Travel CMS: Profile Portal.

The platform behind the itinerary.

Wetu provided a web-based SaaS platform for travel agents, DMCs, operators and suppliers. Travel professionals used it to manage content and assemble bespoke itineraries for their clients, while suppliers maintained information about accommodation, activities and other services.

Profile Portal formed part of that platform. TravelKey gave travellers access to their trip details. The CMS supported the people creating and maintaining the content behind those trips.

Crossing the international date line.

Crossing the international date line can move the local calendar a day forward or back. That gets interesting when you are trying to show departure, arrival and flight duration on an itinerary.

The system did not allow for the long flights involved. Development needed to resolve that, but we still had to understand the dates and times properly to design an itinerary that made sense.

Shared effort. Individual ownership.

There were four of us redesigning the platform. With an enormous number of categories and subcategories, we divided the work equally and took ownership of our own areas.

I worked on mobile accommodation, such as trains and boats, as well as infrastructure, areas and people such as tour guides. Each needed different information, while still feeling like part of the same platform.

We planned the work together and created a shared design system to support the redesign.

Flexible enough for different roles.

Travel professionals and suppliers worked with large volumes of changing information, often under time pressure. The earlier research highlighted duplication, uncertainty about whether edits were current, and workarounds outside the CMS.

The redesign needed to support different content needs without forcing everyone through the same rigid workflow.

Understanding the workarounds.

I spoke with travel agents, tour operators and DMCs, explored existing CMS patterns, and used “How might we” prompts and user stories to frame opportunities. Sketches and wireframes helped test how content and workflows might fit together before the final interface work.

The exploration also covered contextual help, media support and richer profile data, alongside the core content workflows.

Readable, even when content is rich.

Media-heavy profiles called for clear hierarchy, legible contrast and accessible descriptions for images and video. I also considered how text and controls would work across different screen sizes, keeping copy off imagery where it would be difficult to read.

From original designs to the platform today.

Wetu’s recent product demo shows layouts and workflows also represented in the original designs in this case study. It offers a present-day view of the platform we helped redesign.

The platform has continued to evolve since my time at Wetu. This demo is not a record of the original release, and includes work developed after I left. My contribution and the wider four-designer collaboration are described above.

Public Wetu figures checked October 2026. These describe the platform today, including development after my time at Wetu, and provide context rather than measured outcomes of my redesign.

Power needs a clear structure.

These components are not what I would build today. They belong to that stage of my career, and they did their job well. Together, they gave four designers a shared foundation for a very large redesign.

I learned that simplifying a platform does not mean forcing everyone into the same workflow. People still need to trust their content and handle the odd exceptions that real travel brings.