Optima

Optima is a corporate travel planning product built to replace the spreadsheet/email chaos of coordinating multi-person business trips. The MVP needed to prove the end-to-end workflow (organizer → invite attendees → gather data → compare options → manage changes) with enough polish to validate demand and secure next steps.

Problem: Corporate travel planning breaks down because:

• Data is fragmented across spreadsheets, inboxes, and booking sites
• Attendee info collection is slow and incomplete
• Options change in real time (prices/availability), making planning brittle
• Cancellations/changes create notification and coordination overhead
  Optima needed an MVP quickly, but it had to integrate real travel data—otherwise it wouldn’t validate the core value.

Solution: Horizon Labs delivered a working MVP in under 3 months with:

• Organizer profiles + event/trip creation and publishing
• Automated attendee email invitations and onboarding flow
• Real-time flight and hotel option data via multiple APIs
• Attendee travel detail tracking (airfare/hotel/transportation cost components)
• Booking workflow integration (including Booking.com integration, per scope)
• Trip cancellation + automated notifications to reduce operational load

Impact:

• Delivered a functional MVP fast enough to support validation and customer conversations
• Centralized trip planning into a single system instead of spreadsheets
• Reduced organizer back-and-forth through automated invitations and data capture
• Created an integration-ready foundation for approvals, policy controls, and deeper booking automation

Implemented Product Features:

• Trip/event creation + management
• Attendee invite + onboarding workflow
• Real-time flight/hotel data retrieval
• Attendee travel details capture + cost tracking
• Automated cancellation + notification system
• Booking.com integration (as scoped)

Tech Stack: Travel APIs, Booking.com integration