B2B - SAAS

Hotels Manager

goal

Redefine the hotel management experience through intuitive and efficient tools

Introduction

A few weeks after joining Guestline in 2021, I visited hotels and shadowed the front desk staff, to better understand who Guestline users are, how the Property Management System works, and how users experience it.

product

Guestline offers hotels a full platform with a Property Management System (PMS), online channel distribution, guest experience solutions, payment processing, and a Point of Sale system. The PMS is their flagship product, used by 2.500+ clients, with 10k average daily users. Guestline's PMS is the UK market leader and is growing in Asia and Europe.

brief

The research's final goal was to find pain points and define solutions to improve users' experience with the product.

“

The PMS is losing clients to better-looking products that are easier to use

”

Due to staff shortages in the industry, it was essential to streamline the PMS, which users and potential customers repeatedly reported as too complex, inefficient, and outdated.

Moreover, the German support and sales teams stated that customers prefer other products because of the software's complexity and outdated look.

my Role

Product Designer

Timeline

Nov 2021 to Sep 2023

Sep 2021 to May 2023

Company

Guestline

PMS homepage in 2021

Create reservation tool in 2021

Discovery

During hotel visits, I spoke with users in various roles and with different levels of expertise. By shadowing front-desk operations, I gained a deeper understanding of some of the outliers observed in our data analysis.

old school reservation creation

The most striking revelation was that creating reservations was one of the most time-consuming tasks, even if data show it is one of the most frequently performed. Despite the prevalence of modern online agencies like booking.com, manually created reservations accounted for 45% of all bookings in 2021. This indicates that guests still frequently contact hotels to book directly.

reports nightmare

Reports were also a significant pain point. During Guestline's expansion over the past 20 years, it was easier to create new reports based on user needs rather than making them flexible. This resulted in 56 different report pages in the system, complicating navigation and causing confusion. Users often struggle to remember the names of specific reports or where particular data is stored.

unavailable data

This leads to another major issue: data access. Users have significant difficulties finding data, making it nearly impossible for them to have a live, up-to-date picture of what is happening at the property.

priorities

We decided to address entire flows and not singular pages, to decrease architecture complexity.

The focus is on front-desk flows, considering that 70% of all tasks performed on the PMS are front-desk related.

Reservation creation screens

Solution-1: Reservation Creation Wizard

Improve EFFICIENCY WITH a stramlined and efficient flow

The first mission is to streamline the reservation process, focusing on reducing frustration during busy check-in times and increase efficiency.

1

introduce a step-by-step wizard, that keeps flexibility but gives a clear idea of the necessary steps and prevents users from errors.

2

Access from anywhere. Users often create reservations from phone calls or walks-in, so the flow should be available everywhere, minimizing other flows interruptions.

3

Save and continue later. Multi-task is always the key and other tasks may come up while the reservation flow is happening.

validation

The first validation happened through the usability testing platform Maze.co.

50% of Testers were asked to create a reservation with the current flow and the other 50% with the new flow, to measure the impact on usability and efficiency.

metrics

Success rate
Efficiency (Success/Time on task)
Error rate
Perceived ease of use

Baseline

First Iteration

results

The new reservation creation wizard is more efficient.

Efficiency improved by 30%
The error rate decreased by 43%

After the usability test, the solution was divided into different development phases to be able to deliver value gradually and at the same time validate hypotheses.

Second Iteration

follow-up iterations

The first iteration introduced the call to action in the navigation, opening a pop-up with the current creation process.

“

I'd like to have the flexibility to decide where to start from. I normally tell my staff to always start from the Availability Screen.

”

The adoption was lower than expected and follow-up interviews showed that users often preferred other views based on the hotel dimension: big hotels were finding it easier to use the availability page, showing all rooms available for specific dates; small hotels preferred the planner view, showing all reservations booked for the dates. This highlighted the need for a flexible process to satisfy the different hotel setups and operations.

Solution: Aggregator

all data in the same place

We envisioned an aggregator page that can centralize all reservations, data, and custom reports.

1

Tailor reports based on users' roles and hotel needs.

2

Give users the flexibility to create and modify their views

3

Include relevant and timely insights in the reports to help users better understand which tasks to perform.

Concept

opportunities and vision

Showing prototypes and the aggregator vision to prospects and users highlighted the enthusiasm behind a tool that could have saved a lot of time for them and their employees.

Business opportunities are also identified in the possibility of drastically reducing the number of different custom report pages created over the years to satisfy user requests. This would result in a simpler product, easier navigation, and lower maintenance.

The current report dropdown includes 56 pages
Counting all list views on the PMS the pages sum up to 69 pages

The project is ongoing and in September 2023 we finalized the conceptual phase.

Solution: Dashboard

the center of insights

After confirming that the current homepage of the PMS was having very low interactions, we decided to use that space to display more critical insights to users. The goal for this page is:

1

Provide a centralized platform where users can stay informed about the current and upcoming hotel status.

2

Enable users to track their tasks and complete them efficiently.

3

Offer customizable widgets based on role, system usage, and preferences.

new and improved iteration methodology

After performing usability tests and interviews, the first iteration of the dashboard was shown to customers at the ITB, the world's biggest conference for the tourism industry in 2023.

The German sales team reported a high interest and success in the new dashboard, so we decided to launch a BETA test with 35 hotels, roles, and markets. We included a survey component to receive on-page direct feedback, allowing us to quickly iterate and improve the concept.

“

It would be great to have a forecast for the near future. This is always very interesting for planning.

”

Thanks to this process we started seeing great results:

On average, users access the Beta dashboard 12 times per day, compared to only 5 times on the current homepage.
The adoption rate of the Beta dashboard is 5% higher compared to the current homepage.

Impact

+30%

Efficiency

-43%

Error Rate

+7

Average Page Visits

-49

Report Pages

The solutions proposed not only represent a step towards a simpler and more efficient product but also enhance product perception at sales events, as demonstrated at ITB Berlin.

These concepts improve ease of use and adoption, reduce system complexity, and create a product that is more efficient to use and maintain.