Hyatt Hotels - Experience Booking Flow
Challenge
Will customers book experiences directly through hotels?
One of Hyatt’s business goals was to create a way to diversify hotel revenue. Pre-existing research showed that people would book based on a number of factors, including what sort of experiences they could book or expect during their vacation. Experiences could range from a cocktail making class to booking a cabana. No two hotels are alike and could offer their own unique curated experiences that fit their market.
An initial pilot was run with hotels utilizing a 3rd party booking platform that was proven successful. I helped during this phase of the project but business goals quickly shifted with the need to build the booking process internally, utilizing internal patterns and implementing best UX practices.
My Role & Team
I was the Senior Product Designer working within a triad group alongside a product manager and engineering manager. We had a team of 6+ engineers ranging in specialties from front end, back end, SDET, QA and partnered with our research team.
Research & Data
While we had a base to go off of from the initial pilot phase, a lot of pain points were quickly identified utilizing data and feedback from both customer and individual hotels. During the whole process, I created multiple prototypes to test flows and ideas that landed us in a solid direction for an MVP. We also utilized surveys to help gather quantitative feedback.
Pain Points
User specific pain points included:
Multiple accessibility issues with color contrast and unusable UI elements
Unintuitive booking flow, depending on the type of experience
Unclear or confusing details and information about the experiences
Organizational and technology pain points included:
Limited API functionality from 3rd party
Different brand standards for 20+ different hotel brands
Inconsistent hotel standards for creating and inputting experience details
Competing internal marketing programs
Ideation & Process
One of the main areas of focus was to become mobile first with the design approach and patterns. With over ~%70 of users viewing and booking on a mobile device, making sure users got everything they needed with a smaller viewport was a necessity.
My goal was to always design mobile first and reverse engineer how it would work on a larger breakpoint size. This was important during stakeholder review to showcase how thinking mobile first would translate across the entire design process.
Additionally, during the design process I had to think holistically across all touchpoints for a brand including their individually branded websites, a differently branded room booking flow and how it could scale on the mobile app. Making sure patterns could accommodate the necessary brand elements was the key to being able to scale this quickly. Not to mention the challenges of translations, which is something I’m sure every designer has come across.
Usability Testing & Analysis
*The entire flow had multiple steps but I will only discuss a few since the entire flow is not formally live.
Test as early and as often as possible. That’s the approach I took during the process. The best part about working on a triad are the different perspectives blended to create the final product. Sometimes a design didn’t really achieve the business goal or it could present a challenge for engineering to develop at a quick and scalable pace.
Experience Catalog Page
This page was the first chance a user was able to explore what sort of experiences were offered by the hotel. Users could use filters to refine their search. During testing, we uncovered what sort of categories users would engage with, how they engage with dropdowns vs. exposed filter options, what would entice them to learn more about an experience and what the minimum amount of detail would be needed to make an experience clear to them.
Experience Detail Page
After the catalog page, a user would land on a page with more detail and a booking action to move forward in the flow. During testing we explored what information would be needed here to have a user enticed to book, the differences between gating and un-gating the remainder of the flow, what sort of booking specific detailed information was needed and what was the best UI to present for each of the experience types.
Learnings
This project was full of learnings and complexities but was full of exciting potential to grow the product. Engineering feasibility included challenges of blending 3rd party API’s, internal design libraries and custom coding new elements. Legal and compliance across multiple regions was at top of mind. I had to make sure accessibility standards were met while also maintaining brand compliance. Additionally, making sure data was interpreted effectively for all stakeholders was most important for the overall narrative.
Nothing is straightforward with any new product and this experience booking flow was no different. Some of my ideas didn’t make the cut for MVP but we backlogged them for a later date. This project allowed me to expand my understanding of the complexities of the entire process from hotel, business and user needs. I enjoyed every step of the way and learned a ton to carry forward with all of my future work.