Why Must Travel Businesses Ditch Legacy Systems?

79% of travel agencies (TA) see legacy systems as a barrier to digital transformation, leading to drops in bookings, frequent outages, and mounting security vulnerabilities. The cracks are no longer hypothetical: travel firms have suffered £5.45 billion in annual revenue loss from UK consumers due to failed transactions. As per a report, two-thirds of firms say that payment failures even result in an increase in staff workload.

The risks go deeper as you dive deeper. Up to 75% of IT budgets in travel and hospitality are being drained just to keep legacy tech on life support—leaving little room for innovation or customer experience improvements.

In short, legacy tech is not just slowing you down; it might be leading you to a slow death.

That’s why travel businesses worldwide must adopt unified, modern platforms. In 2025, many travel agencies are already doing so. Should you, too? Well, read this insight and you’ll figure it out.

The Cracks in Legacy Travel Technology Systems

You might wonder, “Why so much outcry against legacy systems while they have been the cash cow for decades now?” Let’s break it down.

Fragmented Processes

Today’s travel businesses juggle dozens of supplier APIs, GDS integrations, payment gateways, and customer touchpoints.

With disparate systems (usual for companies relying on legacy travel technology solutions), critical data sits in silos, forcing TAs and online travel agencies (OTAs) to stitch together workflows manually.

If this is the case with your OTA too, then you would know the implications of fragmented processes in the travel business:

It results in manual task overload on staff, which has a ripple effect across operations, customer success, and, of course, carves a dent in your profitability as well.
Worst of all, the customer suffers—70% of US travellers get stressed while booking flights, accommodation, airport transfers, luggage allowance, and other travel content.

Inefficiency and High Maintenance Costs

Every time a travel content supplier updates their API or a GDS changes its specifications, agencies on legacy platforms are up for weeks or months of development work and quality testing. Even minor enhancements, like adding ancillaries or updating fare rules, often require expensive maintenance work (patching, coding) and downtime.

Yes, your cash cow could soon become a money pit.

Legacy travel technology systems aren’t designed for today’s multi-channel, high-volume operations. With legacy solutions, it’s almost impossible to cater to rising customer demands, never-ending supplier changes, and strict compliance requirements. Even if you attempt, most probably you would either be draining your staff’s productivity or guzzling your profitability. Worst, both.

Poor Integration Capabilities

In a market where agility and content inventory drive conversions, legacy systems are a bottleneck (or more precisely, ‘growth inhibitors’) when it comes to extending your offerings and efficiency with integrations, hence resulting in missed opportunities and a reputational risk.

Adding a new low-cost carrier API, new distribution content (NDC), or hotel wholesaler isn’t a simple plug ‘n’ play for TAs and OTAs stuck with legacy tech. Instead, it’s a slow, resource-draining process. Each integration demands endless developer hours, constant vendor back-and-forth, and manual data mapping that can take weeks or months. By the time integrations are GTM ready, incumbent and new entrants, i.e., your competitors, on modern travel technology solutions already capture a majority of market demand.

Also, if the systems are not potent enough, other problems sprout up—outdated pricing, slow response times, an increase in booking errors, and fragmented, insufficient inventory. Often, corporate clients grow frustrated with their TMC when their preferred suppliers aren’t available on the self-booking tool.

Limited Data Analysis and Personalization

Legacy travel systems weren’t built for the data-driven world that agencies operate in today. Interoperability between software is quintessential today. However, in legacy travel agencies, critical booking, customer, agent, and revenue data is scattered across siloed systems, making it nearly impossible to get a unified view of the business. There’s no way to track traveler preferences, analyze trends in real time, or personalize offers at scale. As a result, agencies are stuck pushing generic products instead of tailoring experiences to high-value clients; they miss conversion opportunities and chances to win customer loyalty.

Security Risks

Recently, Expedia, one of the largest OTAs, was hacked, resulting in the compromise of 880,000 payment cards from its subsidiary, Orbitz. Older travel tech stacks often run on outdated architectures with minimal security controls. They lack modern encryption, real-time threat monitoring, and compliance with evolving data privacy regulations like GDPR. Every patch or integration introduces new vulnerabilities, exposing agencies to data breaches and financial fraud. In an industry where trust is paramount, legacy systems turn security into a ticking time bomb.

Dislodge Legacy from Your Travel Tech Stack

A recent survey found that 72% of travel and hospitality industry experts consider digital transformation as being ‘very important’ to their business. Digitization, more specifically, moving to cloud-native containerized solutions, can save up to 40% in operational costs. However, travel agency digitization or stack modernization is often not as simple as it sounds. There are challenges—data migration difficulties, existing system compatibility issues, limited flexibility, technology expertise, talent access, staff training, and cultural rehaul, among other roadblocks.

Team Iween takes cognizance of these challenges and helps you navigate them in style. Here’s our suite of travel technology products to help you mitigate legacy tech issues and leapfrog ahead of competitors when it comes to innovation, efficiency, and agility-

API Gateway: Plug into 160+ suppliers with just one API, cut integration costs & time by 90%, go live in 3 days.
Online Booking + Mid-office: An integrated system for booking, ops, accounting & markups. And save up to 70% in ops cost.
T&E Software: Win corporate clients with policy-compliant intelligent travel + expense workflows.

Get in touch with our team for a more profound & personalised solution for your travel agency. Stay tuned to Iween’s LinkedIn page to stay abreast of the latest in TravelTech.