CASE STUDY: Preferred-Hotels

Who is Preferred Hotel Group?

Preferred Hotel Group is the world’s largest independent hotel brand. Unlike traditional hotel chains like Marriott or Hilton, Preferred does not own, manage, or operate its properties. Instead, it serves as a global soft-brand and marketing alliance for luxury independent hotels.

They are the leader in luxury travel representing over 650 distinct hotels in over 80 countries. With over 6 millions enrolled members, it is one of the largest programs specifically for independent hotels.

Challenges

Cart Hemorrhage

Preferred Hotel Group experienced a high degree of cart abandonment compared to other luxury travel sites and wanted to increase conversion –a tricky task in online travel.

Flagging Mobile Engagement

Preferred Hotel Group saw a decline in mobile engagement in the rise of social media travel experiences and wanted to regain mobile users.

Brand Elevation

As the leader in luxury travel, Preferred Hotel Group wanted to elevate their brand to align with their standing in the world of online travel.

RESEARCH

The Luxury Travel Shopper

The first step was understanding who the luxury travel shopper is. The client provided extensive research into who buys luxury travel and how. This was confirmed by our own internal research.

Gender

Women dominate luxury travel bookings and engagement, accounting for over 61% of luxury travel interest and up to 80% of bookings.

Interactivity

Luxury travelers are highly influenced by digital experiences—40% of all luxury purchases are shaped by the quality of online interactions.

Life Cycle

Luxury travel shoppers visit an average of 277 different web pages before making a booking. It takes roughly 45 days before they make a purchase.

Browse on phone, convert on desktop

Most luxury travel is still booked on desktop computers rather than mobile devices. While mobile generates about 60–68% of online traffic for travel and hospitality websites, desktop accounts for approximately 62% of actual sales

Inspiration leads to intent

Whereas 95% of hospitality website users immediately go to the search function first, they are also drawn to curated experiences, visual inspiration, and the discovery process in early to mid process shopping.

How can we capitalize on emotional needs of the consumer throughout their journey?

A lot of thought went into tactics that dovetail into the emotional needs of the consumer at various points within their journey. Boards were created to capture any and all ideas about what was important and how we could convey it at various points.

Strategy

Meet them where & how they are

Understanding the life cycle of the luxury travel shopper was key to designing the Preferred Hotel Group web experience. Mobile filtered up not only locations but also curated galleries and themed categories like “Last Minute Escapes” or “Spa Retreats” while desktop encouraged learning and conversion.

Dream

Learn

Find

Convert

Facilitate inspiration

Inspire with imagery

Promote discovery

Allow people to find experiences and be inspired by the act of browsing and dreaming. People might not know what they want yet.

Facilitate investigation

Inspire with scenarios

Promote sharing

Allow people to turn dreams into possibilities through stories. Allow them to get others excited as well. Give them high-level information.

Facilitate a deep dive

Inspire with details

Promote planning

Allow people to give structure to their ideas. Turn dreams into plans through detailed information. Here is where price is most important.

Facilitate booking

Soothe with simplicity

Promote confidence

Towards the end of the life cycle, shoppers move to desktop for larger imagery, more details about the location and to make a purchase. Remove any friction or fear.

DESIGN & METRICS

Homepage

All versions of the homepage were optimized for their device. The mobile prioritized browsing and discovery (through collections and destinations) whereas the desktop was focused toward search and conversion (prioritizing a mix of destinations and properties) .

By optimizing the UX for what the user wants during the life cycle, we increased mobile engagement by 83%

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Mobile webpage showing luxury hotel deals with sections for Paris, last minute escapes, ski & ride, spa retreats, and food & wine, plus listed hotel prices and benefits.

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Luxury resort pool area at sunset with lounge chairs and cabanas at The Carneros Inn, Napa, California.

Prototyping

Luxury shoppers are highly engaged with pages that feature micro-interactions and engaging visuals so prototyping heavily featured animation and visual delight. . Not all of it got implemented but it was worth exploring.

Animation and interactions are heavily involved in increased time on site and loyalty.

[data-wf-bgvideo-fallback-img] { display: none; } @media (prefers-reduced-motion: reduce) { [data-wf-bgvideo-fallback-img] { position: absolute; z-index: -100; display: inline-block; height: 100%; width: 100%; object-fit: cover; } }

Property Details

The Property Details page was the most frequently entered page (via SEO). Originally, there was little engagement as the copy was lengthy and difficult to read, and the various sections were split up into 5 different URLs per page. For the redesign, the copy was completely rewritten for clarity & scalability, and the page was consolidated into one URL split with jump links that mimicked the structure of the 301 redirects.

Great pains were taken to bring forward room data and imagery outside of the Global Distribution System (GDS) which managed room availability.

The Property Page was the first step in increasing conversion by 25%

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Luxurious resort pool area with thatched-roof pavilion, lounge chairs, and surrounding tropical greenery at sunset.

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Mukul Beach Golf & Spa resort pool area with thatched-roof cabanas and surrounding tropical greenery at sunset.

Checkout

The checkout process needed to be completely redesigned. It was simplified to four steps. There were many restrictions as to what could and could not be done, as the system is powered by SABRE (the Global Distribution System) and SynXis (the Global Reservation System) and is neither hosted nor controlled by Preferred Hotels & Resorts so a strong collaboration was needed to maintain a consistent look and feel to reduce confusion.

‍Research showed that once in the checkout flow, removing the main nav items reduced “ADHD Bounce” and increased conversions by keeping consumers in the flow. The redesign was made to be clear, easy to use, and inspire trust.

Removing the nav helped decrease abandonment by 25%

Adding a security badge significantly reduced bounce at the payment input