Hilton Honors™
Mobile Concierge Features
Overview
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Hilton Honors is a mobile app directed at members of Hilton's hotel loyalty program. These programs give their members brand-specific perks in exchange for continued loyalty towards that particular brand. These perks can include free or discounted rooms and room upgrades, keyless entry via mobile device, free Wi-Fi, and much more. Post -COVID, these programs are big revenue generators for the major hotel brands.
The goal of this project is to graft new features onto the Hilton Honors app that will help drive new loyalty program signups.
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Hypothesis
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The integration of hotel services into the Hilton Honors app will drive additional program signups, and thus increase revenue.
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In a hurry? Jump to the conclusion.
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Role​
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Product Designer
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UX design
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User Research
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Prototyping, Testing
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Existing Market Landscape
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Hilton Honors
The goal of this project is to graft new features onto the Hilton Honors app that will help drive new loyalty program signups. Currently, the app allows for users to check on their loyalty benefits points amounts, shows clearly what rewards are available for each tier, and more. However, it does not allow users to make simple requests for items like towels.
There is a notable chat feature, but it does not have access to property-level information.
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Search Tab
Stays Tab
Account Tab
Help Tab
Chat Feature
Marriott Bonvoy
This is a similar app to Hilton's. The functionality is similar (book, look up trips, account settings). However, it has a Wishlist tab, for planning and inspiring users to make their next trips. Help is available in the Account tab. I did not see a chat feature.
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Home Tab
Book Tab
for booking trips
Trip Tab
Wishlist Tab
Account Tab
Research Survey
I sent a short survey out to about 20 people of various ages. I got 10 responses. To keep the data relevant, I eliminated anybody who has not stayed in a hotel in the last two years. That left 9 people.
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Business professionals find time for tourism
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Even busy professionals find time to do some sightseeing while they're out of town on the company dime. This tells me I was right to combine the two personas into a single one that shares aspects of both the business traveler and the leisure traveler.
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There are still opportunities to add new customers to a loyalty program.
Primary Persona
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Based on survey data, interviews, and other research, I constructed the following persona for the project. It combines aspects of leisure and business travelers.
Research Artifacts
I created a number of documents during the ideation and research phases of this project. This helped me clarify and understand aspects of the users, the contexts the users would be operating in, their frames of mind, and more. In order to keep this case study manageable, I will make them available here for people interested in seeing them.
User Scenario
This was useful for providing nuance and detail to user journeys.
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Opportunity Solution Tree
This helps link what the hotels have with what guests need, and helps to identify other areas of value for the customer and hotel.
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Service Blueprint
This app requires humans to perform many of the necessary behind-the-scenes steps for the guests. Service blueprints help identify any major service areas to address or blind spots.
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Perspective Grid
To help with the creation of journey maps I created a perspective grid to help create the core user stories. To stand in for project stakeholders, I brainstormed with help from ChatGPT.
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Priority Matrix
I then ranked each possible feature for its value and its implementation cost.
You can see some explanation for the decisions below.
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Customer Journey Maps
With the help of the perspective grid, I created the initial customer journey map for my "Leisure Traveler" persona, as well as a map for a Concierge that would be fielding these requests.
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Feature Prioritization Discussion
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Below are the reasons for each feature's placement on the above priority matrix.
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Reservations for restaurants on premises, or nearby
This can already be achieved with existing services. Hotel outlets can already register with these apps (OpenTable, etc.). Within the loyalty apps, links can be provided to these services to facilitate easy booking. The ROI for most properties almost certainly isn't worth redoing what those apps already offer.
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However, food is still a big differentiating factor between hotels and an AnirBnB. It might make some competitive sense to look into ways to mitigate the absence of a kitchen with better access to quick, tasty food.
Verdict: Registration with a service like OpenTable can be done independently of this app. Links to those services can be made available within a section of the new app. Providing these options might entice some short-term renters back to a hotel if they can be done easily.
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Room Service orders via app
Could be a useful additional service for properties that provide room service. Travelers today are comfortable ordering food from their phones, and with the myriad delivery options already available, room service operations need to stay modern to compete. Certain middleware solutions exist to facilitate this capability, so it could be integrated cheaply with the right third-party solution.
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More research would need to be done to determine if the ROI (for the franchise as a whole or for the franchisees offering the service) for this feature justifies the expense of design or implementation.
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Verdict: Support for room service ordering via chat might make sense if the order-taking can be routed to the employee formerly responsible for taking the phone orders.
