A Berlin-based startup looking for a development partner to turn an early MVP into a production-ready travel platform that could attract further investment. The core request: redesign the product, build native mobile apps, scale the backend, and fine-tune the AI so it actually works across multi-turn conversations. Speed, technical quality, and the ability to ship across frontend, backend, and QA mattered most.

Layla lets travellers plan, compare, and book flights, hotels, and activities without jumping between multiple platforms. The AI chat generates personalised day-by-day itineraries from short user descriptions, while real-time pricing and smart search surface the best available options. Over time, users spend less time researching and more time travelling, with all bookings, modifications, and trip details managed from a single dashboard.

Layla works as a single conversational layer over the full trip planning process. Users type what kind of trip they want (destination, dates, budget, preferences), and the AI returns a structured itinerary with flight options, hotel matches, and local recommendations. Getting the AI to that point took serious work: reducing hallucinated travel data, improving response relevance, and keeping multi-turn conversations coherent through prompt engineering, context management, and ongoing QA.

The experience stays consistent across web, iOS, and Android, with shared data, bookings, and conversation history on every platform. A centralised trip tracker keeps all reservations in one place, giving users long-term visibility over past and upcoming travel.

The interface went through several design iterations to reach its current form. The goal: reduce the number of steps between a user’s first prompt and a confirmed booking. Chat sits at the centre of the experience, with itinerary cards, pricing summaries, and booking actions attached directly to conversation threads. Colour and typography follow a clean, modern direction — enough personality to feel distinct, restrained enough to keep the focus on content and actions.

Cross-platform consistency was a priority from the start. The web version carries the full layout with expanded trip views and detailed search filters. The Flutter-based mobile apps adapt the same design language to smaller screens, with swipe-friendly itinerary cards and quick-action booking buttons. Core screens (chat, trip tracker, search) share the same structure and data across all platforms, so switching devices never means losing context.