Travel Buddy
Your AI-Powered Travel Companion. Plan, Book, and Experience Personalized Journeys with Ease!
Imagine effortlessly crafting your dream trips, curating a personalized adventure story. We specialize in combining flights, discovering great hotels, and adding personal touches on a user-friendly platform—all with the goal of elevating your travel experience and tailoring it uniquely to you.
On average, people spend 20–30 hours on pre-travel planning.
The challenge
The complexities of travel planning often leave travelers frustrated.
Travelers often grapple with planning inefficiencies, including a lack of personalized recommendations and the need to sift through multiple sources for flights, accommodations, activities, and budget management. One of the biggest factors hampering travel bookings is the lack of transparency, turning the comparison of too many options into a challenging roadblock.
Our goal
How can we leverage AI to simplify travel planning and booking, making it both personalized and budget-friendly for busy individuals and families?
The solution
Unlocking Seamless Travel: Smart Planning with AI
Saving planning time:
AI customizes travel plans based on user preferences, travel history, and budget.
Data-Driven Recommendations:
Gathers diverse data from various sources for personalized trip suggestions.
Budget Planning:
Real-time pricing helps plan budget-friendly trips.
Revenue Boost:
Personalization can increase revenue by 10-30%.
Loyalty Enhancement:
Improved satisfaction drives repeat bookings and referrals.
The solution
One-stop-shop travel booking is needed
Simplified Booking:
Easily book flights, accommodations, and activities in one go.
Itinerary Management:
Manage entire trip in one place.
Cross-Selling Opportunities:
Encourage bundled bookings and suggest add-ons or upgrades for increased revenue.
Competitive Advantage:
Tailored solutions give competitive advantage, drawing 20-25% more customers.
My journey
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Defining Project Scope
To break down the "how can we" question, I've designed an ecosystem illustrating how different travel parts connect. This visual guide helps us pinpoint areas where AI can make the user experience smoother and more personal.
I decided to conduct research on two crucial aspects: before the trip, where users search and plan, and after the trip, where users seek information and assistance in case of interruptions or changes to their plans. Incorporating AI into these two phases holds significant potential benefits.
Discovering User Pain Points
Through Content Analysis of user-generated content on travel forums, social media, and review websites, valuable insights emerged.
Budget Challenges:
Travelers exceed budgets due to unforeseen expenses and lack of real-time cost monitoring.
Time-consuming
Users face time-consuming and complex trip planning, managing multiple sources for flights, accommodations, and activities.
Option Overwhelm
Users feel swamped by online travel information, making decision-making challenging.
Lack of Personalization
Travelers struggle to receive tailored recommendations and itineraries aligned with their preferences, budgets, and past travel history.
Using card sorting technique, I broke down the tasks users perform on travel websites during planning, aiming to identify their priorities during the booking process.
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Personalized Recommendation
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Travel requirements
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Travel assistant
User Persona
Meet our persona, representing the most relatable user likely to utilize this tool.
Mom-on-a-Budget Jen
The family-focused individual who values budget-friendly travel planning while ensuring a memorable experience for her family.
Goals
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Budget-friendly family trips with memorable experiences.
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Simplified trip planning due to limited time.
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Ensuring her family, especially her young children, enjoys the trip.
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Convenience and efficiency in travel planning.
Needs and Expectations
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Simplified travel planning tool within budget.
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Personalized recommendations for family preferences.
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Access to family-friendly accommodations and activities.
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A seamless, one-stop-shop for booking flights, accommodations, and activities.
Ideation
In user journey exploration, trip planning, booking, and delays are often the most confusing stages due to the overload of online travel sources, making it challenging for users to choose the right options for their budget, interests, and time.
Applying AI to this stage, by combining various data sources like travel history, local tips, and reviews to propose ideal itineraries, offers users the flexibility to adjust plans and view real-time flights, hotels, and activities in one place, significantly improving their travel experience.
This is where the concept of an AI travel chatbot comes into play. I explored some design directions, created a paper prototype, and conducted the first round of user testing.
Prototyping and iteration
Trip planning flow: Assisting in planning and booking a trip to based on their date, travel preferences, and budget.
User flow of Trip planning
Paper prototype of Trip planning
Assist user in trip delaying flow: Providing support and guidance when travelers encounter unexpected delays during their trips, such as flight delays, cancellations, or other unforeseen disruptions.
Paper prototype of Trip delaying
Wire flow of Trip delaying
Travel recommendation flow: Recommending Activities Based on Local Insights, Travel Trends, and User Interests
Webflow of Travel recommendations
After conducting paper prototyping, user testing, and a business-focused assessment of the three identified design directions, I have selected a single direction for further development. This direction revolves around leveraging AI technology to simplify and improve the trip planning and booking process for users.
Moving to hi-fi prototype
Trip planning:
The user initiates interaction with the AI conversational interface by entering their travel requirements. They engage with a list of flight options, hotel results, and receive suggestions for a personalized travel plan.
Booking:
The user navigates to their saved travel plan, reviews its details, and proceeds to book their trip. After booking, the user has the option to revisit and review their booked trip under the "Trip" section.
Moving to hi-fi prototype
I conducted Remote Moderated Usability Testing on this prototype, where I guided users through tasks via video conferencing or screen sharing to gather usability feedback. Some of the highlight feedback were:
Booking Flexibility:
Users need the ability to modify choices during booking
Hotel Info Clarity
Hotel info information are lacks of clarity
Exit Pop-up Issue
Users struggle to close pop-up screens
Dining Queries
Users have questions about dining options
Flight Guidance:
Users want clear next steps after selecting flights
UI Confusion
Users find the UI organization unclear.
Next steps
Develop a feature allowing users to adjust choices during booking directly on the platform.
Revise pop-up screens to ensure ease of closure, minimizing user frustration.
Implement clear instructions guiding users on the next steps to take after selecting their flights.
Refine the presentation of hotel information to enhance user understanding and accessibility.
Continue to itterate and test the design