/ Arrival
An online travel booking platform for Australia's most viral content creators
Travel & Hospitality
The team
12
2 Backend developers
3 Frontend / mobile developers
2 QA engineers
Business analyst
Project manager
DevOps engineer
UI/UX designer
Delivery manager
Integrations
Nezasa (TripBuilder API)
HubSpot CRM
Mapbox
Google OAuth
Apple Sign-In
Stripe (partial)
MailJet
BranchIO
CookieBot
Timeline:
Phase 1 - February 2025 - July 2025 (website launched)
Phase 2 - Summer 2026 (React Native app, planned)
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Customer profile
Our client, ARRIVAL, is an Australian travel brand built on the powerful mix of influencer culture and off-piste adventure (beyond routines and boundaries). Founded by The Inspired Unemployed, Matt Ford and Jack Steele, two of Australia's most followed content creators, together with investor and travel entrepreneur Quentin Nolan and GM Trent Ellen, ARRIVAL was born from one frustration: travel had gotten too polished, too predictable, too easy to copy.
The concept is a hard-to-spot gem in the sand. The founders have built a community of over 2 million followers. They travel the world, documenting their journeys, and sell those exact experiences through a dedicated travel account that has already reached an audience of over 100,000 followers, and sell those exact experiences on the platform. They give travelers curated, culture-first trips designed for a young audience that wants the story, not just the destination. ARRIVAL needed a platform to match this spirit. It should have been something they fully owned, built around their audience, showing their uniqueness, and capable of handling the traffic that comes with a viral launch.
ARRIVAL came to us with a project already in motion and had complexity with it. The original brief was a React Native mobile app, with a separate contractor handling the website frontend. After two months, it became clear that this approach was creating technical friction, leading to a more unified way where we took the lead on the whole website development. On the way, we were overcoming challenges:
- Transition challenges. We inherited a frontend that required substantial stabilization. The existing configuration introduced persistent performance bottlenecks, adding significant scope to our workload as we worked to meet deadlines.
- Growing scope. With the contractor gone, full responsibility for the website transferred to our team. At the same time, the client paused the app for some time, so the website became the priority. The team made this shift quickly and efficiently, carrying both tracks simultaneously until the website became the singular focus.
- Nezasa integration. ARRIVAL's trip catalog runs through Nezasa, a B2B TripBuilder platform that aggregates hotels, flights, activities, and car rentals across providers. Nezasa has its own logic, its own data model, and constraints. We often joke that our engineers earned their "Nezasa Degrees" just to master the platform's unique constraints. The challenge was to align Nezasa’s capabilities with our own vision, ensuring we could handle two distinct trip types in real time.
- Orchestrating the launch. The project timeline was a collective effort involving several moving parts, from ownership’s vision to the marketing team’s influencer-led launch. We understood that our delivery was the foundation for everyone else's plans. Our priority was to remain a stable and reliable partner, ensuring that development stayed on track so that all departments could move forward together.
With determination and complete understanding of the final product the client wanted to receive, we overcame these challenges to create something unique.
By late July 2025, ARRIVAL had gone past the initial technical challenges to a fully operational travel booking platform. We built on Node.js with a React.js frontend and implemented Payload CMS as the admin layer. This gave the content team full independence to manage trips and Collection pages, a hub for travel journals, playlists, and editorial albums.
On the travel content side, the availability, pricing, room types, accommodations, and activities data syncs from Nezasa into our admin, where content editors can override descriptions and enrich listings. The pre-booking flow handles the configuration step before checkout: date selection, room choice, optional activities, party size, with pricing recalculating in real time from the availability API.
For checkout, we implemented Nezasa's native iFrame as a ship-fast decision. A full Stripe integration is the planned next step that will give ARRIVAL complete ownership of the payment experience.
HubSpot was connected via webhooks to centralise sales data, booking counts, and revenue tracking for the operations team. The broader integration layer includes Mapbox, which powers the interactive maps for individual trips as well as the Explore page, helping users discover every available destination. For the homepage and trip highlights, we integrated HubSpot video embeds to showcase the travel experience through high-quality headers. MailJet is integrated for transactional email, BranchIO for future deep linking, and CookieBot for compliance. Each was scoped and shipped within the same timeline.
The site design came from ARRIVAL's own marketing designer. Our team implemented it responsively, adapting marketing-first layouts into performant, production-grade UI. The primary constraint throughout was mobile: the vast majority of users arrive from Instagram on iPhone via Safari, and the product had to feel native to that context.
User roles
Traveller
Browses trips, applies for early access on limited drops, selects dates, configures rooms and optional activities, and completes checkout through the pre-booking flow. Registration is required to book. It’s a deliberate decision by the client to build a direct, owned relationship with their audience rather than funnel bookings through a marketplace.
Content manager
Manages trip listings, descriptions, marketing pages, travel journals, playlists, and editorial content through the Payload admin. There’s no developer dependency for any routine update. Content can go live the same day it's ready.
Admin
Full platform access for managing trips, users, roles, and all platform settings. Operates in a dedicated Payload environment separate from the public-facing website.
Key features
Business outcomes
ARRIVAL launched on July 23, 2025, and the internet noticed loudly. Four media outlets, including RollingStone, covered it within 24 hours. The pre-launch early access window, promoted through the founders' Instagram with a code-gated entry, generated over 120,000 sessions before the site was even publicly live. By release, 50,000 users were already on the platform.
Since then: 500,000 total visitors, 20,000 weekly active users, and 200+ trips booked, all through a direct channel the brand fully owns, with no OTA commission, and no algorithm deciding who sees what. The content team runs the storefront without touching development. HubSpot gave no need for a manual order tracking from week one.
The mobile app is next. Paused during the website sprint, redesign underway, back on the roadmap for summer 2026. The foundation is already there, and we’re proud to keep going with these adventure-seekers to keep building their travel world.
Why partner with COAX?
Flexibility & adaptability
Our team understands the importance of flexibility in the construction industry, which is why we work around your schedule to provide services at a time that's convenient for you.
Skilled and dedicated team
The COAX team consists of pioneering industry experts and experienced professionals who meet high proficiency standards. We stick to our ethos and are dedicated to delivering high-quality solutions that can lead the future of digital solutions.
Ongoing support
We're committed to providing excellent support throughout the entire project lifecycle. That's why we don't just focus on our technical specialists but also pay close attention to the professional skills of our project managers to ensure seamless cooperation.
Security and confidentiality
At COAX Software, we take data privacy and security very seriously. We sign a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) and guarantee to keep all project information safe and establish trust.
Growth-focused approach
In the construction industry, businesses need to constantly adapt and grow. That's why we don't just develop custom software solutions, we implement cutting-edge tools that help your business and technology scale for long-term success.
Agile methodology
At COAX Software, we value transparency and efficiency. That's why we follow a truly agile approach when providing IT services for construction companies. We aim to remain flexible and responsive to your needs at all times to ensure project success.
What I’ll do next?
1
Contact you within 24 hours
2
Clarify your expectations, business objectives, and project requirements
3
Develop and accept a proposal
4
After that, we can start our partnership
