Hilton Book

Hilton’s reservation funnel is one of the major revenue contributors for Hilton and one of the most used touchpoints for users on the website. It is a constantly evolving digital product that represents 18 brands
and nearly 6000 properties. The work done in this team directly impacts the business and the user’s needs at the deepest level, which means we have to research, iterate, and develop quickly under high pressure, shift priorities and release efficiently, and strategize in order to meet deadlines and work around technical difficulties while also always advocating for the user.

Client

Hilton Worldwide

Project Date

2019 - 2020

Hilton Book Details

The redesigned Hilton reservation funnel took nearly 2 years to complete and achieved huge success with a double digit uplift in conversion just from the MVP release alone. I joined this team as a design lead to continue the Post-MVP feature work. A few of the features that we were able to release in my first 6 months on the project included “Points & Money Multi-room” experience, the “Manage, Modify, Cancel” flow, and the Flexible Dates Calendar.

We were working under tight deadlines because we had to release a list of features in order to decommission global web and move over to One Hero Web. It was important to maintain an MVP mindset, while also keeping track of Post-MVP features we were confident would enhance the experience for the user.

Team:

I was the lead designer on this team.
I worked closely with a UXA, a UXR, 4 product owners, 6 developers, an ADA compliance specialist, 2 copy writers, and the project manager.

Process:

2 week sprints
Daily Standups
Agile Process

Features:

Points & Money Multi-Room Experience
Manage, Modify, Cancel Flow
Flexible Dates Calendar

Points & Money Multi-Room Experience

The redesign of of the Reservation flow was such a huge endeavor but just like anything, the work is never done. After the MVP release release of the OHW Book flow, we had to start redesigning experiences for different user flows. This experience specifically allowed Honors members to shop and book multiple rooms using both Points and money.

Intricate as this project was, the user needed it to be simple and easy to understand. We went through multiple rounds of user testing, iterating and designing for each specific scenario to ensure that we maintained consistency and gave the user the best possible experience.

The pages involved in the Book flow generally include the Rooms, Rates, and Payment pages.

For the Room page, we blended together design features from both the multi-room and Point & Money experiences. We did multiple rounds of user testing to determine how the pricing and breakdown should be shown to the user.

For the MVP release of the rates page, we just added the ability to book with Points. In the future, we will add the ability for the user to further customize the use of Point & Money
on this page.

The payment page was possibly the most complicated part of this project to design. We needed to allow the user to adjust and customize the usage of their points for each room, and to see a full breakdown.

Manage, Modify, Cancel Flow

The Manage, Modify, Cancel flow was a quick follow after the MVP release of Book. Such an important part of the user experience allowing them to cancel or make changes to their stay. This also takes a huge weight off of the customer service department. For the MVP release of this product we kept the requirements pretty simple, but have future plans to add more customization features to make it even easier for the user to make specific updates to their reservation.

In order for the user to enter the Manage, Modify, Cancel flow, we had to make a few changes to the confirmation page by adding the ability for the user to cancel, and also a “View & Edit” CTA that takes the user to the manage page.

The manage page contains all the user information for their current reservation and allows the user to make updates with the “Edit Stay” CTA which takes the user back to the Rooms page to review or change their current selections.

A few features were cut for MVP, but were added as quick follows such as allowing the user to make specific changes to rooms and rates directly from this page.

Currently, as seen in the screens below, the user can go back through their booking experience to review the details of their reservation, current selections, and make changes.

Flexible Dates Calendar

The Flexible Dates calendar was a deeply anticipated update both by internal team members and users. This feature gives the user to the power to shop by price and date quickly and easily. Unfortunately for this project, we had very little time to deliver and release, so we had to forego the user testing and iterative process that we wanted to do. We did however, test internally and pulled together as much research as we could. After 3 iterations in a matter of weeks, we chose to move forward with this one. It greatly improved the overall experience and received great feedback.

We added the ability to search for the best price through flexible dates on our calendar widget, which was the entry point to the Flexible Dates Calendar.

This calendar allows the user to see the average price per night based on their length of stay. They have the ability to quickly update their search criteria by changing the length of stay, the number of rooms or guests, and viewing special rates. The user also has the ability to turn on “Use Points” and see the avg number of Points per night.