Plaza Premium Group’s Central Travel Marketplace Accelerates Time to Market with TCS and AWS

Leading global airport hospitality services provider Plaza Premium Group (PPG) navigates the challenges of a fragmented airport business ecosystem with a unified digital travel marketplace. It appointed AWS Partner Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) to create an innovative reservation and fulfillment system that seamlessly connects the demand and supply side of the entire business ecosystem under one platform. The solution utilizes a microservices-based architecture that leverages a variety of AWS services to optimize speed, security, and scalability. With this strategic approach, PPG efficiently launched the system in around 10 months, enabling the company to expand globally while delivering personalized, airport-specific services, improving efficiency, and owning the 360-degree airport passenger experience.

In the airport hospitality industry, extensive fragmentation among platforms and service providers complicates travelers' bookings, leading to a degraded user experience. Travelers must visit multiple vendors for different services, such as ground transportation, accessibility accommodations, and dining options. This framework also prevents service providers from gaining a holistic understanding of the customer journey, hindering capabilities for sales optimization.

PPG aims to address these pain points with a unified digital travel marketplace. To achieve this, it requires one flexible and scalable platform that is capable of accommodating the diverse requirements of different airports and passengers. Passengers desire customization aligning with their specific needs and preferences, such as meet-and-assist services, wheelchair assistance, luggage wrapping, and unaccompanied minor services. The platform also has to seamlessly integrate various enterprise platforms as PPG expands to new airports.

PPG worked with Amazon Web Services (AWS) and AWS Partner Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), a seasoned tech consulting firm with over 25 years of experience in the travel transportation industry. Leveraging TCS's extensive expertise in travel and retail, together with the robust capabilities of AWS, PPG successfully developed oneTECO, an innovative centralized platform with marketplace, reservation, and fulfillment services all built on AWS.

Before designing the platform, TCS conducted comprehensive market research. One key finding was that while existing platforms in the market provided services and booking options, all relied on third-party providers for fulfillment. Armed with this insight, TCS strategically designed oneTECO to seamlessly integrate fulfillment directly in the platform — a first-of-its kind product in the industry.

TCS built a single page web application using Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3), Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (Amazon EKS), and Amazon API Gateway on the backend. Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS) handles scaling and enables a multi-tenant architecture, while Amazon CloudFront provides a content delivery network. TCS also utilized Amazon ElastiCache and the Amazon EKS stack to orchestrate business processes.

The implementation of a microservices-based architecture, with each component running independently on the Amazon EKS stack, offers benefits such as enhanced speed, simplified scaling, and increased security. AWS Glue integrates data from multiple sources to create a streamlined data platform, eventually formulating a robust data pipeline for efficient data processing.

"Together, Amazon S3, Amazon API Gateway, Amazon RDS, Amazon ElastiCache, and Amazon EKS offer robust security features, including encryption and access control, that protect PPG enterprise infrastructure and applications." notes Keith So, director, IT infrastructure, security, and operations at PPG.

“The scale and compartmentalized nature of the infrastructure accelerated time to market, which is crucial for global expansion,” says Simon Leung, director of digital solutions at PPG. "We successfully launched the system, which is now fully operational at Hong Kong and Bangalore International Airports, in just 10 months.”

Leung continues, “The solution’s scalability powered by AWS is playing a pivotal role in accommodating our vision to expand to 25 key global travel hubs in the next five years. Our ongoing collaboration with TCS will be instrumental in achieving this goal.” Additionally, over 80 airports around the world have already onboarded oneTECO’s meet-and-greet services to provide travelers with a seamless end-to-end airport experience.

Another benefit is the enhancement of customer experience. The operations team at Hong Kong International Airport and PPG’s airline partners have noted that customers value having a centralized platform that provides visibility into all the service options available at the airport. In particular, customers enjoy the time-efficient convenience of booking services through a single platform. Moreover, the system enables airlines and ground handling agents to upload service requests in bulk to PPG, streamlining operational processes and enhancing overall efficiency.

Airports offer a diverse range of services, and thus it is essential to customize PPG’s solution to meet each airport’s unique needs. Project timelines vary depending on the level of customization required and the size of the airport. “We’ve established a solid foundation with our end-to-end integrated solution, significantly reducing the launch timeframe for new airports,” explains Leung. “It took only five months to roll out oneTECO at the Hong Kong International Airport.”

With its continued partnership with TCS and AWS, PPG is well-positioned to meet the needs of each airport while maintaining efficient and scalable operations. Together, they're redefining the future of airport hospitality and making travel better at scale.