Visitor records due to exceptional times in the travel industry

It's no secret that 2020 gave an enormous boost to the digital transformation of organisations. That is also the case with Stichting Garantiefonds Reisgelden (Dutch Travel Guarantee Fund Foundation, or SGR). SGR has been an institute in the Netherlands since 1983. It has helped more than 140,000 travellers, paid out more than 50 million euros and is responsible for 1.8 million bookings per year with an SGR guarantee.

Harborn has been the proud digital partner of SGR since 2020 and developed the much-visited website www.sgr.nl. It goes without saying that the website is a business-critical part of SGR's communication, which places high demands on the continuity of the platform and on us, as a supplier. The website is subject to large fluctuations in visitor traffic. We took over the management of the website halfway through 2020 and expanded it in a future-proof manner. We also moved the website to our certified Amazon Web Service Cloud environment. Of course, in close cooperation with SGR.

Roadmap

When the takeover was completed, the performance and security improvements were implemented in just a few weeks. That was followed by rapid development of the platform itself. During a number of short focus sessions, a roadmap was drawn up and the improvements were realised in short iterations. The performance was improved by more than 20%. By using frequent releases, the improvements quickly became visible to SGR customers.

Multisite strategy

The solid new foundation (based on Open Source elements) formed the starting point for the new multisite strategy. The websites of SGRZ and Calamiteitenfonds (Calamity Fund) are also being completely renewed within this strategy. All based on just one basic platform.

Conclusion

2020 and early 2021 were exceptional times in the travel industry. All visitor records were broken. We saw 899% more visitors on our cloud infrastructure without any downtime. An achievement that we are very proud of.