Search & Book

In our research, we discovered that the majority of the Hilton Honors app users were business travelers on to go, booking a room a few days before their arrival. The previous Hilton Honors app relied on old web-app technology that was functional but not reliable nor performant.

While the backend integrations were being updated, we took the opportunity to incorporate Apple’s new Human Interface Guidelines and redesigned the search flow to be more intuitive and personalized.

We chose to design for the power user persona matching the needs of business travelers, giving them quicker ways to book and manage their upcoming stays.

These changes delivered a massive increase in room bookings via mobile channels, growing annual revenue processed from $750M to $4B within the first two years of the new app launch.

Prepare & Arrive

Usually once people book their hotel room online, their digital journey ends. We looked to change that by helping both guests and hotel operators streamline the next steps of their journey. We thought to make the app more contextual by introducing a dynamic Stay Card, that would surface up relevant options to the user based on their next set of stays.

Options like Arrival Requests, gave guests and staff the ability to ensure the room had all the essentials as they arrive. This not only drove revenue for the hotels that supported it but also a strong showing of loyalty to that brand.

One of the most frustrating things about travel is waiting to check-in to your room after a long journey. We took inspiration from the airlines and created a concept that digitized the entire check-in flow, from room selection to room key. Referred to as Digital Check-In and Digital Key, guests could now choose their room based on their preferences via an interactive floor map and upon arrival, they would be issued a digital key to their Hilton Honors app. This not only remediated a key frustration point of the weary traveler but also allowed hotel staff to tend to guests already checked-in.

Stay

After leading the Hilton mobile product development team for 4 years, I was given the opportunity to extend my vision to the in-room experience. That vision was to digitally connect the guest to the room, the hotel and the community, personalizing every touchpoint while optimizing hotel operations. The existing in-room experience was quite underwhelming with very little to offer guests for entertainment or convenience. Additionally, operators were piecing together various 3rd party solutions that created an inconsistent and mostly ineffective outcomes. My team and I conducted a deep discovery of the ecosystem, the tools and the actors, yielding a set of strategic components that would support our vision for a more connected journey.

My team of 60+ talented individuals, across product, design, engineering and support, worked towards bridging a complex set of initiatives that required parallel work-streams and domain-specific knowledge. Our strategy was to help guests feel the familiarity of their home while traveling and to give hotel owners a clear benefit by investing into this new connected system.

To achieve this, we started with the value proposition for the actual customer: Hotel owners. We sought to incorporate efficiency drivers that would reduce their overall maintenance costs and streamline staff requests. One way we did this is by building an Energy Management System using machine-learning and remotely managed IoT devices in the room (Door Lock, Edge Controller, Lights, Thermostat, Drapes, etc). For instance, a hotel with the Connected Room system would save an average of $93 dollars a year per room, by having the system turn down lights and thermostat while the room is unoccupied as well as in some cases, close and open drapes based on the location of the sun to conserve energy.

To better understand what guests wanted while traveling, we conducted a series of tests and interviews. We learned that the first friction point comes when walking into the room. Guests spend about 8-10 mins learning the TV and thermostat. Based on those learnings, we knew that the design of our TV and App Interface needed to feel personal while easily surfacing up universal room controls.

To enable personalization, we embedded several touch-points throughout the digital journey to best prepare the room for the guest’s arrival. For instance, guests could set their preferences such as desired temperature for the room or favorite TV channels during the Digital Check-In process, and those settings would then be pre-loaded for a perfect welcome when entering their room.

One of our primary goals was to replicate how guests watch TV at home. The biggest friction point we observed in our early discovery phase was the aspect of having to login to streaming apps. The virtual keyboard was not conducive and usually ended up being abandoned. We solved this by partnering with Netflix, Showtime, Youtube and iHeart to create seamless ways to manage credentials while at a hotel. This meant that once a guest would check-in to their room, their content preferences and settings would be enabled on the TV. This made getting to their favorite show on Netflix much easier.

By combing through past request logs, we uncovered additional learnings related to what guests ask for after they have check-in to their room. The items didn’t vary much and usually were basic essentials. Based on the hotel brand, location and level of service available, we were able to identify the key items guests could easily request without having to call a specific department. This not only left a delightful moment for guests but it also helped to streamline the fulfillment process.

Due to the product being a combination of hardware that needed to be installed in a room and software that needed to be adaptive to the 15 different brands of hotels under Hilton, we had to be mindful about iterations. One of the biggest challenges of this project was the aspect of product deployment. My team worked closely with 3rd party integrators and hotel staff to prepare, test and certify an installation process, that achieved a baseline of just under 16 hours per hotel. We surely learned certain nuances such as a smaller size remote controls tend to get lost in the sheets and eventually in the laundry. We eventually settled on a 5th iteration, which had sleek design and a designated button for room controls.

Our proprietary design of the Edge Controller, which served as the control center for the room, provided a MPI and HDMI I/O to control the TV, a BLE chip to communicate with the door lock and the Hilton Honors mobile apps, a IR receiver to communicate with the physical remote control and a Zigbee chip that allowed for a constant stream of data from the IoT devices in the room. The underlying OS was based on Android Open-Source Project, which gave us the necessary libraries to integrate with the middleware and core components.

The entire estate of hotels with the Connected Room product, were managed above-property via the custom built Mission Control platform. This allowed both Hilton IT and hotel staff to get a quick gauge of any issues and special guest requests. Additionally, the Mission Control platform hosted a CMS application, giving event planners the ability to customize in-room TV content for special group events. To become more proactive, we incorporated smart alerts which would notify hotel staff to resolve an issue, aiming to do so before observed by a guest. For example, one of the challenges with the Digital Key product was ensuring the door lock battery had enough charge to operate, so a guest wouldn’t be locked out of their room. With the Mission Control system, door locks always remained ready, since hotel maintenance was given ample notice to address any low batteries or malfunctions with the lock.

The Connected Room product was deployed at 200 hotels, over 40,000 rooms in the first year and has showcased its value to hotel owners and guests alike. Hotels were able to see immediate savings by activating energy management settings, replacing in-room collateral by with a digital compendium, and streamline operations by having their staff connected with the Mission Control platform.

83% of guests, surveyed after staying at a Connected Room hotel, said that they are more likely to choose a hotel with Connected Room versus one without. Guests shared positive sentiment about the selection of streaming entertainment, the ability to turn down the thermostat or lights from the comfort of their bed and how they didn’t have to search for their favorite channels.