Thank you everyone for coming out today. I am glad to to have this wonderful opportunity to show you, Marriott International, the importance of user experience design and how Robert Brown can drastically improve multiple aspects of Marriott International.

Before we get started. I am going to breakdown this presentation in a highly detailed summary. (Read/address topics on slide)

We are now going to talk about the initial findings of this project.

Here is the path that users take to book a room via Marriott’s online website. They enter their information: location, stay time, what type of room, etc. They then are able to see the rooms that are available. They get to then look at the options that they will get in their room. Lastly, they review their room and complete the booking. 

There are currently 3 areas that have issues within them: the initial search page, the room selection options page, and the review page.

In a nutshell, the major problems from the website are: its overwhelming content, inconsistent pricing, location issues, and no room comparison option. There are so many options, buttons, and selections that make your room selections endless. Some the information can be found halfway down the page. When you select a room, users expect that to be the price they will be paying. Often times this is a lie. Also, people often want or need to be a certain location, but you can only select certain cites nearby. You do not have the option to put in an exact location. Often times, people want to see their options. There is no way for someone to compare rooms they want unless the open up a new tab and compare them side by side. By that point, your room will already be timed out.

Now we can look at the mobile application. Notice how there are two more pages than the website. That may be an issue to some users. First you need download the application, enter as a member or guest, enter your search criteria, select a room, view a room, select your amenities/upgrades, review your room, and book your room.

There are issues on the initial search, room selection, room mediates/upgrades, and the room confirmation pages.

When talking about the mobile application, users have four main issues: it is an extensive process, there are too many options, location is nowhere to be found easily, and the room selection is confusing. There are many extra steps that users have to go through compared to the website. There are also a ton of buttons and dropdown menus that will make users confused as to what they are searching. There is no way to see where the hotel is located. Lastly, selection a room on the application tends to take a lot longer than the website. There are more times you have to confirm and review your room compared to the website.

When looking at both the website and mobile application we found very similar results. The results from the initial research shows that individuals have spent too much time clicking through the hotel booking process and struggle the most when finding a proper location and accessing the final room price. 

Now lets highlight the key things that Marriott is interested in.

(Read/address topics on slide) To solve these needs, we have broken them down and combined them into three user research goals that will ultimately benefit Marriott in the long run.

Here are the three user research goals of the project.

There is no prefect way to access a project so we implemented multiple research methods into this project.

(Read/address topics on slide)

Here is an example of coding the interviews and trying to sort out what the common themes/responses were.

The data analysis has been the most time consuming phase of this project. It is challenging to decipher what people are saying about there user experience when booking hotels.

Before the interviews were conducted, four hypothesizes were written:  

1. These interviews will find that price and location are important to the user when booking a hotel online or through a mobile application.

2. These interviews will confirm that users prefer booking a hotel online instead of on a mobile application.

3. These interviews will show that individuals will come back to a specific service when booking a hotel if they are provided with a unique and successful user experience.

4. These interviews will confirm that a successful user experience will increase a company’s overall profit.

The data found on the next slides backs up the first hypothesis. (Read/address topics on slide)

I interviewed three individuals. One male and two females. One female was 21 years old and the other two are a married couple in their mid 50’s. There were a total of 21 questions asked to these individuals. Questions were on the following topics: background, how much traveling do you do, what do you look for in a hotel when traveling, current issues of booking a hotel, what makes a good hotel booking process, and how do you find good deals on hotels. Answers were broken down into 8 categories that were the most common responses. These were: family, price, location, amenities, photos, reviews, phone, and  hotel comparison.

Here is what I found:

25.40% of responses focused on price. Individuals are extremely concerned about price when booking a hotel. It is by far the most important thing and it’s visibility should be top priority. 20.63% of answers focused on hotel comparisons. People prefer to go on hotel comparison websites vs an individual hotel’s website. Lastly, 17.46% of responses focused on location. Finding a hotel in a prime location near your points of interest will make things extremely easier for the user once they are settled within the hotel for their stay.

Other data includes family at 9.72%, amenities at 7.94%, phone at 6.35%, reviews at 4.76 percent, and photos at 1.59%.

Here are some of the key points that were brought up in the interviews. Note: my third interview’s file got corrupted so the audio an video do not sync for that individual. (This link has been removed from dropbox.)

The data concludes the following: Price is the most important thing when it comes to booking a hotel. Users prefer to compare hotels with one anther to get the best price in a prime location.

Here are some of the next steps in the research:

The next steps within this research includes: conduct the questionnaire that has already been developed, tweak the current interview questions to better support business needs, analyze all this data to confirm initial findings, and prototype for a new website and mobile application.

My results did not touch on two of the following business needs: Gain 10,000 incremental members of the Marriott Rewards loyalty program in the first quarter after the redesign and increase by 5% the number of people choosing a hotel and flight package (vs. just booking their hotel alone). The next steps should make sure to focus more on these issues. I can look into more on how people travel and better market to people who fly. I only touched on email marketing, but most people do not care for marketing material unless they are frequent travelers. Being able to interview request travelers would drastically help improving these two business needs.