IHG, 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 through other travel agencies.
Even if travelers choose to book through IHG, they are routed to individual brand websites and the booking process becomes more confusing.
How might we optimize the booking experience so that travelers book through IHG instead of other websites?
But what incentivizes travelers to book one hotel over another? It turns out, it depends on why, and with whom, they are traveling.
From 202 survey responses, travelers largely grouped into 3 categories.
“{{ seg.quote }}”
How might IHG help travelers book their stay according to their preferences?
One feature idea, refined over three rounds: from sliders that didn't work to a search curated around the experience you want.
It started with how travelers search today: comparing options across many sites based on their preferences, which is a long and arduous process.
But what if IHG made these preferences a main feature of the website?
Stay Tuners
Users “tune” their stay with sliders across various criteria and get hotel results based on their selections.
Users couldn't intuitively quantify their preferences, and IHG doubted how the values would translate to hotel results.
Experience adjectives
What if users searched by the experience they want, using qualitative adjectives, instead of numbers?
Users preferred searching by experience, but the options only lived at the start of the search. We needed to carry these adjectives throughout the journey.
Experience Search
Results are curated around the experience you want, and the feature shows up across every part of the website.
With experience adjectives, users intuitively search and select hotels by preference, shortening the time it takes to find their ideal stay.
We hypothesize that this will lead travelers to book through IHG instead of other websites.
Compared with other industry leaders, our design stacked at the top in Customizability, Booking Optimization, and Experience Management.
We re-evaluated the journeys of our 3 key travelers. The biggest gain: browsing hotels by personal preference.