About Hummingbird Travel
Hummingbird Travel is a leading wholesaler and ground handler for luxury holidays in the Indian Ocean, the Caribbean and Mexico. They sell only through travel agents. With more than 30 years' experience, offices in London, the Maldives and Sri Lanka, and a place as the largest seller of luxury room nights to the Maldives, they give agents access to a portfolio of more than 700 hand-picked properties.
The Challenge
Hummingbird were launching a new Caribbean programme and needed a website to match. Their old site no longer served the agents who sell their product. It was hard to browse on the laptops and tablets agents use every day, and keeping hundreds of property pages up to date meant copying data by hand from Hummingbird's in-house reservations system.
They wanted a site that showed off the quality of their properties, gave agents the information they need to sell with confidence, and stayed in sync with their back office without constant manual work.
Our Solution
We started with collaborative design workshops, working with Hummingbird's sales and marketing team on wireframes and then full desktop and mobile designs. The result is a clean, premium design built for travel agents, with property pages at the centre of the experience.
Behind the scenes, we integrated the site with Hummingbird's in-house reservations system through its API. Property descriptions, images, facilities, ratings and locations are imported automatically on a schedule. They're stored in custom Joomla components, so the site keeps running normally even if the connection to the back office drops, and Hummingbird's team can still add web-only content in the CMS.
Agents can search the full portfolio with fast, faceted search powered by Algolia. They can filter by destination, facilities and Hummingbird's own star ratings (4★ to 5★++), and find recommended properties quickly. A mega menu brings the Indian Ocean, the Caribbean, bespoke journeys and featured experiences together in a simple structure. Page Builder lets the marketing team create destination pages, Hum Club content and campaign landing pages without a developer. Property reviews link to profiles of the Hummingbird staff who know each property, which adds a personal, expert touch.
The Results
The new hummingbird.travel launched in December 2024. Content now flows straight from Hummingbird's reservations system to the website, which saves their team hours of manual updates and keeps property information accurate for agents. The site works just as well on mobile and tablet as on desktop, and it has grown with the business, now covering Mexico and new "Hum Beyond" destinations.
Mr Zen continues to host, support and develop the site under an ongoing support agreement.
