Travel Communities case study
A reason to come back between trips
Booking.com’s community for travellers, built to bring them back without paying for every visit.
I set the vision and led design across up to three teams, in Booking.com’s Marketing business vertical.
Trips were planned on other sites
of the 90% who planned trips online went on to book
Advice from other travellers was a growing part of how people planned, and Booking.com had no place for it. Competitors did. Meanwhile, the return on paid search was falling.
Every new traveller adds more value
2 travellers make 1 connection, 4 make 6, and 8 make 28.
The vision was a place where travellers talk to each other and get relevant, authentic answers, so they come back many times over. It rested on the network effect: a service gets more valuable to everyone as more people use it.
How we got it off the ground
- Research how travellers already share online
- Find entry points across Booking.com for early traffic
- Build with SEO in mind, to shift the channel mix
- Use the content to fuel recommendations everywhere
Recommended for you, on the homepage
Germany
- 116K travellers
- 327K visits
- 127K interactions
The homepage recommended communities to each traveller, based on what they had searched for and done on Booking.com. With our product manager, I planned the rollout so we could ship fast and measure every step.
What it added up to
Monthly active users in under a year
Monthly active users within 18 months
12-week retention, doubled
What I learned along the way
We went on to monetise the platform. Three things I took from it:
- Community is a powerful tool
- Be resourceful however possible
- Prove profitability early
Next project
Booking Assistant
Set the vision and led the team through it. 30% of stay-related questions answered automatically, saving $10M+ a year.
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