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 19 hotel brands including Holiday Inn and Crowne Plaza across the world.
IHG came to us wanting to improve their booking process. They wanted users to book through the IHG website rather than other travel agencies.
The Problem
19 Brands. 3 competitors. 100+ third-party websites.
Even if travelers choose to book through IHG, they are routed to individual brand websites and the booking process becomes more confusing.
Luxury and Lifestyle Collection
Premium Collection
Essentials Collection
Suites Collection
How might we optimize the booking experience so that travelers book through IHG instead of other websites?
But what even incentivizes travelers to book one hotel over another?
Turns out, it depends on the reason why they are traveling.
Our research showed that depending on why and with whom they are traveling, users can be largely grouped into 3 categories:
Travel for Leisure
Travel with family
Travel for work
Budget-Friendly
Leisurely
Adventurous
Safe
Budget-Friendly
Free Breakfast
Family Activities
Cultural
Productive
Luxurious
Late Checkout
Bar
*Updated problem statement
How might IHG help travelers book their stay according to their preferences?
The Ideas
Current User Behavior involves comparing various options based on various preferences, which becomes a long and arduous process.
But what if IHG integrates these preferences as a main feature of the website?
Stay Tuners
Users can “tune” their stay based on various criteria. They are easy to use and provides hotel results based on their selections. However, it turned out to be unrealistic to try to quantify these values and compare them equally.
What if we implement qualitative adjectives to allow users to search by desired experience instead?
Users were unable to intuitively quantify their preferences. IHG representative doubted how the preferences would translate to hotel results.
Users preferred this method of experience searching. However, the options were limited to the beginning of the search process.
We needed to integrate these adjectives throughout the users' journey on IHG.
Home Page
Ability to look up hotels by experiences from the home page itself.
Location Search
Allows users to search experiences in a specific location, using qualitative experiences.
Experience Search
Allows users to customize their holiday preferences to generate relevant results.
Hotel Results
Re-inforced experience adjectives to make the connection between user selection and results presented.
Filters
Users can add and change preferences within filters from the Hotel Results page itself.
Review System
Reviewing involves the same words used in experience searching, which allows the algorithm to tag hotels based on reviews.
How might IHG help travelers book their stay according to their preferences?
By using experience adjectives, users can intuitively search and select hotels based on their preferences, shortening the time they take to find their ideal hotel stay. We hypothesize that this will lead them to book through IHG instead of other websites.
Evaluating Design
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.
