Modernizing the digital front door of a major Saudi aviation gateway
AHD Solutions partnered with Kogifi on the second delivery phase of KAIA’s traveler-facing experience - a headless Sitecore XP + Next.js platform with Arabic-first design, real-time flight intelligence, CRM self-service and content built for peak pilgrimage and year-round traffic.
Outcomes, before the long story
What we were asked to solve
Phase 1 had stood up the headless foundation. Phase 2 had to turn it into a traveler product: live flights, authenticated services and Arabic-native journeys - not another brochure site.
A gateway handling tens of millions of passengers a year, with sharp Hajj / Umrah and holiday spikes, needed a stack that stays calm when traffic and editorial demand hit at once.
Arabic and English had to share one content model and design system. RTL, Arabic letter indexing and bilingual CRM copy were first-class - not a translation afterthought.
Marketing and passenger-service teams needed to publish guides, shop/dine, services and seasonal content without waiting on engineering for routine changes.
One of the Kingdom’s busiest aviation gateways
The client operates a strategic international airport on Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea coast - a primary entry point for national carriers, low-cost networks and global pilgrimage traffic. The digital channel is part of Vision 2030 connectivity: travelers expect live flight status, terminal guidance, services and support in Arabic first, with English as a peer locale.
Six principles we held to
Sitecore XP remains the system of record for content and layout; Next.js owns the traveler experience. Clear seams so flights, CRM and CMS can evolve independently.
Document direction, RTL design tokens, Arabic alphabet filters and bilingual field modeling - so Arabic UX is native, not mirrored English.
Live arrivals/departures, terminal-aware filtering and passenger-journey surfaces keyed to real flight data, not static PDFs.
Shop & Dine, Passenger Guide, Airport Services, Parking & Transport and seasonal campaigns are modeled for editors - same rigor as the traveler UI.
Auth, profile, My Cases and Lost & Found close the loop with CRM so support workflows start on the website.
AHD + Kogifi on one backlog for Phase 2: GitLab pipelines, Oracle Cloud hosting, Sitecore on-prem discipline and runbooks for hypercare.
Composable, layered, operable
9 months · Phase 2 · five waves
Aligned AHD + Kogifi + client stakeholders on Phase 2 scope: Arabic-first UX debt, flight surfaces, CRM self-service and editorial content models for peak season.
What Phase 2 changed
Direction, typography, Arabic letter filters and bilingual CRM fields treated as system primitives - not a post-launch locale pack.
Arrivals/departures search, terminal filters and flight-aware passenger journeys replaced static “check elsewhere” patterns.
Login, profile, My Cases and Lost & Found let travelers open and track service requests without a phone queue.
Guides, Shop & Dine, services, parking/transport and campaigns publish through Sitecore XP without redeploying the Next.js app for routine copy.
Experience architecture aligned to a gateway in the 50M+ annual passenger class, including pilgrimage peaks.
Sitecore XP on-prem, Next.js rendering, Oracle Cloud hosting and GitLab delivery - operable by the joint team.
What we’d tell our future selves
Tokenizing direction, letter indexes and bilingual fields early spared a second pass when editors and travelers both needed Arabic to feel native.
Wiring boards and journeys to live feeds changed the value proposition overnight - content alone cannot compete with “where is my gate?”
With the headless foundation already in place, the win was shipping traveler capabilities (CRM, flights, services) in thin vertical slices - not another platform rewrite.
We help enterprise teams design, build and scale Digital Experience Platforms - on Sitecore, Optimizely, Kentico, Umbraco and Kontent.ai.