UX study for a travel agency
UX Research
About the project
The aim of the project was to support the client in entering the travel agency market and building a brand that inspires trust. I conducted market research, interviews, created a persona, empathy map and user journey. The key problem proved to be the time-consuming and frustrating process of searching and comparing offers.
Based on this, I proposed an AI-based solution that personalises results, aggregates opinions and facilitates proposal comparison. Such a tool could significantly differentiate a new brand from its competitors.
Used tools
Desk Research, User interviews, Persona, Empathy Map, User Journey Map, Card sorting
Desk research
Travel agencies
The Traveldata Travel Market Research Institute's 2023 survey included 36 travel agencies. The market was dominated by four companies: TUI Poland, Ithaca, Rainbow and Coral Travel. Together they generate 80% of all revenues and serve 75% of all customers. The ranking of travel agencies by revenue size is as follows:
The most common destinations
From the report "Zagraniczne wakacje Polaków 2023" compiled by the Polish Chamber of Tourism shows that the most popular holiday destinations of Poles are:
User interviews
I interviewed a group of people who had used travel agents in the past and were planning to do so again. Conducting the interviews allowed me to better understand the needs and problems of travel agent customers, as well as the frustrations and emotions they experience.
The majority of respondents book trips via laptop or phone, choosing the all-inclusive option because of the convenience of this. They find the process of searching for deals time-consuming and frustrating, but using filters speeds it up somewhat. Respondents get their travel inspiration mainly from social media. For most of those surveyed, travel agents inspire confidence. Respondents would like to discover new travel destinations and see travel offers for foreign events and festivals. According to the respondents, the websites of travel agencies are similar, which makes it difficult to compare offers. The opinions of other users significantly influence the respondents' final choice of offer. Respondents also indicated that there is a need for a personalised search engine, as well as special offers such as discounts when buying two or more trips.
Persona
Based on the data collected, I created a lead persona - Oliver, a potential customer of a travel agency. Oliver experiences the frustration of having to search through numerous sites and manually compare similar offers, which makes the travel planning process tiring. He needs to simplify and streamline the search and comparison of offers, which could minimise negative user emotions.
Empathy map
The empathy map helped to identify users' key emotions, concerns and desires. Respondents feel frustrated by the time-consuming process of browsing and comparing offers across multiple sites. They seek simpler access to easy-to-understand summaries of offers and reliable feedback from other users. They want to be able to see all available offers in one place, which would make the selection process easier.
User Journey Map
The User Journey Map showed how users interact with the product in time and space, and what emotions accompany them at each stage. The biggest problems arise in the search and comparison phases, indicating the need for improvements in this area.
Card Sorting
In the Card Sorting study, participants were asked to assign cards with the names of cities, countries, holidays and events to their own categories. The aim was to discover the most intuitive way to classify travel offers. Despite the wide variety in responses, some categories were repeated most often and these were included in the final summary.
Wnioski końcowe
Analysing the data collected, several key findings emerged. Users encounter the greatest difficulties when searching for and comparing travel deals. Hundreds of similar offers on multiple sites, scattered reviews and a lack of tools to easily compare them make decision-making difficult and frustrating.
To streamline this process, an artificial intelligence-based tool could be introduced that would personalise search results based on user preferences, gather feedback and compare offers against key criteria. The tool could work both on mobile devices and in the form of a website, starting with the user registering, creating a profile and completing a survey about their preferences. This would allow AI to suggest the most suitable offers from the travel agency database, and generate summaries and recommendations.
Implementing such a tool could significantly differentiate a service provider from its competitors by meeting key user needs.
