Problem
A new invisible service hotel is opening in Washington D.C. An invisible service hotel provides many of the amenities of a modern luxury hotel, but without a front desk or onsite staff. From check-in to check-out, consider how technologies can provide concierge-level services that are traditionally handled by hotel staff.
Context
This was a personal enrichment project. I have been doing health care experience design for the last two years and I needed to think outside the box. I wanted to test my ability to craft experiences in the hospitality sector and beyond. I found a problem and pushed my experience brain to the limit compiling research, creating scenarios, and doing mock interviews/ testing on my friends and family. I then created a fully working experience model for what a guest could expect at this futuristic invisible service hotel.
My role
Discovery, stakeholder/customer Interviews, competitive analysis, personas, experience mapping, interactive prototyping, usability testing.
Pandemics Effects on Travel
I researched current market trends to understand how the market has behaved for the last year. This would also help me know how trends could act in the future. The COVID19 pandemic put tremendous strain on the health of our economy. This has created a drought for most of the hospitality industry.
In the US, international travel and business travel showed the sharpest declines due to COVID-19. Global travel spending fell 76%, while business travel spending fell 70%. (U.S. Travel Association)
From March to December 2020, the pandemic has resulted in $492 billion in cumulative losses for the U.S. travel economy, which equates to a daily loss of approximately $1.6 billion. (U.S. Travel Association)
10 trends we will see in hospitality in 2021
1. New Sanitation and cleanliness standards
2. Shift to outdoor spaces
3. Locally produced products
4. Restaurants and hotel technology changes
5. Value consumers are here to stay
6. Sustainability
7. New travel trends in general
8. A new flat organization
9. A new focus on cash
10. Fresh Look at Hospitality
If you take a look at the hospitality industry’s current climate, not many hotels offer invisible service, but this is changing. Most local hotels don’t even provide an application that integrates with their services. This is a massive oversight by these companies. When it comes to hotels, 39% of guests would like to use digital room keys, and 36% would want to check into a hotel via an app.
Companies like Alibaba have already started automating most services. They plan to sell their services to hotel chains across the world, but currently, they use all this tech in their Fly Zoo Hotel, Located in Hangzhou, China.
Key Takeaways
The pandemic will be a considerable hurdle: Hotel employees and guests must participate in a complete sanitization and cleanliness upgrade. The hospitality industry is about to go through an entire redesign whether we are ready for it or not. The company will need to follow these standards in the future to stay in compliance.
The future of hotels is technology: Autonomous service is the future of hotel life. Between the money saved on labor and the sanitation standards an autonomous servant can provide, we will see a shift to having autonomous staff on-site in most hospitality places. The vast majority of hotels are not capitalizing on mobile experiences yet. Creating a unique mobile experience could fill a gap in the Washington, DC area.
Our client is open to ideas: After talking to our client GoodHotel for just an hour, one thing is quite clear. They don’t have an established concept or brand, but they do have the funding and technology. To create a unique seclusive experience to bring in just about any base who is willing to try it. We will need to create branding, a design system, and a customer base to succeed.
Understanding Hotel Guests
After collecting a basic understanding of how the hospitality market is working, we switch our focus to the people who will be using our products. Specifically, I wanted to get a picture of how people feel about hotels and traveling these days. Being amid a pandemic, I do not have many options for “users” based on time, and everyone’s a busy schedule. I asked friends and family to help me understand how they feel about traveling. Thankfully my dungeons and dragons friends were more than happy to oblige. I had two family members, four friends, and my girlfriend tell me how they feel about hotels and traveling.
I did these interviews over the phone/ discord as most of them don’t live locally (Except my girlfriend). I asked them to tell me everyday things they need while staying at a hotel. I asked what they liked to do while at a hotel, as well as how they feel when planning on traveling and while lodged.
Some things I noticed across all individuals I interviewed.
- They all will need reliable transportation around the city.
- Everyone wants a comfortable bed.
- In-suite entertainment such as movies, or local tv.
- Wifi is a must in anyone’s rooming experience.
- Local attractions will be one of the core parts of the trip.
- Pricing will greatly affect where they will stay.
- Clean rooms are high on the list of most guests.
- Room Service, and or customer service is a must.
What we learned
Check-in/ Checkout can be confusing - It’s a process that will need guidance for getting new users acclimated to a new concept. Having an onboarding experience could be tremendous for teaching people how to use the product.
