Booking a holiday doesn’t have to be a stressful experience

What’s bothering us is that a lot of interfaces in the travel industry use pushy techniques and dark patterns, pressuring travellers to book NOW!. This is probably a familiar sight for you as well: “Only 1 room left!” or “54 also looking!!!”. These techniques hijack the minds of travellers and manipulate them into booking. Once a rarity but now it’s the norm online, however there is another movement growing. One which is more respectful of the time and autonomy of people.

We believe that looking for and booking a holiday doesn’t have to be a stressful experience. It should offer a glimpse of what is to come. That is why we asked ourselves: what would a booking flow look like which is relaxed, fun and memorable?

To achieve this goal, we made use of 4 guiding principles.

1. Less is more

In order to make the experience very relaxed we give the traveller only one choice at a time. This allows the interface to breathe and provides space for high quality illustrations.

2. Unique looks

A lot of interfaces these days look alike, very clean and functional. Great from a platform-usability perspective but exciting? Definitely not! You want your holiday to be different from the daily routine. Your holiday should be fun, playful and relaxed and booking your holiday should give you that same vibe. The visual style is of utmost importance to set the tone: this is going to be different.

3. Do the unexpected

Unexpected events create memorable experiences. Holiday horror stories are dreadful when experienced first hand but make for great stories later in life. And when you are delighted by a small personal gift you feel like you want to tell everybody how great that was. To add a little bit of the unexpected to the interface we played around with the screen where you can playfully choose the luxuriousness of the trip. Select 5 stars and your personal limo driver shows up.

4. Immerse the traveller

Do you remember the first time you used google maps streetview? Awesome right? And it’s still a much used and loved feature. We believe booking an accommodation based on 400 by 600px images is just shy of cruel UX. When selecting your perfect holiday destination you want to be able to see all around you, hear the gentle surf and the music playing. This was possible 5 years ago, we believe it’s about time this is the new norm.