TRVL Air Mobile App

TRVL.gr had a web platform doing national-scale volume. What it did not have was a place to live on the phone that a traveller already had in their hand — on a ferry, in a taxi, at a gate, in the twenty minutes before a decision is made.

A mobile app is not a website in a frame. It is a different contract: it is allowed to know who you are, to remember where you left off, to speak to you first, and to work when the network does not. The brief was to design and build something that earned all four of those permissions.

Most OTA apps are a wrapper. They open on a search box, ask for a destination the traveller has not chosen yet, and deliver a list identical to the one in the browser. The install is downloaded once, opened twice and deleted in the spring cleaning.

The harder problem is that an app has one screen and no patience. On the web a traveller will scan a page; on a phone they will make a judgement in a second and a half. Every element has to earn a place that a finger can reach, in a layout that survives a small screen, a large screen, a notch and one hand.

We drew the app as a system rather than as a set of screens: a type scale, a spacing rhythm, an elevation model and a motion language, all specified once and shared by both platforms. The identity carries TRVL's editorial warmth — deep gradients, generous type, photography given room — without borrowing web layouts that do not belong here.

Reach

Every primary action sits inside the thumb arc. Navigation, search and the booking commit live at the bottom of the screen, never at the top, because that is where the hand is.

One system, two platforms

Tokens and components are shared, but the app is not identical on both: it uses the sheet, the back gesture and the haptics each platform's users already know. It should feel native, not ported.

Motion with a job

Transitions carry continuity — the card a traveller tapped becomes the screen they land on — so nobody has to rebuild their mental model at every step. Everything respects the system's reduce-motion setting.

Legible in sunlight

Contrast, type sizes and tap targets tested outdoors, at arm's length, in the conditions this app is actually opened in. Full dark mode, and Dynamic Type honoured rather than clamped.

We mapped the two ways the app is genuinely used — the traveller who knows exactly where and when, and the one who has a weekend free and no destination — and built for both instead of averaging them into a search box.

The open screen

Not a form. A greeting, the trip already in progress if there is one, and a small number of real starting points. The search is one tap away for the people who want it and out of the way for the people who do not.

Search & results

Filters as a sheet rather than a page, results that stream in as they arrive, and a map that shares state with the list instead of being a separate mode to get lost in.

The booking flow

Room, guest, pay. Saved travellers and stored cards mean a returning guest confirms in three taps, and the flow is resumable — leave at the payment step, come back an hour later and it is exactly where it was.

One-click rebooking

The most valuable screen in a travel app is the one that says: you liked this last year. Past stays are one tap from a new reservation on the same terms.

TRVL.gr was the first Greek OTA to offer Buy Now, Pay Later on accommodation, and the app is where that matters most — the moment of a large, discretionary decision taken on a small screen.

The integration is native rather than a web view dropped into the flow: eligibility and instalment terms are shown on the room card, before the traveller has invested in a checkout, so the price they are weighing is the price they will actually pay each month. It moved average order value up and abandonment down at the step where both are decided.

A confirmation email is the end of a transaction. An app can be useful for the whole trip, which is the only honest reason to ask someone to install one.

Offline itinerary

Bookings, addresses, directions and confirmation codes cached on the device and readable with the aircraft mode on — at a border, on a ferry, in the mountains where the plan is most needed.

Push that is worth allowing

Real-time notifications for the things a traveller actually wants interrupted for: a confirmation, a change, a check-in window, a price drop on a saved stay. Nothing promotional inside a trip.

The account

Sign in with Apple and Google, travellers and documents stored once, and a booking history that is genuinely useful rather than a receipts folder.

Native performance

Cold start under a second, lists that never drop a frame while scrolling, images decoded off the main thread. Speed is the whole of the experience on a phone.

One API, one truth

The app reads the same rates, inventory and content as the web platform — there is no second source to drift out of date, and a change made once appears in both places.

Release discipline

Feature flags, staged rollouts and crash and performance monitoring from the first build, so a weekly release is routine rather than an event.