Luxury Hotels
The reframed ask
Design a booking experience that allows guests to find the best rooms in luxury hotels.
The first ask
Design a booking experience that allows guests to find the exact room they want in a hotel.
My role
Design lead, working directly with the Director of Design and presenting to the CEO.
What I did
Reframed the ask to focus on guests problems. this lead to a reframing of the entire startegy for booking luxury hotels.
Final luxury hotel experience
How I got to the end
Starting small
I started out by auditing the current product pages available for us to build off of quickly. The initial approach was to make quick wins to support luxury hotels using our current layout for our luxury homes.
My audit broke down the current experience to highlight what types of things we would need to change if we wanted to work quickly.
I concluded that it would actually be relatively easy to use what we already had built for homes to support a quick standup of a Hotel offering.
In order to make this work, we would however need to some additional pages highlighting the hotel and an overview of all the suites. Otherwise guests would view hotel rooms alongside homes, which inherently is not how a guest experiences a room. The amenities of a hotel are usually just as important as the suite itself.
Great, but can you push it further?
I reframed the problem to start with the real guest problems.
Room bait and switch
Hotel sites merchandise one room type. Guests often book a room type and when they arrive at the hotel, the room is different than the one they saw online.
Must call to add customizations
Once a guest books a room they must call the hotel to arrange any special requests or room customizations.
So many hotel sites, which one is the best
There are many hotel sites that offer the top rooms at hotels. It is hard for guests to know what room they are booking and which site offers the best rooms.
The best rooms
in the world.
Luxury Retreats welcomes guests into some of the most incredible homes in the world. Why should hotels be different?
Highlight and inspire guests to stay in some of the most impressive hotel rooms around the world. Use the rooms best feature as a way to guests to choose the best one for them.
Make it stand out.
Add in some things we know about rich people
The guest starts with a clear value proposition for choosing Luxury Retreats Hotels, followed by clear actions.
Once a location is selected, the guest will browse all the best rooms available. They will view the actual room they will check into.
The photo tour will allow the guest to explore the entire space to make sure it is perfect. The guest can then ask any questions or go straight to booking this room.
Booking your perfect room
It all begins with an idea. Maybe you want to launch a business. Maybe you want to turn a hobby into something more. Or maybe you have a creative project to share with the world. Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.
My learnings
Always reframe the question, even if that was not the ask.
I quickly added this to my list of values. I didn’t question the origional as because it was handed down from the top. Once we delivered on the first ask, it was clear this was not what leadership wanted. I now do more work upfront to explore or get more detail before solving a problem that was not based in user problems/feedback.