optima startup horizon labs
SaaS

Optima

Optima simplifies corporate travel planning, automating bookings, budgets, and data collection for accurate, easy trips.

Case study

Problem

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.

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

Outcome

  • 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

Features & Tech Stack

  • 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)

Travel APIs, Booking.com integration

"Horizon Labs conceptualized and created an MVP for my mobile app in less than 3 months. They were collaborative and had excellent communication and technical expertise - Highly recommended!"
Optima logo

Omar Suchedina

Founder & CEO

See what your project would cost.

Tell us what you're building. After an intro call with our founders, you'll hear back within 72 business hours: a written scope with an hour range and a hard ceiling, or the questions we need answered first.

Get an estimate
Book a call