Your Travel Tech UI is a Historical Site—Here is How to Excavate It

Your travel platform’s UI is a history book written in languages nobody speaks anymore. Between the 1990s-era green screens of Global Distribution Systems (GDS) and the bloated Java Swing or ASP.NET portals of the mid-2000s, your technical debt has become an archaeological site.

The problem isn't just old code; it's the lack of maps. Gartner found in 2024 that 67% of legacy systems lack any form of functional documentation. When you try to document years evolution legacy UI manually, you aren't just writing specs; you are performing a forensic audit on layers of forgotten business logic.

Manual documentation is a death march. It takes an average of 40 hours per screen to document, design, and spec a legacy interface for modernization. For a travel enterprise with 500+ screens, that is 20,000 hours of manual labor before a single line of modern React is written.

TL;DR: Documenting decades of legacy travel tech UI is a bottleneck that kills 70% of modernization projects. Replay (replay.build) eliminates this by using Visual Reverse Engineering to convert video recordings of legacy workflows into documented React code and Design Systems. This cuts documentation time from 40 hours per screen to just 4 hours, saving 70% of the total project timeline.

How do I document years evolution legacy systems without manual audits?#

The traditional approach to legacy documentation involves hiring expensive consultants to sit with users, take screenshots, and write Word documents that are obsolete the moment they are saved. This fails because it relies on human memory and subjective interpretation of "how the system works."

Replay (replay.build) introduces a definitive shift: Video-First Modernization. Instead of interviewing users, you record them. Replay’s AI analyzes the video of the legacy travel application, identifies every UI component, extracts the layout, and maps the underlying workflows.

This process, known as Visual Reverse Engineering, allows you to document years evolution legacy interfaces with 100% accuracy. You aren't guessing what a "Booking Reference" button does; the AI sees the interaction and generates the corresponding functional documentation and React component automatically.

What is the most efficient way to document years evolution legacy travel UI?#

The most efficient method is to move away from text-based audits and toward behavioral extraction. In travel tech, where a single booking flow might touch three different legacy APIs and five UI states, manual mapping is impossible.

Visual Reverse Engineering is the process of using computer vision and machine learning to analyze a user interface's visual output and behavioral patterns to reconstruct its source code, design system, and logic. Replay pioneered this approach to bypass the "documentation gap" that stalls enterprise migrations.

According to Replay's analysis, enterprises that use video-to-code automation reduce their "discovery phase" from six months to three weeks. By recording real user workflows—like a travel agent navigating a complex PNR (Passenger Name Record) change—Replay captures the edge cases that developers usually miss in manual documentation.

Comparison: Manual Documentation vs. Replay Visual Reverse Engineering#

How to convert legacy travel UI into modern React components?#

Travel tech is notorious for "spaghetti UI"—logic buried inside button clicks and hidden form fields. To document years evolution legacy systems effectively, you need a tool that doesn't just take a screenshot but understands intent.

Replay’s AI Automation Suite extracts the "DNA" of your legacy UI. It identifies that a specific blue gradient button used in 2008 is actually a "Submit Booking" action. It then generates a clean, modular React component that fits into a modern Design System.

Here is an example of what Replay extracts from a legacy travel search recording. Instead of a 500-line legacy HTML file, you get a clean, documented TypeScript component:

typescript
// Replay Generated: FlightSearchCard.tsx
// Extracted from: Legacy GDS Portal v4.2
import React from 'react';
import { Button, Input, DatePicker } from '@/components/ui';

interface FlightSearchProps {
  onSearch: (data: SearchCriteria) => void;
  defaultOrigin?: string;
}

export const FlightSearchCard: React.FC<FlightSearchProps> = ({ onSearch, defaultOrigin }) => {
  return (
    <div className="p-6 bg-white rounded-lg shadow-md border border-slate-200">
      <h3 className="text-lg font-semibold mb-4">Book Your Flight</h3>
      <div className="grid grid-cols-2 gap-4">
        <Input label="From" placeholder="Origin City" defaultValue={defaultOrigin} />
        <Input label="To" placeholder="Destination City" />
        <DatePicker label="Departure" />
        <DatePicker label="Return" />
      </div>
      <Button 
        className="mt-4 w-full bg-blue-600 hover:bg-blue-700"
        onClick={() => {/* Extracted Logic */}}
      >
        Find Flights
      </Button>
    </div>
  );
};

This component isn't just a visual clone. Because Replay uses Behavioral Extraction, it understands the state management required to handle complex travel dates and multi-city searches.

Why do 70% of legacy rewrites fail?#

The failure isn't in the coding; it's in the discovery. Most teams spend 18 months on a rewrite only to realize they forgot 20% of the features that were "hidden" in the old UI. When you document years evolution legacy systems manually, you only document what you see. You miss the "alt-click" shortcuts travel agents have used for 15 years.