Users will be using different mediums - Not every user will be checking in early, and not every user will have a smartphone on hand, period. We need to consider how we can provide a way for users to use most of our tech-related amenities—iPod for users that don’t have a cellphone.
Partnering with companies - Most of our amenities - food, travel, attractions will be processed through responsive apps. It would be helpful to figure out in advance how this will work. We could also work with outside vendors to provide services such as food trucks, which is mutually beneficial.
Customer experience overview
We will briefly look at what guests can expect when lodging with GoodHotel co. The experience is likely to start at pre-stay and depends on how guests decide to book hotels. Guests have two ways to check-in, but it depends on a few factors.
Before arrival, guests have the option to book on mobile or the website. If guest checks in before arriving, they can walk to their room when they arrive.
When arriving, guests may also download the invisible hotel portal through a QR code. If the guest has already downloaded the application; they will land at the check-in screen from here; they just check-in and will be able to access their room.
Upon arrival, some users may use this check-in kiosk. This kiosk provides basic check-in options if users have their access ID number.
If a user doesn’t have access to a smartphone for some reason upon arrival, we can provide an iPod for the duration of their stay. This iPod will have basic functionality for using the GoodHotel application. The kiosk will also guide users through onboarding if necessary to teach them to book a room.
Initially upon logging in users get this splash screen.
Non-registered users are dropped at this screen. From here they can browse, but if they do anything related to rooms or services they are dropped into a login screen.
Users have the ability to login with an account created previously, or sign up for services.
Users enter basic personal info from here. They agree to our TOS by clicking below.
After completing sign up users have the ability to enter a card on file or they can skip for later.
Once users put in info or exits they are given a short animation receiving their room key. They have the option to learn more about room keys.
Your profile has all your personal info, payment preferences, favorites, and account settings.
Services are centered around b2b transactions such as transport, and delivery, but also reservations and valet options.
You can chat with a service agent at any time; they are on-site but not in view.
Access has room keys, room controls, and requests such as toiletries.
Attractions is your digital guide to what’s going on. Use it to find events and explore Washington, dc.
The search feature is fuzzy, and it integrates with Google. So expect smart, snappy performance.
You can see room services and reviews. Also, you can book rooms or favorite them for later.
You can see previous guests’ reviews, and write a review here.
You can write a review of your experience here.
User Testing
I was lucky enough to have a friend test the application for me.
General task-driven feedback questions:
Hello! Welcome, I am Jeremy what is your name? Hey, I am David.
What do you do for work David? I work at a restaurant called Safe Harbor.
Nice, how often do you travel? I travel about once a year.
How do you like to book your hotels currently? I use Travelocity.
What do you think as you look at this? It feels like a travel application or service.
What is your (first) impression of this product? Ui is pretty clean.
What do you think this product/feature does or will do? It feels like a travel application.
Where do you start? home page/ check-in
When and where do you think someone would use this product/feature? If I plan to travel, I will look
for reviews for rooms, I want to stay in.
What do you expect to gain from using this product? Better priced rooms and will be more
comfortable based on reviews.
What would keep you from using this product? Face scan would potentially stop me from using it.
Do you feel this product is similar to another one? similar to Airbnb
Do you trust this product? Yes, I trust an application that is clean and well laid out.
General task-driven feedback questions:
How would you go about performing [Search for food]? home page and use search bar
What do you expect to happen if you did this [Search for food]? Help future guests with a clean/
good experience.
What alternative method would you use to perform [Search]? Google search bar.
Was anything surprising or did not perform as expected? Not really
Was the interface easy to understand? Yes
What was the most straightforward task to accomplish? Searching for the room I wanted.
What was the most challenging task to complete? Signing up, because of a face scan.
Feedback and takeaways
Face scan may be a no: There was a lot of effort and focus on the face access feature. Bear in mind this is a popular technology in china that lets you access your room without the need for a keycard. In America, people are a little more reserved to let you use their face for any access. This showed across my research and just theoretical studies.
Iterative process: We will need to have an iterative process with this project. Having only a week, I couldn’t fully flesh out every single feature I wanted. The MPV would have to serve as the brand gets its footing in the market. One thing I noticed when user testing was that he kept asking why stuff was not responding. This was because the content hadn’t been made yet. We will need a lot of user testing to pinpoint what content needs to make it into the application.
Combining service and access: Something I considered and made a comp for was mixing service and access. Admission is for room controls, keys, and tv related controls. Service is for pulling responsive websites that are connected to the application. We could stack this content, but it’s going to come down to are we going to make users scroll or tap on the next section.