Booking Optimization for IHG

Role

UX Designer (Group of 4)

Duration

10 weeks

Design Objective

To check, edit, and add features to IHG's current booking flow to allow multiple entry points for more accurate bookings.

Who is IHG?

IHG or the InterContinental Hotels Group owns 16 hotel brands including Holiday Inn and Crowne Plaza across the world.

IHG sponsored our senior studio and came to us wanting to improve their booking process. They wanted users to book through the IHG website rather than other travel agencies.

View Final Prototype

01 Research

Research

Current State

To discover where we could intervene with design, we started by assessing the current state of the IHG booking process.

Additionally, we discovered the following problems upon investigating the booking process:

Competitive Analysis

We identified 9 criteria that we used to compare the major players in the hotel business. I found that there was space for IHG to innovate in the customizability and experience management areas.

Survey

Following a competitive analysis, we started talking to people to understand their experiences with booking

We found that the needs and desires of travelers varied greatly based on the reason for their travel.

Market Research

To understand if our insights matched with a wider audience, we conducted secondary research as well.

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Reinforces our learnings from primary research through survey

User Journeys

We utilized user journeys for the 3 distinct travel groups as a way to ground our findings. It allowed us to identify opportunities to bring to ideation.

From our research, we knew that we had to create a solution that allowed people to search based on their travel interests. We found 3 main themes emerge:

The ability for the user to customize their search to a certain extent, through experiences and amenities.

Relay information in a simple and clear manner so that users don't have to search for it themselves

Allow for users to quickly be able to tell difference between hotel brands and experiences while searching

Customization

Clarity

Differentiation

02 Ideation and Iterations

Ideation & Iterations

'How Might We's' to guide ideation

Based on our findings we set out to ideate with a bunch of 'how might we' statements.

Experience Search Ideation

For most people, choosing a stay is more than just booking a hotel. They have preferences regarding budget, itinerary, activities, etc. So in choosing their stay, they have to visit a hundred different websites before they can make their decision. What if IHG could integrate this search process within their website?

Current Journey

Intended Journey

Stay Tuners

Users can “tune” their stay based on various criteria. They were easy to use and gave users hotel results based on their selections. However, it turned out to be unrealistic to try to quantify these values and compare them equally.

Insights from Round 1 of ideation

Customization

Clarity

Differentiation

What the tuners represent is not very intuitive.
How will users interact with tuners if they come in from a different starting point?
Need to be upfront with users of the benefits of the tuners and why you are gathering information from them
Percentage value matches are hard to process on the back-end

There needs to be a lot more communication between individual hotel managers and the app in order to receive updates on stay preferences.
What happens when a user profile switches during the same stay? Sorting hotels by user type may be flawed in this way.

Improve comparison of hotels.
Filters are underutilized, find a way to present this in a way that is more visually engaging.

Experience Searching

Qualitative adjectives are more intuitive than trying to quantify abstract experiences.

Test users liked that hotels were differentiated based on these adjectives.
They disliked that the words were limiting.

Fine-Tuning Results

Allowing users to edit their preferences from the hotel results page provides them with more flexibility and context.

IHG Plugin Ideation

Earning points is very important to keep customers loyal. However, customers are always looking for the best deal on third-party websites. If IHG is able to support this behavior and allow travelers to book from any website while still earning points at IHG, it will encourage more bookings.

Current Journey

Intended Journey

IHG Plugin

Streamlining Hotel Selection Ideation

Apart from new features, changes in visual design and information architecture also enhances the overall user experience, leading to higher bookings through IHG.

Iteration 1

Visual Cues

Visual icons for filters and percentage matches can streamline the search process.

Percentage matches, while easy to imagine on the front end, are difficult to implement due to the qualitative nature of the matching criteria.

Icons are a great upgrade, but don't match the look of the rest of the website.

Iteration 2

Coherent Visual Cues

Continuing the model of experience search through qualitative adjectives creates a coherent user experience.

Test users want to know why a certain tag has been given to a certain hotel.

03 Concept Proposal

Concept Proposal

Based on the numerous rounds of user testing, we made changes to these key areas of the booking process:

Home Page

Made calendar more intuitive
Added 'anywhere' search
Added reviews
Added experience cards

Filters

Change UI to be more visually appealing
Easily accessible and visible

Experience Search

All new feature that allows users to customize their holiday preferences

Location Search

Ability to search experiences in a specific location

Hotel Results

Reduced clutter in hotel cards
Re-inforced experience adjectives

Review System

Use the same words used in reviews as options in experience searching. Make leaving reviews easier

Hotel Details

Hotel details are now provided on the same website. All amenities clearly identified.

