International Hotels Group

The Project

I was tasked with partnering with our research team to understand the needs of 5,977 hotels and their customers as it involved the check in process.

Believe it or not, the global reservation system at that time was just a series of old-school green screen interfaces. The design team’s task was to reimagine an omnichannel reservation process that took into account phone-in, online, mobile and in-person reservation management and EVERYTHING that goes with those processes.

The Approach

Since the previous reservation system had been in place for decades, it was abundantly clear that simply putting a shiny new interface in front of people who had become accustomed to it could cause a great deal of user aggravation. Instead, I made the recommendation to first study the current experience. I wanted to know all the things that the current system would allow its users to do. Though clearly antiquated, it was the only system that hotel employees had used. I felt it particularly important to understand their starting point and craft an experience based on their foundation.

Specifically, I wanted to see if they had keyboard shortcuts that would allow them to complete certain tasks. I wanted to know each user group and how they were evaluated in their day-to-day work so that any experience I recommended would be a frictionless enhancement that would add efficiency and accuracy to the experience.

The Satisfaction

As far as enterprise projects are concerned, this effort moved at lightning speed. Our researchers literally travelled across the globe to speak with hotel owners, managers, and front-line staff. They brought that knowledge back to us so that we could understand the primary use cases and design accordingly.

After a few weeks of research and study we were able to design the primary portion of the experience. Upon completion, the system would roll out to be used in IHG’s nearly 6,000 hotels across the globe. While there were certainly some technical hiccups on deployment, the project was a great success for both IHG and it’s customers. The average check-in time was reduced from 11 minutes to 5 minutes. Customer satisfaction scores dramatically increased, largely due to fewer reservation-related mistakes, increased reservation access via mobile devices, and omni-channel awareness of reservation details.