Improving Travel Booking Experience

Desktop

Company

Trip.com

Role

UX Researcher

Industry

Travel and Tourism

Date

2024

Introduction

Trip.com, a leading online travel agency, recognized the need to continuously innovate its platform to address evolving customer needs and expectations. This case study explores how Trip.com analyzed its platform, identified key pain points, and proposed solutions to enhance the overall travel booking experience, ensuring it remains a preferred choice in the global travel market.

About Business

Trip.com is a leading online travel agency (OTA) with a global presence. The platform offers a comprehensive suite of travel booking services, including flights, hotels, train tickets, car rentals, and activities.

Problem

Navigating Trip.com's desktop hotel booking interface is cumbersome due to an overwhelming amount of information and limited options to effectively guide users through booking decisions. This may result in decision fatigue, potential user drop-offs, and missed conversion opportunities.

Objectives

  • Easily view relevant deals and information on the hotel booking interface to make quicker booking decisions.

  • Feel assured that they’re getting the best price and rewards for their loyalty.

  • Navigate the platform with minimal friction, reducing cognitive load and potential decision fatigue.

Research

The design process began with a comprehensive competitor landscape analysis to identify successful UX elements in hotel booking sites. Following this, a heuristic evaluation of Trip.com’s current platform was conducted to pinpoint areas needing improvement.

Landscape Analysis

Key competitors in the desktop hotel booking market were identified, assessing their strengths and weaknesses in areas such as user flow, booking efficiency, and personalization.

Heuristic Evaluation

Using Nielsen’s 10 usability principles, Trip.com's interface was evaluated for areas that deviated from design best practices, focusing on clarity, engagement, and the reduction of cognitive load.

Usability Review and Design Recommendations

Combining landscape analysis and heuristic evaluation findings, design recommendations were developed to aim at enhancing user engagement, facilitating decision-making, and improving the booking experience. Recommendations were inspired by best practices observed on competitive platforms.

Define

The analysis revealed specific opportunities to optimize user experience, focusing on:

Urgency in Limited-Time Deals

A lack of effective urgency cues reduces incentive for users to book quickly.

Clarity on Trip Coins Program

Users are not immediately aware of Trip Coins' benefits, limiting its potential as a loyalty incentive.

Pricing & Promotional Strategies

Without visible promo codes or incentives, users may turn to competitors with more attractive pricing options.

Key Feature #1

Countdown Timers & Color Emphasis

Adding countdowns to limited-time offers to create a sense of urgency, drawing from successful practices on Agoda.

Key Feature #2

Trip Coins Highlight

Featuring clear, tangible Trip Coins rewards to drive user motivation, similar to Hotels.com’s reward breakdown.

Key Feature #3

Promo Codes

Introducing promo codes on booking pages to align with industry standards and improve user retention.

Results

There were no results or impact as this case study focused on UX research and recommendations.