Sector(s)
ESNcard.org supports students in international exchange with thousands of discounts on accommodation, food, and local events. The Erasmus Student Network issues ESN membership cards to more than 160,000 holders across 40 countries, and those numbers grow each year. The organization needed a single Drupal portal where card holders search offers at local, national, and international scope while section managers publish discounts, manage vouchers, and notify users without maintaining separate tools for each country.
About the project
ESNcard.org is the public discount portal for Erasmus Student Network membership card holders. Students browse and redeem offers while ESN section managers and central staff maintain discounts, vouchers, and user records for an audience that spans dozens of countries.
The client
The Erasmus Student Network (ESN) organizes international student exchange and issues the ESNcard to members. ESNcard.org gives card holders access to partner discounts on accommodation, restaurants, transport, and events. Offers can apply to a single local section, an entire country, or all card holders worldwide. The network needed one platform that could serve that scale without fragmenting registration or voucher management across 40 national ecosystems.
Challenge
The platform needed to:
- Reach more than 160,000 card holders across 40 countries with new offers and blog updates.
- Register users once and sync accounts with the Hostelling International hostel booking portal.
- Group users by country and ESN section for local, national, and international discount rules.
- Let managers add, edit, and retire large batches of vouchers and promo codes without manual data entry.
- Validate ESN card numbers during registration and give students map-based discount discovery on mobile and desktop.
Solutions
Simplenews and editorial content
Editors compose newsletters in Drupal with selected discount highlights and links to blog posts, then send campaigns to card holders filtered by section or scope. Banner and blog content types sit alongside discount nodes in the same CMS.
Registration and Hostelling International sync
The registration flow auto-completes university address fields and validates card numbers against stored ESN card records. Account creation triggers synchronization with the Hostelling International portal so students reuse the same login for hostel reservations.
Tiered discounts with geo-enabled listings
Custom discount content ties each offer to local section, national, or international visibility. Address fields feed map displays on discount detail pages and power a Nearby discounts view based on the user's location. Views and taxonomy filters let card holders search by category, country, and city.
Voucher and promo code management
Managers attach vouchers to discounts through an admin interface that supports copy-and-paste bulk entry, uploads from CSV, TXT, or XLS files, and selection from existing code lists. Rules set expiry dates and maximum redemptions per card. Status tools update or remove codes in batches.
User panel and data export
Card holders see assigned vouchers and promo codes in a personal panel after linking a valid ESN card. Administrators search users by section or active card status and export name, address, and voucher ownership to spreadsheet files from the user interface.
Result
ESNcard.org runs as a Drupal portal serving 160,000+ card holders in 40 countries. Section managers publish scoped discounts, import voucher batches in minutes, and email targeted newsletters from one backend. Students register with validated card data, discover nearby offers on a map, and access Hostelling International booking with shared credentials.
Examples of implemented features:
- Three-tier discount scope: local section, national, and international.
- Simplenews campaigns with offer highlights and blog links.
- ESN card validation and university address auto-complete at registration.
- Hostelling International account sync during sign-up.
- Category, country, and city discount search with detail minimaps.
- Nearby discounts based on user location.
- Bulk voucher import via paste, file upload, or list selection.
- User panel for owned vouchers and administrator export to XLS.
Why Drupal was chosen
Drupal handles large user bases, granular roles, and structured content types in one stack. ESNcard.org needed section-scoped access for local managers, national coordinators, and central administrators alongside a public discount catalog with maps, vouchers, and newsletters. Custom entities on Drupal user profiles store ESN card numbers validated against an internal database, while Simplenews and Views power segmented mailings and filtered offer search for 160,000+ accounts.
Drupal's registration APIs integrated with the Hostelling International booking portal so students create one set of credentials for both services. Export hooks and bulk voucher workflows use Drupal's entity framework and batch processing rather than external spreadsheets for day-to-day operations. The platform scales with new ESN sections and countries as membership grows.
Technical Specifications
Drupal version:
