HelloSuite
A Contactless Digital Concierge solution for the post pandemic world
INTRODUCTION
About this project
HelloSuite, an end-to-end digital concierge, that is created to help hotels drive more revenue while providing a secure and contact-less service to guests. Through this progressive web-app guests can conveniently explore all hotel services from their own devices. Guests can use it to digitally check-in, order food, reserve tables, book spa sessions, request housekeeping, and much more.
Context
HelloSuite being in the hospitality business was heavily impacted by the global pandemic that started in 2020, hospitality GMV had hit its lowest point in two years. Guests were scared of traveling to hotels amid the scare of this widespread virus and hotels were struggling to upsell their value add services to guests, as the process relied heavily on human interaction
Role
Product Designer
THE PROBLEM
Pandemic’s effect on hospitality
The COVID-19 safety measures implemented accelerated the need to digitize the customer-facing services at the hotel in order to minimize physical contact between the staff and the guests without compromising the efficiency and quality of the service and the customer-centric approach.
MAIN CHALLENGES TO SOLVE FOR
- High spike in guest anxiety to travel and stay in a hotel
- Maintain quality standards despite the pandemic restrictions
- Decreased guest in-house spends, resulting in low revenue for hotels
THE RESEARCH
Understanding the new normal
One of the first most important steps we did was talk to guests and our partner hotels. What was crucial was understanding behavioural insights and changes post the breakout of the virus.
We interviewed 140 people in total and asked questions about how they travelled to the hotel, how they checked in, how they ordered food, how did they explore offers running in the hotel and many other questions
We found that most travellers wanted the experience of checking in to a hotel less tedious and more secure. They wanted to simply upload their documents before arrival and get a key directly on their mobile phones without having the need to wait hours in the common hotel area. They also didn't want to touch any in room collateral and order items in room without using infectious in-room one touch phones.
MORE RESEARCH
Identifying the various touch-points 😷
During our research, we wanted to dive deep on understanding various guest touch-points and where could our product intervene to provide better customer experience and potentially contribute to the revenue of the hotel.
Designing A La Carte modules
Through our user research, we understood that there is a need of a comprehensive portal which has a quick access menu at it's heart, for easy navigation, and can accommodate the varying needs of hotel specific requirements and design customization requests.
SOLUTION
How we shaped this new future of hospitality
Restricting contact between staff and guests became a major requirement in 2020. Also, the new generations of guests wanting their experience to be situationally specific to them, and more control over their experiences via their mobile phones also became vital. All of this underlined the need for a contact-less guest experience that includes online check-in, checkout, key-less room entry, and other services via mobile phone with little or no contact with hotel staff.
DIGITAL CHECK-IN WITH HEALTH DECLARATION
Restricting contact between staff and guests became a major requirement in 2020. Also, the new generations of guests wanting their experience to be situationally specific to them, and more control over their experiences via their mobile phones also became vital. All of this underlined the need for a contact-less guest experience that includes online check-in, checkout, key-less room entry, and other services via mobile phone with little or no contact with hotel staff.The mobile check-in feature minimizes human contact in the process and allows guests to directly go to their room thereby avoiding crowded waiting areas. The option to upgrade room is essential for adding to the revenue of the hotel
ROOM SELECTION AND UPGRADE
Entwined with the digital check in process is the room selection and upgrade functionality. On completing the required check-in process, guests are shown images of a higher room category and given exclusive deals to increase chances of a room upgrade, which takes a significant portion of the hotel’s added revenue.
DASHBOARD FOR SIMPLIFYING CHECK-IN
Contact-less console for easy identification of guests who have completed self-check-in and the staff can then physically verify the guest on arrival.
Interesting scalability challenge solved through design
Every hotel wanted a custom branded application that could adhere to the brand identity of the hotel. This was an interesting challenge, because for every hotel if our team had to change the design, then the customization efforts would have increased, making it difficult for us to scale. So we designed the app in a way that only by making a couple of changes(controlled through the backend), webapp could absorb the design language of the brand
DIGITAL IN ROOM DINING(IRD) & RESERVE TABLE FLOW
In-Room dining is one of the major source of revenue for the hotel so it is essential to have a clean UI which can display the pricing and uniqueness of each dish while also accounting for the broad customization options available
Engaging Micro-interactions
The webapp also has the functionality to reserve a table in the restaurant of their choice. The micro-interaction in this screen makes the process of reserving a table unique and exciting for the guest.
ADDED REVENUE TO THE HOTEL BY PERSONALIZED UPSELLING
Cross-Selling and Up-Selling contributes to a good amount of the revenue and is mostly done by the hotel staff. Since the onset of active social distancing and minimisation of active human touch points, the in person selling had taken a back seat. It was one of the challenge to incorporate this functionality in the app without any human interaction
Visual Dashboard designed for control
Hotels wanted control over the content displayed on their app. So it was our responsibility to design an interface which could empower staff to update all types of content and with a minimal learning curve. The design was specially kept very visual to give the user a clear preview of the update he/she is going to push.
REFLECTING
THE IMPACT WE CREATED
We tracked multiple KPIs to measure the success of our customer facing as well as staff facing product solutions. Take a look at some key metrics for yourself!
Reduced Service Delivery Time
Automated forwarding of guest requests to respective departments reduced delivery time by up to 50%.
Increase Revenue Streams
Created cross-sell and up-sell opportunities & facilitated service reservations that increased cash flow for hotel
Higher Guest Satisfaction
A hyper-personalized, contactless, safe and seamless experience resulted in avg 37% increase in NPS
Reduced Operational Costs
Removed operational bottlenecks & improved staff collaboration to cut down hotel costs by a great margin.
LEARNING AND KEY TAKE-AWAYS
Working on a big product suite is fun!
This project was a classic experience of designing a comprehensive B2B2C product suite. From a heavily hotel branded guest facing app to a staff facing dashboard with whatsapp API integration, it was truly an enriching experience to be able to complete this project.
Creating and maintaining a scalable design system
Since this app was a combination of multiple apps like cab booking, food ordering, table resevation, spa booking and so many more modules(where each module is usually a complete product on it's own), it gave me experience of being able to expand our design system across various domains. I understood the importance of creating and maintaining a scalable design system.
Empathy can compensate for experience
When I started designing the backend dashboard, I remember that I was worried that I never had any experience of managing hotel operations, will I be able to justice to the project? However, I realised that with empathy we can put ourselves in other people's shoes and connect with how they might be feeling about their problem, circumstance, or situation. It helps create solutions which are more suited for the target audience.
A big big big thank you to the entire team at HelloSuite, for supporting me at every point in our beautiful product journey. Special shoutout to the dev team for such amazing and quick development work, you guys did total justice to our designs! Thanks to all our partner hotels, that very patiently answered all our queries and for giving us access to their internally used tools for better understanding of their operations ❤️