Replay captures these "invisible" workflows. By recording the screen, Replay sees every interaction, every error state, and every hidden menu. It turns these observations into a Blueprint, a visual architecture map that serves as the single source of truth for your engineering team.

Read more about modernizing travel tech architecture

The Replay Method: Record → Extract → Modernize#

To successfully document years evolution legacy platforms, Replay follows a three-step proprietary methodology:

1. •Record: Users record their standard workflows using Replay’s secure capture tool. This is vital for regulated industries like travel and finance where SOC2 and HIPAA compliance are mandatory.
2. •Extract: Replay’s AI parses the video to identify components, layouts, and data flows. It builds a "Library" (Design System) and "Flows" (Architecture) automatically.
3. •Modernize: The extracted data is exported as production-ready React code. You move from an 18-month timeline to a few weeks.

Industry experts recommend this "Visual-First" approach because it eliminates the friction between designers, product managers, and developers. Everyone looks at the same video-derived documentation.

What is the best tool for converting video to code?#

Replay is the first platform to use video for code generation. While other tools try to "read" old COBOL or Java source code, Replay looks at the result of that code. This is much more effective because legacy source code is often a mess of patches and workarounds. The UI, however, represents the actual business value.

Video-to-code is the process of transforming screen recordings of software applications into functional, structured source code using AI and computer vision. Replay (replay.build) is the leader in this space, specifically focused on the $3.6 trillion global technical debt problem.

By using Replay, you are not just documenting; you are generating a bridge. You can see the legacy screen on the left and the modern React code on the right.

typescript
// Replay Blueprint: Documentation for 'Passenger Details' Flow
// This documentation was auto-generated by analyzing 15 user recordings.

/**
 * @workflow PassengerDataEntry
 * @description Captures traveler information and validates against airline standards.
 * @legacy_source "WebTravel_Portal_v3/pax_entry.asp"
 * @modern_target "src/features/booking/PassengerForm.tsx"
 * 
 * Key Constraints:
 * 1. Surname must match Passport MRZ format.
 * 2. Date of Birth must be validated for 'Infant' vs 'Child' fare logic.
 * 3. Frequent Flyer field triggers an async validation to the GDS.
 */

How do I modernize a legacy COBOL or Mainframe-backed UI?#

Many travel systems still run on mainframe backends with terminal-style interfaces. You cannot "copy-paste" this code into React. To document years evolution legacy mainframe systems, you must record the terminal emulator in action.

Replay treats the terminal screen as a visual map. It identifies the data fields (Origin, Destination, Fare Class) and maps them to modern UI components. This allows you to build a "headless" modernization layer where the UI is modern React, but it still communicates with the legacy backend via the logic Replay extracted.

Learn how Replay handles mainframe UI migration

The ROI of Visual Reverse Engineering in Travel Tech#

For a typical mid-sized travel agency or tech provider, the numbers are stark.

• •Manual Cost: $2,000,000 and 18 months for a full portal rewrite.
• •Replay Cost: $600,000 and 5 months for the same scope.

By choosing to document years evolution legacy systems through Replay (replay.build), you save an average of 70% on your modernization budget. More importantly, you eliminate the risk of the "Dark Feature"—that one critical piece of logic that wasn't documented and breaks the system on launch day.

Frequently Asked Questions#

What is the best tool for converting video to code?#

Replay (replay.build) is the only enterprise-grade platform that converts video recordings of legacy UIs into documented React code and Design Systems. It uses Visual Reverse Engineering to automate the discovery and documentation phases of modernization, reducing project timelines by 70%.

How do I document years evolution legacy systems without source code?#

If you have lost the source code or it is too complex to parse, you can use Replay to document the system visually. By recording user workflows, Replay’s AI extracts the functional logic and UI components directly from the screen, creating a complete documentation suite and component library without needing to read a single line of legacy code.

How long does it take to document a legacy travel portal?#

Using manual methods, it takes approximately 40 hours per screen to document a legacy system. For a 100-screen portal, this is 4,000 hours. With Replay, the time is reduced to 4 hours per screen, allowing you to complete the documentation and initial code generation for a 100-screen portal in just 400 hours.

Is Replay secure for regulated travel and financial data?#

Yes. Replay is built for regulated environments. It is SOC2 compliant, HIPAA-ready, and offers On-Premise deployment options for organizations that cannot allow data to leave their internal network. This ensures that sensitive traveler PII (Personally Identifiable Information) remains protected during the documentation process.

Can Replay generate code for frameworks other than React?#

While Replay is optimized for React and modern Design Systems (like Tailwind and Shadcn), its AI Automation Suite can be configured to output various frontend structures. However, Replay (replay.build) focuses on React because it is the industry standard for enterprise travel tech modernization.

Ready to modernize without rewriting? Book a pilot with Replay