IHG Plugin

Route users on other websites to the IHG website to increase traffic

04 Evaluation

Evaluation

Comparing our new design with other leaders, we found that our design stacked at the top in the Customizability, Booking Optimization, and Experience Management categories.

We also reevaluated the journey of the 3 key customers we had identified earlier on. Overall, we saw the most improvement in the experience of browsing hotels based on personal preferences.

Booking Optimization for IHG

Role

Duration

Design Objective

Who is IHG?

View Final Prototype

01 Research

To discover where we could intervene with design, we started by assessing the current state of the IHG booking process.

Additionally, we discovered the following problems upon investigating the booking process:

We identified 9 criteria that we used to compare the major players in the hotel business. I found that there was space for IHG to innovate in the customizability and experience management areas.

Following a competitive analysis, we started talking to people to understand their experiences with booking

We found that the needs and desires of travelers varied greatly based on the reason for their travel.

To understand if our insights matched with a wider audience, we conducted secondary research as well.

}

We utilized user journeys for the 3 distinct travel groups as a way to ground our findings. It allowed us to identify opportunities to bring to ideation.

From our research, we knew that we had to create a solution that allowed people to search based on their travel interests. We found 3 main themes emerge:

The ability for the user to customize their search to a certain extent, through experiences and amenities.

Relay information in a simple and clear manner so that users don't have to search for it themselves

Allow for users to quickly be able to tell difference between hotel brands and experiences while searching

Customization

Clarity

Differentiation

02 Ideation and Iterations

Based on our findings we set out to ideate with a bunch of 'how might we' statements.

Current Journey

Intended Journey

Stay Tuners

Users can “tune” their stay based on various criteria. They were easy to use and gave users hotel results based on their selections. However, it turned out to be unrealistic to try to quantify these values and compare them equally.

Insights from Round 1 of ideation

Customization

Clarity

Differentiation

What the tuners represent is not very intuitive.

How will users interact with tuners if they come in from a different starting point?

Need to be upfront with users of the benefits of the tuners and why you are gathering information from them

Percentage value matches are hard to process on the back-end

There needs to be a lot more communication between individual hotel managers and the app in order to receive updates on stay preferences.

What happens when a user profile switches during the same stay? Sorting hotels by user type may be flawed in this way.

Improve comparison of hotels.

Filters are underutilized, find a way to present this in a way that is more visually engaging.

Experience Searching

Qualitative adjectives are more intuitive than trying to quantify abstract experiences. Test users liked that hotels were differentiated based on these adjectives. They disliked that the words were limiting.

Fine-Tuning Results

Allowing users to edit their preferences from the hotel results page provides them with more flexibility and context.

Earning points is very important to keep customers loyal. However, customers are always looking for the best deal on third-party websites. If IHG is able to support this behavior and allow travelers to book from any website while still earning points at IHG, it will encourage more bookings.

Current Journey

Intended Journey

IHG Plugin

Apart from new features, changes in visual design and information architecture also enhances the overall user experience, leading to higher bookings through IHG.

Iteration 1

Visual Cues

Visual icons for filters and percentage matches can streamline the search process.

Iteration 2

Coherent Visual Cues

Continuing the model of experience search through qualitative adjectives creates a coherent user experience.

03 Concept Proposal

Based on the numerous rounds of user testing, we made changes to these key areas of the booking process:

Home Page

Made calendar more intuitive Added 'anywhere' search Added reviews Added experience cards

Filters

Change UI to be more visually appealing Easily accessible and visible

Experience Search

All new feature that allows users to customize their holiday preferences

Location Search

Ability to search experiences in a specific location

Hotel Results

Reduced clutter in hotel cards Re-inforced experience adjectives

Review System

Use the same words used in reviews as options in experience searching. Make leaving reviews easier

Hotel Details

Hotel details are now provided on the same website. All amenities clearly identified.

IHG Plugin

Route users on other websites to the IHG website to increase traffic

04 Evaluation

Comparing our new design with other leaders, we found that our design stacked at the top in the Customizability, Booking Optimization, and Experience Management categories.

We also reevaluated the journey of the 3 key customers we had identified earlier on. Overall, we saw the most improvement in the experience of browsing hotels based on personal preferences.

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Who is IHG?

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Qualitative adjectives are more intuitive than trying to quantify abstract experiences.

Test users liked that hotels were differentiated based on these adjectives.
They disliked that the words were limiting.

Made calendar more intuitive
Added 'anywhere' search
Added reviews
Added experience cards

Change UI to be more visually appealing
Easily accessible and visible

Reduced clutter in hotel cards
Re-inforced experience adjectives