How Antarctica21 Built a Custom Booking Experience That Turns Browsers Into Buyers
Client project
Developed by
Nexus Creative
Enterprise plan
For truly comprehensive solution choose our most feature rich plan.
- Unlimited page views
- Unlimited project add-ons
- 99.99% uptime SLA
- Staging environment
- Priority email support with account executive
- Okta and Auth0 SSO Add-on
- Log in to Wized with SSO
- Information security PPII report
- Dedicated custom server infrastructure
- Monthly maintenance retainers
Rest APIS used
Xano
HubSpot
Zapier
Loops
Google reCAPTCHA
RezMagic
About the client
Antarctica21 is a pioneer in boutique air-and-cruise expeditions to Antarctica. They offer exclusive, once-in-a-lifetime travel experiences with trips ranging from $15,000 to $30,000+ per person. Their mission is premium service at every touchpoint while ensuring polar ecosystem safety.
Antarctica21 needed a booking experience that matched the exclusivity of their expeditions. Their existing booking engine (RezMagic) forced visitors through a clunky, 50+ step process with no customization options. We used Wized to build a completely custom expedition finder and cabin booking system on top of their existing backend - without replacing their core booking infrastructure.
Nexus Creative built Antarctica21.
Highlights
- "Find My Expedition" page became the #2 most visited page on the entire website
- Leads now arrive "warmer" - enquiries include specific departures, dates, and cabin numbers already selected
- Reduced time, stress, and steps required for each seasonal expedition launch
- Team can manage 100s of cabin records without backend complexity
- 39% increase in organic visibility (46% → 64%)
- Mobile performance improved from 32 to 84 (2.6× improvement)
- 99 PageSpeed score achieved pre-marketing scripts
Before Wized
- Relied entirely on RezMagic's default booking interface - not customizable
- Visitors faced 50+ steps just to complete a booking enquiry
- No way to display real-time cabin availability or pricing on the website
- Couldn't show interactive ship maps or cabin visuals
- Users selected cabins blind - no images, no deck location, no context
- High drop-off rates with no visibility into where users were abandoning
- Complex discount rules (child ages, cabin types) couldn't be shown upfront
- Every booking enquiry required back-and-forth with sales to clarify basics
After
Wized
- Custom expedition finder with filters for dates, ship types, and trip duration
- Interactive ship deck maps showing real-time cabin availability - click directly on a cabin to select it
- Dynamic pricing displayed upfront with all discount logic calculated automatically
- Visitors can browse, compare, and select multiple cabins in one session
- Booking basket builds as users explore - no losing progress
- Leads arrive with cabin selections, dates, and guest details already captured
- Two booking paths: "Request a Journey Proposal" for high-touch sales, "Book Online Now" for ready buyers
- Sales team receives complete, qualified enquiries instead of vague "I'm interested" messages
- Live expedition filtering - visitors filter by date, ship, expedition type, and available cabins with results updating instantly, no page reloads
Project Summary
A custom expedition finder and cabin booking system. Wized powers the dynamic frontend that displays real-time expedition availability, pricing, and cabin selection with interactive ship maps. It handles complex pricing logic including child age-based discounts calculated against expedition dates, multi-cabin selections, and a seamless booking flow that captures leads before they drop off.
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Amazing Features
- Interactive ship deck maps: Converted vector ship plans into HTML elements using Wized. Users click directly on cabins to see availability, pricing, and images - then add to their booking basket
- Smart child discount calculator: Wized calculates whether children qualify for discounts based on their age on the expedition date, not the booking date. A child turning 13 the day before departure? No discount. This logic runs automatically as users build their booking.
- Multi-cabin booking basket: Families booking multiple cabins can add each one to a running total, see the full price, and submit one enquiry - previously impossible with RezMagic's interface
- Dual booking paths: Wized powers conditional routing - visitors can request a proposal (captured as a qualified lead) or proceed directly to RezMagic's checkout for immediate booking
- Live filtering: Expedition results update in real-time as users adjust filters - date ranges, ship types, available cabins. No waiting, no page refreshes. Visitors can explore dozens of expeditions in seconds to find their perfect match.
Cool Technical Features
- Xano as middleware: Built a database layer that pulls from RezMagic API, reformats the data, and serves it to Wized at speed. RezMagic's API wasn't flexible enough to query directly - Xano solved this.
- CMS-to-database sync: Custom app syncs Webflow CMS collections with Xano, so the A21 team edits expedition content in Webflow's familiar interface while Wized displays the live data
- SVG-to-HTML ship maps: Used SVG Import to convert deck plan vectors into interactive HTML elements that Wized can target and update dynamically
- Conditional cabin logic: Wized handles rules like "this cabin requires minimum 2 guests" or "not available for children under 12" - displaying only valid options
- 3-layer spam protection: Honeypot fields, reCAPTCHA, and Zapier validation working together on all Wized-powered forms
- Automated lead routing: Form submissions route to different departments based on expedition type, travel dates, and enquiry type
Monica Randriamialy
Marketing Manager
Wized let us build a custom booking experience on top of a rigid third-party API. Live filtering, interactive ship maps, dynamic pricing logic - none of that would've been possible with the booking engine's default interface. It's now Antarctica21's second most-visited page.
