Reimagine Guest Service Experience
Project Context:
A global hospitality giant with 6,000+ destinations and 19 hotel brands is aiming to supercharge its growth by delivering a seamless, digitally-driven customer service experience across its diverse portfolio. In a competitive landscape, it seeks to redefine guest interactions, turning service into a value driver rather than a cost center.
The Challenge:
The company’s current service model is fragmented and inefficient, resulting in high costs and inconsistent guest experiences. The challenge was to design a unified, future-proof service framework that integrates across all brands and customer touchpoints, improving operational efficiency and delivering a cohesive, customer-centric experience at scale.
Timeline
4 months
The solution
A seamless, end-to-end digital service that anticipates guest needs, personalizes every interaction, and delivers a proactive, frictionless experience. By identifying stay intent, it ensures responsive, transparent service at every touchpoint.
The solution also drives innovation, offering experience-first services that go beyond expectations to create lasting value, boost loyalty, and fuel growth.
Instant Service
A trusted digital assistant which gives the guest end-to-end stay support, from planning, booking and handling their requests during all the phases of their IHG journey.
Key service frictions
Uncoordinated guest communication channels and point of contact
Lack of awareness and clarity on how to best use rewards
Difficulty in finding tailored and unique stay experiences
Long wait times to get serve (customer care, check in and check out process)
No communication record for feedback on request
Guest Value Proposition
A personal, trusted digital stay assistant* giving users an end-to-end support and inspiration, from designing, planning and booking through to handling their requests as well as in-stay and post-stay experience.
* The level of assistance is split into foundation (available to all) and iconic (premium) services
Instant Request
It is an always-on, responsive digital assistant which would handle guest’s queries between booking and arrival which would be easy to track.
Key service frictions
Lack of information sharing
Guest often frustrated by having to repeat information over and over again
Unclear status of request
No communication record for feedback on request
Complicated and long wait times service journey
Uncoordinated guest communication channels and point of contact
Guest Value Proposition
An always-on, responsive digital assistant to handle guest queries between booking and arrival, in a way that's easy for the user to track, leveraging existing channels of communications.
My role
🕵️♀️ User Researcher & Service Designer
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Planning, structuring, and facilitating workshops and collaborative session
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Develop research strategy and questionnaires
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Deliver experience flows and integration of work between process and UX team
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Manage work with product designer and researcher
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Upskill client team members in Service design methodology and system thinking
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Equip the the client design team to take over the concept to execution
-
Planning, structuring, and facilitating workshops and collaborative session
-
Develop research strategy and questionnaires
-
Deliver experience flows and integration of work between process and UX team
-
Manage work with product designer and researcher
-
Upskill client team members in Service design methodology and system thinking
-
Equip the the client design team to take over the concept to execution
🛠️ Relevant Tools: Miro, Figma, Microsoft SharePoint, Word, Excel, Outlook
🤝 Cross-Functional Team Size: 3
👥 Stakeholders Involved: 15
Approach & Process
I worked through countless guest feedback to gather qualitative and quantitative data to understand key service drivers; identify guests’ friction points from booking to check out. My team and I co-created solutions aimed at simplifying operations, standardising processes, and adopting new technologies to automate low-value-added tasks to support the guest service propositions.
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