Veila Heritage

AT A GLANCE

The client is a Croatia-based heritage network managing 24 castles, archaeological sites, museums, historic buildings, and cultural routes. Each site had its own visitor information, ticketing, content, and reporting workflows, making it difficult to build a consistent experience across the network.

The organization needed a unified digital experience platform for discovery, route planning, booking, multilingual content, accessibility information, and visitor data. Computools built Veila Heritage as a destination management platform that connected these workflows while keeping local teams in control of their content, schedules, capacity, and ticket products.

The visitor engagement platform gave travelers one place to discover sites, plan multi-site visits, buy tickets, and access content during their trip. It also gave the network a clearer view of visitor behavior across destinations and helped smaller sites attract more off-season demand.

THE CLIENT

The client coordinates heritage attractions with different visitor volumes, ticketing models, operating schedules, and levels of digital maturity. High-profile coastal attractions draw strong seasonal demand, while smaller inland sites rely more heavily on cultural routes and destination campaigns to reach visitors.

The network used local websites, booking tools, printed materials, audio guides, spreadsheets, and site-specific cultural tourism software. Opening hours, events, accessibility details, ticket information, translations, and historical content were maintained separately by individual institutions.

This made the digital visitor experience inconsistent across destinations. The network needed common standards for discovery and visitor information without taking editorial or operational control away from local teams.

BUSINESS CHALLENGE

The main challenge was fragmentation across visitor-facing services and internal content operations.

Disconnected discovery. Travelers had to move between destination portals, attraction websites, maps, and booking services, making it harder to discover related sites or plan multi-stop visits.
Inconsistent visitor information. Opening hours, accessibility details, events, translations, and ticket availability were maintained separately, increasing the risk of outdated or conflicting information.
Weak cross-site planning. Visitors could find individual attractions but had no easy way to combine them based on interests, distance, available time, opening hours, or accessibility needs.
Slow content operations. Curators, translators, marketers, and local teams relied on email, spreadsheets, and duplicate publishing, which slowed updates and created inconsistencies between languages and channels.
Limited network-wide visibility. Site-level attendance and booking reports did not show how visitors discovered destinations, built routes, or moved between cultural sites.

The project required heritage tourism software development experience across cultural content, visitor journeys, geospatial planning, accessibility, ticketing, and offline use.

It also needed travel and hospitality software development capabilities for multi-site integrations, visitor-facing commerce, analytics, and phased operational rollout.

SOLUTION SUMMARY

Computools combined web development with geospatial services, booking integrations, offline access, and content workflows to build Veila Heritage as a mobile-ready platform for travelers and heritage teams. A shared data model brought sites, events, routes, tickets, accessibility information, and visitor content into one system while keeping content management under each institution’s control. Travelers could discover sites, build itineraries around their interests and available time, save routes, and adjust plans as schedules or travel conditions changed.

Itinerary planning helped travelers build multi-site routes based on their interests, available time, location, opening hours, and accessibility needs.

Online ticket booking connected admission, timed entry, cross-site passes, events, donations, and memberships with trip planning, so travelers could move from discovery to purchase without switching between separate systems.

A mobile-ready multilingual visitor guide combined text, audio, maps, QR content, accessibility information, and saved materials. Routes, tickets, and essential content remained available offline.

A tourism content management system gave curators, translators, marketers, and local teams one place to manage stories, translations, media rights, events, opening information, and accessibility data, with approval controls for published content.

Computools applied AI development to itinerary ranking, content recommendations, demand analysis, and visitor segmentation. Recommendations considered interests, trip duration, seasonality, location, capacity, and accessibility while keeping destination teams in control of promoted content.

IMPACT

Veila Heritage improved visitor distribution, advance booking, content operations, and cross-site engagement across the network:

off-season visits increased by 31%;
advance ticket sales increased by 24%;
visitor value per completed visit increased by 18%;
content update time decreased by 42%;
complete visitor profiles increased by 27%.

Route planning and themed discovery increased visibility for smaller sites and helped distribute visits beyond the best-known attractions. Travelers could combine locations around shared themes, events, distance, and available time instead of planning each stop separately. Integrated booking eased the move from discovery to purchase, while centralized content workflows cut duplicate updates across languages and channels.

Shared destination analytics connected discovery, itinerary activity, bookings, engagement, and revenue. Teams could see which routes generated cross-site visits, where planning dropped off, which destinations needed more promotion, and which content contributed to bookings or longer engagement.

WHY COMPUTOOLS

The project required experience across multi-site content governance, geospatial discovery, ticketing integrations, multilingual publishing, accessibility, offline mobile use, visitor consent, and portfolio analytics.

Computools brought together business analysis, CX and UX design, content architecture, geospatial data modeling, recommendation logic, system integrations, QA, accessibility validation, cloud delivery, content migration, and rollout support.

Delivery priorities were tied to measurable outcomes such as off-season distribution, route engagement, booking conversion, content freshness, offline reliability, visitor value, and adoption across participating sites.

STORY IN DEPTH

Background

The network included 24 cultural sites with different ticketing models, content processes, visitor volumes, and levels of digital maturity. Local control worked well for individual institutions but made cross-site planning and reporting increasingly difficult.

Travelers could find information about individual attractions, but connecting several locations into one trip often required switching between websites, maps, booking tools, and local visitor information. Remote sites also faced connectivity constraints that reduced access to digital interpretation after arrival.

