Cases / Travelsphere
Travelsphere — holidays of a lifetime
Upgrading a 60-year escorted tour specialist from Umbraco 7 to 17, rebuilding their community platform, and running the booking, payment and multi-market integrations behind it.
A digital upgrade
60 years in the making.
Travelsphere, the renowned escorted tour specialist with a legacy spanning 60 years, embarked on a transformative journey to enhance its digital footprint and provide travellers with a more modern and functional online experience.
The project began as a full upgrade from Umbraco 7 — a complex migration requiring meticulous preservation of decades of content — alongside a revitalised Community platform to bring together Travelsphere's loyal customer base. It did not stop there: the platform has been carried forward release by release and runs on Umbraco 17 today, so it stays current rather than ageing into another big-bang migration.
Since then the engagement has widened. The Umbraco project was restructured from the ground up around a new taxonomy built for search, the Canadian and Australian sites joined the UK one on the same installation with their own content and pricing, and Umbraco Engage was added to put analytics and A/B testing in the marketing team's hands.
As part of the platform redesign, we implemented a direct integration with the G Adventures API, replacing the previous reservation workflow — extended with G2G for stored traveller profiles, so returning customers book faster. Taking on that integration also meant taking on payments: the third party was removed from the flow, and the platform now sits directly between the FXC gateway and Compass. The result is real-time booking creation, better data accuracy, and a smoother end-to-end reservation with less operational overhead for the client.
The result is a faster, more secure, and genuinely mobile-friendly platform that empowers travellers to explore and book tours wherever they are, while giving the editorial team modern tools to publish and manage content.
60+
Years of heritage preserved
17
Umbraco version, kept current
3
Markets: UK, Canada & Australia
100%
Content integrity maintained
Umbraco 7 to 17 — and always current
A meticulous platform migration preserving years of travel content, tour itineraries, and customer data. We did not stop at the migration: the platform has been carried forward release by release and runs on Umbraco 17 today.
Mobile-first booking experience
A fully responsive booking journey that lets travellers explore destinations, compare tours, and complete reservations from any device — with intuitive filtering and fast page loads.
Revitalised community platform
A refreshed forum with improved categories, efficient search, and an intuitive gallery for travellers to share photos and stories — turning customers into brand ambassadors.
Content integrity at scale
Every content block moved and recreated with precision — historical tour data, editorial pages, and rich media preserved intact through the full migration lifecycle.
A dedicated careers site
A separate, deliberately lean Umbraco project powering the G Touring careers section at careers.g-touring.com — the same editorial tooling the main site uses, sized to what a recruitment site actually needs.
Umbraco 17
Latest & secure
↑ Speed
Page load improvement
60 yrs
Content preserved
Migration milestones
Solution
Precision-engineered for continuity.
What began as a migration planned for zero data loss has become a long-running platform engagement — a rebuilt content structure, three markets, the booking and payment integrations behind them, and the analytics to measure it all.
Meticulous Content Migration
Every content block was moved and recreated with precision, preserving valuable historical data and tour information accumulated over 60 years — with minimal downtime and the booking engine live throughout.
Always on the Latest Umbraco
The backend was refactored to align with modern Umbraco, and has been kept on the current release ever since — from 7 through to 17 — so security patches and CMS capabilities arrive continuously rather than in one painful jump.
Taxonomy Rebuilt for SEO
A complete restructuring of the Umbraco project — document types, content tree, and URL hierarchy rebuilt around how travellers actually search, so decades of tour content became findable instead of buried.
Three Markets, One Platform
Alongside the UK site we run the Canadian and Australian sites from the same Umbraco installation — each with its own content, currency, and pricing, so every market reads as local while the editorial team works in one place.
G Adventures API Integration
A direct integration with the G Adventures API replaced the previous reservation workflow, enabling real-time booking creation, accurate live availability, and a smoother end-to-end reservation for the traveller.
G2G Customer Profiles
Alongside the booking API we integrated G2G, G Adventures' dedicated customer service, so traveller details are stored once and reused — making every subsequent booking noticeably shorter.
Payments, End to End
We took ownership of the payment path during the API migration, removing the previous third party from the flow. The platform is now the bridge between the FXC payment gateway and Compass, handling the full payment conversation itself.
Umbraco Engage
Engage was integrated into the project to give the marketing team on-platform analytics, A/B testing, and personalisation — so content decisions are made on measured behaviour rather than instinct.
Outcomes
A platform ready for the next 60 years.
The migration delivered a more secure, performant, and user-friendly platform — and the years since have added the taxonomy, markets, and integrations it needed to keep growing, all without losing a single piece of the content and customer data that defines Travelsphere's decades of experience.
For Travellers
Explore and book from anywhere.
An enhanced mobile experience lets customers effortlessly browse destinations, view detailed itineraries, check flight options, and complete bookings on the go — with a clean, fast interface designed around how people actually travel today.
For the Community
A home for shared travel stories.
The revitalised community platform gives Travelsphere's loyal customers a richer space to connect — with improved categories, smart search, and an intuitive gallery for sharing photos and videos from their journeys around the world.
Visit Travelsphere
See the platform for yourself.
Escorted tours across every continent, decades of itineraries and a travel community — all running on the migrated platform. Browse the destinations and book your next journey.
www.travelsphere.co.uk
Would you like to know more?
You are always welcome to contact us to find out more about what we can offer you. We are ready to hear about your business and advise based on your needs.
