User experience design for Travel, Tourism and Hospitality Websites

Successful online marketing and booking is critical for today’s competitive travel, tourism and hospitality businesses.   Consumers prefer the web for investigating travel products, destinations and experiences, so a simple, usable process throughout is critical to gain trust and improve conversion rates.  Many travel, tourism and hospitality businesses do not achieve their potential due to websites that:

• Fail to meet the needs of prospective customers
• Are difficult to navigate
• Provide content that is not persuasive
• Present barriers during the booking or registration process
• Make it difficult for existing customers to manage their bookings

A good online user experience will significantly improve your brand loyalty and business revenues.  This intensive half-day course provides a solid practical foundation for travel, tourism or hospitality companies aiming to improve their site user experience.  It covers the usability principles for all parts of the online customer journey including:

• Marketing and promotion pages –presenting your travel product, destination or services persuasively, answering the questions your customers want to know
• Selection –helping customers research and find the best travel products for them so they can proceed to purchase with confidence
• Purchase and booking - removing barriers to online purchase, reduce basket abandonment and maximize conversion rates as a result
• Managing bookings –allowing your customers to self serve and manage their booking including the mobile service channel

This intensive half-day course includes case studies and examples taken from various ecommerce travel, tourism and hospitality websites and practical hands-on experience through workshops. 


What will I learn?
Attendees will understand the user experience principles for travel, tourism and hospitality websites including:

• Search and Navigation – designing your site to let users easily find what they are looking for through logical grouping and labeling of content.  
• Product pages –presenting your key content pages to show your travel, tourism & hospitality product persuasively, applying clear calls to action
• Online registration and booking– allowing your customers to quickly and easily provide the necessary information for online purchase. The principles of usable online form design will be explained and demonstrated
• Booking management – allowing customers to revise their booking and potentially integrate their plans with social networking and mobile channels

Who should attend?
Anyone involved in hospitality, travel and tourism websites who wants to gain a better understanding of user experience principles and learn how to apply best practice.

• Website and Ecommerce managers aiming to increase online conversion rates
• Digital Marketing and Brand managers aiming to improve the persuasiveness of their destination or travel product online 
• Web designers aiming to deliver better, more usable sites for their clients in the travel, tourism and hospitality sector
• Heads of IT teams aiming to improve site usability and reduce development time
Project managers responsible for ensuring sites comply with usability best practice

If you work in the Ecommerce retail sector, you may wish to consider our course on Usability and User Experience for Retail Ecommerce Success on April 17th

User Vision also provide in-house training courses, which offers content specific to your company and sector i.e. Review of your company's webiste, competitive review, etc.  For more information check out http://www.uservision.co.uk/services/training/

Any further question? Feel free to contact  chris @ uservision . com  , we will be glad to help.

About the trainers 

Chris Rourke is the Founder and Managing Director for User Vision, a leading user experience and user-centred design (UCD) consultancy working with clients in the UK, Europe and the Middle East.  He has worked with leading companies in the sector including Emirates Airline, Jumeirah, Hertz, Visit Scotland, and other leaders in the travel and tourism sector.

Chris has worked in usability, accessibility and user centred design for over 20 years.  He established User Vision in 2000 and quickly developed an enviable client list and a reputation for practical thorough and affordable user centred design services to help clients gain a competitive advantage through improved usability.  He and the User Vision team offer user experience services across all digital platforms including interactive TV, software and mobile, and increasingly are involved in cross-channel user experience projects.  

Chris has worked with clients across all sectors including financial services, public sector, retail e-commerce, travel & tourism, charity, media, telecoms pharmaceuticals and others.  Clients include RBS, Emirates Airline, Cabinet Office, BBC, HSBC, IKEA, Pfizer, Orange, O2, Nokia, NCR, HP, the Scottish Government and Houses of Parliament among others.

Simon Duke is a user experience consultant with User Vision and has extensive experience in customer research and user centred design especially applied to the travel and tourism industry.   Simon worked for over 10 years in the market research industry, performing both qualitative and quantitative research projects and leading the UK Usability and Accessibility business at Ipsos MORI.

With User Vision Simon has conducted many projects for clients in the tourism sector such as Emirates Airline and Visit Scotland where he is leading a comprehensive user-centred design approach including user research, iterative prototyping and usability testing.  He has also led usability testing projects for British Airways, Groupe Aeroplan and other leaders in the sector, testing websites, mobile phone applications and touchscreen kiosks.  

Simon is highly experienced in user needs analysis, particularly in conducting focus groups and stakeholder interviews to gain an understanding of issues and using this information in persona and task development.   He is a strong advocate of placing the user at the heart of the design process.