For network leadership, the larger problem was visibility. Attendance and booking reports showed what happened at individual sites but gave little insight into how visitors discovered destinations, built routes, moved between locations, or responded to content and campaigns.

Approach to solution

Computools mapped the journey from destination discovery through planning, booking, arrival, on-site interpretation, and post-visit engagement. The team also reviewed content ownership, translation workflows, accessibility requirements, ticketing models, and local operating constraints.

Computools standardized core heritage information before expanding personalization. Sites, stories, themes, events, routes, media, languages, accessibility attributes, opening schedules, and ticket products were organized within a shared model.

Discovery and route planning were then connected to operational information such as opening hours, ticket availability, geography, events, capacity, and accessibility.

Offline access was treated as part of the core visitor journey. Travelers could save routes, tickets, maps, and selected content before arrival and synchronize updates when connectivity returned.

Existing ticketing systems remained in place where appropriate, allowing the network to coordinate the visitor journey without forcing every institution to replace its local operational software.

Computools role

Computools acted as the product and technology partner responsible for:

analyzing visitor journeys, site operations, content governance, accessibility, booking, and reporting workflows;
defining the shared heritage data model and phased delivery roadmap;
designing responsive traveler journeys and role-based workspaces for curators, translators, marketers, and site managers;
integrating ticketing, event, mapping, payment, CRM, content, and analytics systems;
developing route ranking, content recommendation, demand insight, and visitor segmentation logic;
implementing offline synchronization for routes, tickets, maps, and selected visitor content;
defining consent, media-rights, approval, audit, and content-quality controls;
supporting pilot content migration, staff validation, training, KPI review, and phased rollout.

The team worked with destination managers, cultural institutions, curators, translators, visitor-services teams, accessibility representatives, marketers, site managers, and network leadership.

Key decisions and outcomes

Local editorial control remained central to the shared content model. Standardized metadata allowed approved stories and visitor information to be reused across discovery, routes, booking, and on-site experiences while each institution retained ownership of its content.

Offline access was built into the product from the start. Travelers could save routes, tickets, maps, and visitor content for use in areas with limited mobile connectivity.

Recommendation logic combined visitor preferences with operational and editorial constraints. Route suggestions accounted for opening schedules, geography, capacity, accessibility, seasonality, and destination priorities.

Portfolio reporting connected visitor behavior with destination performance. Teams could compare route demand, booking conversion, content engagement, campaign influence, cross-site movement, and seasonal distribution across the network.

DESIGN

The design focused on cultural discovery, practical trip planning, multilingual accessibility, offline use, and clear operational tools for site teams.

USER PERSONA → SITE MAP → WIREFRAMES → USER INTERFACE

USER PERSONA

Defining the needs of destination managers and heritage teams responsible for visitor journeys, content accuracy, and cross-site coordination.

SITE MAP

Structuring discovery, routes, tickets, on-site guidance, accessibility, content operations, and visitor insights within one connected platform.

WIREFRAMES

Testing key flows for route planning, ticket purchase, offline access, multilingual content, and staff content management before UI design.

USER INTERFACE

Creating a responsive visitor and staff experience with synchronized maps, routes, tickets, accessibility information, and offline content.

DIGITAL PLATFORM & TECHNOLOGY

TypeScript

TypeScript supported frontend and backend development across visitor journeys, content workflows, booking interactions, geospatial data, permissions, and integrations.

Next.js and React

Next.js and React powered responsive discovery, planning, booking, and administration interfaces. PWA functionality supported saved routes, offline content, tickets, QR entry points, and synchronization once connectivity was restored.

Node.js and NestJS

Node.js and NestJS handled application logic, content workflows, permissions, notifications, and booking coordination. REST APIs, webhooks, and scheduled data pipelines connected ticketing, event, mapping, payment, CRM, and local content systems.

PostgreSQL and PostGIS

PostgreSQL stored site, story, event, ticket, visitor, consent, and engagement data. PostGIS supported location-aware discovery, route relationships, proximity queries, and geospatial filtering.

Python and FastAPI

Python and FastAPI supported itinerary ranking, content recommendations, demand analysis, visitor segmentation, and related analytical services.

AWS, Docker, and Terraform

AWS, Docker, and Terraform supported cloud deployment, consistent environments, infrastructure automation, monitoring, media delivery, and scalable processing.

PROJECT MANAGEMENT METHODOLOGY

Computools used two-week Scrum iterations with regular validation by visitors and staff, and measurable acceptance criteria. Each sprint tied delivery to outcomes such as route engagement, booking conversion, content completeness, offline reliability, accessibility compliance, and content update time.

Early iterations validated the shared heritage data model, core visitor journeys, content workflows, and integration readiness with pilot-site teams.

Later sprints focused on booking integrations, offline synchronization, recommendation quality, analytics, accessibility, and release readiness. Curators, destination marketers, site managers, visitor-services teams, and accessibility representatives participated in reviews before each rollout stage.

CONTACT US TO GET A COST-EFFECTIVE
PROJECT ESTIMATE

Thank you for your message!

Your request will be carefully researched by our experts. We will get in touch with you within one business day.

Full name* Corporate Email*

Company name Phone number

Message*

I agree and consent to the Privacy Notice, its terms of processing of my personal data.

I want to protect my data by signing an NDA.

WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?

01.

We deeply analyse your request.

02.

We create project roadmap, accelerating your time-to-value.

03.

We co-scope features, minimizing project risk upfront.

04.

We submit a comprehensive project proposal.

Trusted by:

Our Offices

Computools is a global software development company and IT consulting partner