Overview

Our client, an online booking platform, wanted to develop new features that would enhance customers’ travels.  They needed consumer insights to help develop the propositions but recognised that asking customers directly was unlikely to elicit reliable data. 

The opportunity lay in going beyond the answers people could readily give to understand the hidden influences, identify where the platform could improve the travel experience and use that insight to guide proposition development. 

Approach

“Tell us about your best travel moment” gets you a story. We wanted to understand what sat behind it.

Using ReTrack™, we helped consumers relive experiences from recent multi-stop trips. We explored how their plans took shape, what influenced their decisions and how particular moments unfolded, exploring the psychology behind what made them special.

We also explored how travellers reflected on those experiences afterwards, distinguishing what mattered in the moment from the meaning they gave it later.

This connected the highlights people remembered with the everyday decisions that helped create them, from booking accommodation to choosing where to go next, giving us a richer foundation for innovation than a list of requested features.

Output

The research gave the client a clearer starting point for innovation: the motivations new propositions needed to connect with, rather than simply the experiences travellers enjoyed.

Insights included:

• Psychological drivers: The underlying psychological drivers that made travel experiences rewarding, the six factors that enhanced their value and what this meant for proposition development.

  Innovation direction: Where the platform could add meaningful value before and during a trip.

• Proposition principles: What new features needed to support, and where well-intentioned additions could conflict with travellers’ motivations.

• Brand permission: Where the platform’s existing strengths gave it a credible role, and where it would need to build one.

• Experience priorities: What needed to stay simple as the offer expanded.

We translated these findings into focused opportunity areas and questions for the design sprint, giving the team a practical framework for generating and refining propositions.