Helping Travelers Find Their Perfect Travel Destination: A Case Study

11 min readOct 31, 2023

Planning for a trip is a threefold process:

Choosing a suitable destination.
Gathering information and making a to-do list for the destination.
Making hotels and flights reservations.

For every fold you have to go through multiple travel websites, blogs and YT videos which makes this whole process time consuming and overwhelming.

The information is available on our fingertips and yet it is highly scattered.

And the result of all this — too many websites, too many tabs, too much confusion.

Sounds fun eh?

In this case study I will be showing you how I solved the first fold i.e Choosing a Suitable Destination.

Background

Before deep diving into the case study let me give you some context about the problem brief and how I got it.

Problem Brief

Users struggle to find suitable travel destinations that align with their preferences and interests. They face difficulties in researching and comparing options, leading to a time-consuming and overwhelming decision-making process.

Duration- 1 month
Project- Android App (Conceptual)

Note: This problem brief was given to me as a part of a bootcamp’s assignment.

Understanding the Problem Space

When I got the problem brief my mind was blank. I didn’t knew where to start from? What should I do next? but just like they say “You gotta Start Somewhere”

So, I went on the internet and read articles, travel blogs to know more about how people like to plan for traveling.

Some of the findings from secondary research-

50% of the Indian travelers prefer traveling for relaxation of their weary souls, and to unwind themselves from their hectic daily schedules.
Travelers spent over 5 hours consuming online travel content to seek inspiration and plan their trip before finally booking their journey
Most travelers tend to run through nearly 30 sites online in the process of planning their vacation.
The biggest problems with the modern day travel planning stem from too much information. Travelers have trouble deciding on a destination, worry about buying a travel package only to see the price drop later, and choosing which experiences to have once they reach their destination.

After getting insights from secondary research, I defined my user base into 4 categories- Solo, Groups- (Friends/colleagues), Families and Busy professionals.

The people who will be having the most difficulty in finding a suitable destination would be busy professionals. This category of people have money to spend but due to their busy schedule they don’t have the time to do extensive research. They value convenience and transparency in travel planning.

I moved on do some primary research with people who are busy professionals and are frequent travelers to know how they plan for a trip, what all factors they consider while planning and this is what they have to say:

I noted down some major insights after talking people:

Top 4 Factors- When a user plans for a trip, first they ask these questions “What kind of experience do they I want to have? Who All Are Going? When Are We going? What Is The Budget For This Trip?”.
Trust Factor- For deciding where to go, users often seek advice from their friends or go to popular social media handles and search for a trending destination.
Experiencing in Real Life- Users want to have a clear understanding of what to expect from their destination. They don’t want to get disappointed or have unmet expectations during the trip.
Juggling Between Multiple Sites- There is no platform that gives full information to the user about a particular destination. User often checks on multiple platform like Google, Youtube, Quora, Instagram before making their decision.

Based on the research, it was evident that it is indeed a tiring process to search for destinations that match every preference of the travelers.

Now I wanted to see if any travel related platforms are trying to solve this problem. So, I went on the internet and did competitive analysis of some travel related platforms.

Competitive Analysis

Gaps identified while doing competitive analysis:

All travel booking apps and blogs are filled with generic destinations that caters to mass audience. There is no feature that helps users get suggestions based on their needs.
If a website is taking user travel preferences through quiz feature, they are asking too many questions and given few options to choose from.
Typing is the slowest form to take input from a user. Also, while typing there can be spelling mistakes and user needs to input their query again.
The platforms are not taking major factors like budget, traveling dates, type of activity to do into consideration.
Filters can be a time consuming time for the user to narrow down suggestions.

By getting insights from primary research and identifying gaps in the travel platforms, I started thinking of different ways to solve this problem.

Introducing ROVE App

My goal with ROVE app is give a platform to the user that reduces their efforts while planning for a trip by finding the best destinations that matches their travel preferences.

Rove is a travel booking app that helps the users in:

Suggesting the next ideal destination by taking user’s travel preferences.
Giving all the necessary information about a destination in one place that eases the decision making of the user.

Metrics To Be Measured

Primary metrics to measure User Engagement and Customer Satisfaction.
Secondary metric is Conversion Rate.

Assumptions

The app will provide good destination suggestions to the users even if the preferences are complex.

First Time User Experience of the App

I wanted to keep the FTUX very simple. When the user opens the app, the app will ask them to login the app. The user can skip the login process and directly go to the homepage.

Since ROVE is a travel booking app, the user can search for flight, hotels etc or can see his upcoming trips under booking tab.

Xplore Screen

The first feature is the interactive quiz feature that will give users personalized destinations suggestions based on their travel preferences which I will talk in detail in the next section.

Since type of activity is a major factor while deciding a destination, I added explore by activities section that will help the user to get destinations based on the activities they want to do.

Digital nomad haven section is targeted towards my target users because remote work is very common among these type of users.

Now let’s talk about the interactive quiz feature that we all have been waiting for.

While deciding the questions to ask in the quiz, I wanted to pick only those questions that a traveler might consider while they plan for a trip.

