One scrollable itinerary, free-form text blocks, export to PDF.
- Long trips lose structure — hard to scan day boundaries
- Library reuse maps poorly to unstructured text
- Auto-save feels fragile on large documents
Block-by-block builderChosen direction
One day per block, library pull-in, map tied to structure, save per block.
- Matches how operators describe their mental model
- Templates and library items slot cleanly into day blocks
- Granular auto-save reduces fear of lost work
We shipped the block model. Support themes around lost work dropped, library templates mapped directly to day blocks, and reuse became a daily habit rather than a one-off import. That day-based structure became the pattern every downstream module inherited — quotations, tours, and library all mapped to discrete days.
Building consistency across eight modules
As module count grew, visual and interaction drift became a real risk. I designed Toursoft's design system — typography, spacing, form patterns, tables, and module-agnostic components — so every new surface felt like part of the same product from the first screen.
- Shared components accelerated engineering and reduced design debt across modules.
- Form-heavy workflows needed consistent validation and feedback patterns — operators live in data entry.
- A single system let new designers and engineers ship without reinventing basics.
Designing the block-by-block itinerary flow
The itinerary builder is the hero experience — but it never sits alone. I designed it as the hub of a connected trip object: operators move from itinerary blocks to quotation, pricing, and booking through shared tabs, pulling content from the library or live supplier APIs, previewing on a map, and shipping polished output to clients.
- Operators feared losing work — persistent auto-save became non-negotiable after early feedback.
- Library and templates drove daily habit; reuse was the retention hook, not novelty features.
- Modular data structure plus replaceable imagery improved quote quality and conversion.
Client-ready itinerary preview
Operators preview the full branded itinerary before sharing — day-by-day detail, maps, and media from the library, exactly as clients receive it.
Operational workflows across modules
Quotations sit at the center of agency revenue — every delay or revision loop costs bookings. This workflow connects itinerary output, pricing context, and client delivery in one operational thread.
Quote revisions scattered across email and spreadsheets, disconnected from the itinerary source of truth.
Tied quotation views directly to itinerary structure and library content — revisions update in one place and propagate through quote output.
Teams handling high-volume quotation workflows spent less time reconciling versions and more time responding to clients.
One system, many connection points
Every module connects back to the itinerary core — library content feeds blocks, supplier APIs populate days, integrations extend the stack, and in-product help keeps operators moving without context loss. The platform grew outward without breaking the workflow agencies already trusted.
Signals from operators in production
Post-launch feedback came from real travel agencies using TourSoft worldwide — in-app feedback, support conversations, and published operator testimonials on the live platform. The themes were consistent: faster workflows, library reuse, and client-ready output that drives conversion.
TourSoft is built in the right direction — this is how itinerary building should be done. Clean, efficient, and designed with the modern travel professional in mind.
- Auto-save and block-based editing directly addressed the highest-volume support themes.
- Library reuse became a daily habit — stronger retention signal than any single feature launch.
- Client-ready output quality correlated with conversion; preview and branding controls mattered operationally.
Outcomes
What I learned
What I'd do differently
I would establish baseline workflow metrics earlier — time-to-quote, revision loops, library reuse — so design decisions could be evaluated against operational data as module count grew, not only through qualitative feedback.
Lessons
Designing operational software required balancing complexity, flexibility, and usability across workflows used daily by business teams. Scalable systems, thoughtful hierarchy, and reusable interaction patterns matter most when products evolve over years — not in a single launch moment.
Tradeoffs
We shipped breadth across CRM, library, and procurement while the itinerary builder continued to mature. That sequencing accelerated platform value, but increased IA and pattern-consistency work later — work the design system ultimately absorbed.