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Room Cleaning or other Housekeeping Functions
This featured would allow a hotel guest to request room cleaning from their app, while away. They could potentially schedule a time-frame for their service to occur (while they know they will be out, for example), or could request a cleaning with special instructions (or even if they accidentally left the Do Not Disturb door hanger out).
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This could be achieved with a chat feature, or a simple communication to the housekeeping team. On the backend, this could (probably) be solved cheaply with an email or similar communication.
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Verdict: Focus on this feature. Could be an opportunity to deliver enhanced service quality without additional staff cost.
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Front desk / Concierge services
Another area of opportunity is in concierge services. Simple questions could be handled with a chat bot or AI, and more complex requests could be routed to the appropriate customer service rep at the hotel.
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This feature could potentially offer a lot of opportunity for the hotels. It could include travel scheduling (shuttles or taxis), upgrades, maintenance requests, service requests (more towels, a cot, extra pillows, etc.) and could include proactive messaging opportunities (guest relations such as greetings, departure messages, surveys, etc.).
For smaller properties, this might cause a staffing concern. Care should be taken to ensure that smaller properties can tailor their offerings to match their staffing limits, and to ensure they can maintain a certain standard of quality. Additional care must be taken to ensure that these features can be administered by a busy and distracted hotel manager, who may also own the property and have several jobs on the property.
Verdict: Focus on this feature. Could be an opportunity to deliver enhanced service quality without additional staff cost. However, smaller properties may not be a good fit for this feature due to the necessary setup required and potential staff overhead.
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Help & Self-service
This section already exists in today's loyalty apps. For certain content, it could be expanded, but this is not an area where I will spend much time, as the existing solutions function well.
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Verdict: Not a priority. Functionality already exists.
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First UI Sketches
With my customer journeys and scenario, I made my first UI sketches.
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Card Sort
I conducted a card sort exercise with 10 people to determine the ideal structure of the data. This was an open sort. Participants could create groups as they wanted, and name them whatever they thought fit best.
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This is the final grouping I decided to go with. I chose to keep the groups large and fairly broad so that items would not be too deep in a hierarchy.
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LOCAL & DINING
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Local Transportation
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Get Local Information
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Reservations and Tickets
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Local Restaurants
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Order Room Service
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Hotel Dining​
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HOTEL NEEDS
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Request Additional Bedding
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Request Towels
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Request Housekeeping
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Request Toiletries
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Other Requests
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Report a Problem
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Business Services
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Wireframe
I made wireframes of the main screens.
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Testing Feedback
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Participants found the data structure to make sense
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Participants wanted an area in the app that gave general information about the hotel, such as gym policies, pool hours, WiFi access, etc.
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Mockups
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Next, I put together mockups based on the sketches and other artifacts I generated previously, and the testing feedback. The card sort was especially indispensable for organizing the categories and the individual items within them.
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iPad / Tablet version
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I also made a tablet version of the main home screen.
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For this design I pulled the secondary category items up (items from the Drawer / Action Sheets) and displayed them so they can help guide users to the correct categories. I also rearranged the categories a bit since the use cases for tablets are different.
I de-prioritized the Travel category under the assumption that tablet users would be looking more for food or activities on their tablets, rather than travel options. But they're still towards the top, just in case. I also gave the categories large buttons for fingers.
Desktop version
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The desktop version of the home screen is similar to the tablet version, except the category list items are all clickable. This means that desktop users can drill down into the specifics of their request before being directed to the chat interface. In practice, this allows users to remain in a more familiar pattern (lists and clicking) vs. the chat-based UI.
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Just like in the tablet version, the categories are expanded to take advantage of the real estate. And the categories are rearranged to better suit the laptop use case. The design is intended to match the Hilton theme on their web site and mobile app.
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Testing Feedback
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As usual, icon selection is impossible 😅. Users did not understand the meaning of the 'My Stay' icon. I decided to use the standard iOS Tab button for consistency and clarity (labels are helpful!).
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Participants found the expanded desktop version to be clear but did not understand the purpose of the "More Info" buttons.
Prototype
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Finally I created a mobile prototype.
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Conclusion
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Setup and Administration: This project has a second part, which I have not covered here. System setup and administration still need to be handled. This would likely happen as a desktop app.
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Concierge's App: The work queue for concierges and hotel employees would need to be designed as well.
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Got to stretch my brain's legs: This project allowed me to use some techniques, and generate some artifacts that I don't often use, which was great.
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