EGL Tours Boosts Website Responsiveness by 98%, Driving Online Growth

Hong Kong–based EGL Tours provides a diverse range of travel services, including package tours to over 250 cities across 60 countries. The company is renowned for its Japan holidays, with many Hong Kong residents traveling to Japan relying on EGL Tours to plan their trips. As the official overseas agent in Hong Kong for selling tickets to Osaka’s Expo 2025, the agency anticipates organizing travel for thousands more residents.

Like the travel industry worldwide, EGL Tours has experienced a significant rise in traveler numbers in recent years. At the same time, the company has seen increased traffic to its website as more people research and book holidays online. Although EGL Tours maintains a thriving network of travel agencies across Hong Kong and Macau, it aims to expand its digital footprint.

To support its digital strategy, EGL Tours sought to migrate its website infrastructure to the cloud. The on-premises system created scalability and performance challenges. During marketing campaigns, surges in website traffic caused noticeable drops in website speed. Additionally, data could not flow freely between applications, preventing EGL Tours from gaining the insights needed to elevate customer journeys. As its digital presence and online traffic grew, the company also recognized the need to strengthen its security posture. Alfred Kam, chief information officer at EGL Tours, says, “We wanted to move forward and build an IT foundation to support the company’s continued success in an expanding digital market.”

EGL Tours engaged AWS Partner SoftwareOne to help migrate its website infrastructure to the cloud. SoftwareOne proposed migrating the website to AWS, which already supported EGL Tours’ CRM system. Comments Alfred, “We knew from experience that AWS could provide the scalability, performance, and security we needed for our website, and we were confident that SoftwareOne could help us make the transition.”

SoftwareOne worked with EGL Tours to design the cloud infrastructure. “It had to follow best practices from our standpoint,” says Alfred. “We aimed to improve every aspect of our previous architecture.” EGL Tours utilized the AWS Migration Acceleration Program (AWS MAP) to save costs and speed up execution, following a three-phased framework to achieve its digital transformation goals. “We had regular calls between our team, SoftwareOne, and AWS to address challenges and identify solutions,” remembers Alfred. “We also conducted extensive testing to ensure a smooth transition.”

In addition to migrating the frontend, EGL Tours and SoftwareOne moved the website’s backend search and booking engines to Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) instances. They also deployed Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS) for application databases and Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) for object storage. With most of EGL Tours’ IT systems still on premises, the architecture used AWS Direct Connect to ensure a fast and secure connection between the company's data center and the AWS Cloud. To safeguard the website's applications, EGL Tours deployed a landing zone, along with F5 Advanced WAF and Fortinet FortiGate Next-Generation Firewall through AWS Marketplace.

The smooth migration boosted EGL Tours' leadership team's confidence in cloud technology and future digital expansion. “Because we’re a traditional business, the cloud has been a big step for the organization,” states Alfred. “I'm seeing a cloud mindset take hold thanks to projects like the website migration.”

Using AWS, EGL Tours’ website now handles traffic surges during marketing campaigns and supports the company’s growing online business. With AWS infrastructure auto-scaling as traffic increases, the website delivers sub-second response times even during peak periods. This represents a 98 percent improvement in service speeds for online visitors, reducing average response times from a few minutes on premises to a few seconds on AWS. The company has also achieved better performance from its web investment at a lower cost compared to its previous on-premises infrastructure. “By moving to AWS and adopting a pay-as-you-go model, we’ve reduced website costs by over 70 percent, helping IT to operate more efficiently and free up resources for investment across the organization,” says Alfred.

In addition to cost savings, EGL Tours has enhanced the security of its website using AWS. Built on a highly secure global cloud infrastructure, AWS provides security, identity, and compliance services designed to help customers to safely innovate. This foundation has given EGL Tours the confidence to evolve its website while maintaining robust protection.

David Wong, senior sales director at SoftwareOne, says, “The collaboration between EGL, AWS, and SoftwareOne have been highly successful, reflecting our commitment to innovation and enhancing the end-user experience. Users now enjoy improved performance, especially during peak traffic periods, showcasing the tangible benefits of migrating to AWS.”

Furthermore, the company has laid the groundwork for creating an integrated platform that combines data from multiple sources to deliver operational insights. “It supports our commitment to improving customer journeys as we expand our digital footprint,” Alfred concludes.