Ticketing and booking software development

The hard part of ticketing is not the booking screen. It is making sure a seat sold on the app cannot also be sold at a counter or kiosk a second later. Every channel has to read and lock the same inventory, and a seat held during checkout has to be released cleanly if payment fails or the passenger walks away.

That inventory model is designed first. Fares, seat classes, quotas for agents and cancellation rules sit on top of it.

The same model works whether the inventory is a train seat, a bus seat, a ferry place or a numbered seat at a venue. What changes is the shape of the journey: a train has many stops, so one seat can be sold several times on different legs of the same trip, while an event seat is sold once.

Most operators need more than a passenger app. These are the touchpoints I scope, each built around a different user:

• Passenger app on Android and iOS: search, availability, seat selection, booking and tickets.
• Agent interface for counters and resellers, with sales tracked per agent.
• Kiosk interface for self-service sales in stations or venues.
• Ticket checking for staff on board or at the gate.
• Ticket administration and passenger management for the operator.
• Administrative reporting on sales, occupancy and channels.

On the Railway Ticketing Platform my role was product design and the mobile experience. The platform covers Android and iOS app design, journey search, train availability, seat selection, booking workflows, passenger management, ticket administration, agent interfaces, ticket checking, kiosk interfaces and reporting. Designing the passenger journey and the staff workflows together is what keeps the channels consistent.

Payment gateways, refunds and the providers you are allowed to use differ by country, so they are confirmed during scoping. Peak days such as holidays are planned for in the inventory locking and tested against the traffic you expect.

A first phase is often the passenger booking flow and operator administration, with agents, kiosks and checking added after. Each phase is quoted at a fixed price with a written scope.