Client
Footprint Expeditions
The brief
Before this project, the business ran entirely on manual effort - every tour explained one-on-one over WhatsApp, every booking tracked informally, no central place to see what was confirmed, pending, or paid. The ask was a platform that could handle both sides: a public site travelers could actually book from, and back-office tooling the team could run the business through without hiring extra hands for admin.
The approach
Started with the data model, not the UI - mapping destinations, tours, itineraries, images, and bookings as a relational structure before any screen was designed. Deliberately scoped out customer accounts for the MVP, using a booking-reference + email lookup instead, to keep the traveler-facing flow frictionless while still giving the operator a reliable record. Both user journeys - traveler and admin - were mapped end to end before build started, which surfaced real gaps early: a dedicated 'things to do' layer per destination, a proper multi-image gallery per tour instead of one flat image field, a guided multi-step tour builder rather than one long form.
What got built
A public site with destination and tour browsing, multi-image galleries, day-by-day itineraries, and a guest-checkout booking flow with no account required. On the admin side: a 5-step tour creation wizard, direct image upload to Cloudflare with URL fallback, a full bookings dashboard with status and payment tracking, and an overview dashboard summarizing activity at a glance.
