How I Built a Travel Quotation Platform After Seeing Tour Operators Struggle with Excel

Mia Soluciones — Wed, 03 Jun 2026 20:21:58 +0000

The idea behind MIA Coster and the technical challenges of building software for the tourism industry.

Most developers have built a CRM, an e-commerce platform, or a SaaS dashboard at some point.

Few have built software for tour operators.

A couple of years ago, I started working closely with travel agencies, DMCs (Destination Management Companies), and inbound tour operators.

I expected to find complex operational workflows.

What I didn't expect was that many companies were still running their entire quotation process using Excel spreadsheets, Word documents, PDFs, and email threads.

A single travel proposal could take hours to prepare.

The Problem

A typical quotation workflow looked like this:

Receive a client request.
Search hotel rates in spreadsheets.
Search transportation prices.
Calculate margins manually.
Build an itinerary in Word.
Export everything to PDF.
Send it by email.
Repeat the process when the client requests changes.

The larger the operation, the more spreadsheets appeared.

Version control was practically impossible.

Why Existing Tools Didn't Fit

Most available solutions were designed either for:

Generic CRMs
Booking engines
Enterprise travel systems

Very few were focused on the quotation process itself.

The challenge wasn't booking.

The challenge was creating customized proposals quickly.

That became the starting point for building MIA Coster.

Technical Challenges

Building a quotation platform sounds simple until you start modeling the data.

A travel itinerary can contain:

Hotels
Rooms
Transfers
Activities
Guides
Optional services
Multiple currencies
Different pricing rules
Markups
Commissions

Every item can affect the final price.

The biggest challenge was designing a structure flexible enough to support different business models without creating a maintenance nightmare.

Generating Professional Documents

One of the first lessons I learned was that users don't just need accurate pricing.

They need beautiful proposals.

The generated document often becomes the first impression a customer has of the company.

That meant solving problems such as:

Dynamic layouts
Responsive itineraries
Large image galleries
PDF generation
Consistent branding

A document generator quickly became one of the most important components of the platform.

APIs Everywhere

As the product evolved, integrations became unavoidable.

Travel companies need information from multiple sources:

Hotels
Activity providers
Transportation companies
Payment platforms
Internal systems

Building an API-first architecture made it easier to connect external services without rewriting core functionality.

What Building in a Niche Taught Me

One of the biggest startup lessons was that niche industries often have massive software gaps.

Many founders chase large markets.

But some industries are still solving critical business processes with spreadsheets.

Those gaps create opportunities.

The tourism industry is much larger and more complex than many developers realize.

And despite the growth of travel technology, there are still countless workflows waiting to be modernized.

Final Thoughts

Building software for a niche industry has forced me to think differently about product design.

The challenge is not writing code.

The challenge is understanding operational reality.

The more time I spent talking with tour operators and DMCs, the more I realized that the best features didn't come from brainstorming sessions.

They came from observing how people actually work.

Sometimes the next SaaS opportunity isn't in the latest AI trend.

Sometimes it's hidden inside a spreadsheet that nobody wants to open anymore.

DEV Community: Mia Soluciones

How I Built a Travel Quotation Platform After Seeing Tour Operators Struggle with Excel