Our third Tech Tour took us to Caravelo offices in Barcelona. This time we were with 15 software developers eager to know more about the tech stack behind the startup.
Caravelo was first named Change Your Flight but as soon as they developed more solutions for airline companies its name changed to Caravelo. What it basically provides is ancillary revenue solutions & travel technology so these airliners can maximize profit from new revenue streams. Among the solutions offered we find: Extra Seat, for travelers who might prefer to keep their adjacent seat free by paying a bit more, Upgrade, for customers upgrading their economy class ticket to a seat in business class, or Seat Resale, for customers who might prefer to resale their ticket on flights with high demand.
It’s not an easy job the process of adapting Caravelo’s technologies to the needs of each airline but anyway its CTO, Marc Fornós, explained us how they managed to do so and how they are automating it. They have created their own system which is called Basis, using an hexagonal architecture where all other technologies are structured to work independently but in coordination with their specific Domain.
Precisely one of the main challenges they had to overcome was convincing airlines that in fact this technology could work flawlessly with airlines own technologies. Each company is different but use same integration systems which vary depend on the geographical zone and the kind of airline. “Legacy airlines” (the big ones) are particularly complicated to deal with because they run on Amadeus and the process to gain access to it is ridiculously difficult. But once you have access to the systems you are there for all companies using it, which is good.
Marc told us he was happy on having created their own solution -Basis- as it was making easy all subsequent integrations with all other technologies in use.
At the end of Caravelo’s tech presentation Marc and me, from JobsBCN, shared with the software engineers some information about the startup ecosystem in Barcelona. We talked about salaries for software engineers and the scarcity of tech talent in the city, the companies that are hiring more and also the industries thriving more in the city (right now Gaming, FinTech and Logistics) in terms of job demand, and we also shared information from particular companies that those present knew from the inside.
If you are software engineer and love startups join us for the next meetups coming up in 2016
If you want to know how did it go at Tiendeo and Letgo Tech Tours read this