In my primary research I got the 4 most important questions-

Who all are going?
What kind of experience do they I want to have?
When Are We going?
What Is The Budget For This Trip?

And in my competitive analysis I got some more questions that a user might consider-

5. What type of climate do you prefer?

6. Any particular place in mind?

7. Where do you want to go (Domestic/International trip)?

Happy Flow of Quiz Feature

I used real images in the questions that I will be asking them so that it lets the users dream about their next trip increasing the chances of a positive experience (Visual Priming).

Destination Page

To tackle the problem of user wanting to experience the destination before going there, I introduced 360° videos for each destination. This helps the user to virtually explore destinations as if they were there.

Since users often seek recommendations from friends who have been to the destination, I introduced a travel guide section. This section will have famous travel vloggers posting the travel guide of exploring the whole destination showing real experiences, local culture, and sometimes behind-the-scenes glimpses that can’t be captured through videos or articles.

By introducing 360 degree videos and travel guide section, I wanted to impact the user engagement of the app since users will be hooked to watching the videos.

To view/edit your answers

If the user wishes to edit their answers they can click on Edit Quiz button. A bottom modal will pop to show the users all the questions and what answers they chose for each question.

Also I made the edit quiz section similar to the quiz feature to ensure design consistency.

Now let’s talk about some edge cases that I encountered while designing the solution.

Edge Case 1

If the user chooses Within India in Question 2 and Beaches in Question 5, how will it affect the choices in Question 6?

Since beaches in India like Goa, Andaman islands etc has temperature ranging from 21°C-35°C, temperature choices like Cold and Mild will be automatically disabled and users can click on info button to know the reason behind it.

Edge Case 2

Suppose the destinations that will be suggested to the user has a minimum budget of ₹25,000 per person then in the budget screen, the the app will automatically set the minimum range of ₹25,000.

The user can only increase the maximum amount and if the user wants to change the minimum range, they need to expand their travel preferences.

Edge Case 3

What if no destinations or only 1–2 destinations are found in the results page?

In no destination found screen, I didn’t wanted the user to feel a sense of disappointment. So instead of using ‘No Results Found’ in the heading, I used ‘Let’s Expand Your Search’ to give them a sense of optimism to continue their search.

What happens after using the Quiz feature?

To track customer satisfaction metric, I used a feedback modal to gather feedback from the user about their experience with the feature.

It is important to send the feedback modal at the right time to get good insights from the user. I thought of sending the feedback right after-

The user interacts with the quiz feature but exits the quiz feature before or after generating destination results.
The user is satisfied with the destination suggested to them, proceeds to book the best package and after landing on the homepage the feedback modal will appear.

Usability Testing

I did the usability testing using the “think-aloud” method, where users verbally expressed their thoughts and actions while using the interface and were also asked questions about their understanding of certain screens.

This is what users have to say after the usability testing:

More options are needed in Question 4- How do you want to spend your time?
Don’t you think selling packages will restrict freedom of exploring the destination.
The budget question should come earlier as for me budget is one of the first thing I consider before planning for a trip.

After the usability testing I was in a dilemma whether to do changes in my existing solution and make the solution according to what the users said.

I started thinking from the business P.O.V and the product as as whole. I decided not to change my solution and below are my reasoning for each question:

More options are needed in Question 4- How do you want to spend your time?
I already have given 9 options in question 4 for the users which practically covers majority of the choices available. If you think from the lens of Millers Law, people on average can only process about 7 pieces of information at a time. More options can overwhelm the user and user can go into decision paralysis.
Don’t you think selling packages will restrict freedom of exploring the destination.
Yes, packages in general can restrict users who loves to take their own time to explore a destination. But the target users for my app is those who doesn’t have time to do the planning. So, packages will be the best choice as everything will be planned for them to enjoy their trip.
The budget question should come earlier as for me budget is one of the first thing I consider before planning for a trip.

I wanted to nudge the user to increase their budget per person which will eventually help the business in generating more revenue. I can do that by telling the user what other travelers usually spend if they had same kind of preferences i.e (Conformity- Psychological principle)

So first I took all the preferences from the user and then put the budget question as the last question.

Color Styles, Component Set, Documentation and more…

I am still a beginner is creating design system but I tried my best to make components and variants of elements which will be used many timed. Also, I tried writing down my thought process and insights I got while solving this problem and here are some snapshots.

Key Takeaways and Future improvements

While working on this problem, I learned how to think of different use cases, edge cases and how the come up with a solution that can cater to a large audience.
I learned to focus on what insights were derived from each process and how it will help me in the next stage.
Since the goal of the app was to ease the decision making of the user, adding crowdsource itinerary can really help the user in planning their daily activities on the destination.
I want to gamify this quiz feature and make it more engaging to improve the overall experience.
Adding a wishlist feature can help the user in saving their favourite destinations in one place.

THAT’S ALL FOLKS

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I would love to hear your thoughts and feedback in the comments. 👇

I am looking out for opportunities as a Product Designer. You can reach out to me at 📩 jibinjoseph1503@gmail.com or on Linkedin and we can work something out.

Until next time