During my time working on the Hostelworld iOS app, I had the opportunity to work on many amazing projects, with the focus on the travelers out there using mobile platforms as part of their trip experience. 'My Trips' is probably my favourite project. A space to bring the essence of traveling to the Hostelworld app while solving pain points and increasing the engagement of our users through a carefully selected package of contextual content.
Hostelworld is the largest online hostel-booking platform, with over 9 million reviews across 35,000 properties in more than 170 countries, making the brand the leading online hub for social travel. The website and mobile app operates in 19 different languages and are available across all the devices and operative systems.
Our mission is to make Hostelworld a mobile-first platform and initiate the transition from a booking-only to a travel app while increasing engament and hostel awareness.
Based on 36 surveys and 84 interviews
90%
are between 18-35 years old.
32%
are employed.
32%
are students.
14%
are taking a gap year.
Traveling is #1 Priority.
(#5 among other types of travelers)
56%
book a hostel in between a week to 24h before traveling.
They look for experiences rather than places to visit.
They value the social aspect more than other types of travelers.
Based on our research, we identified the 5 stages of travelling, and discovered we were only fully covering one of these. It was important to create new experiences for our users based on their needs and desires, so we started with 2 of the most important one: Experiencing and sharing.
Our process includes a combination of Design Thinking with the Agile methodology. We go through the 3 main stages of Design Thinking, incorporating Agile once we start planning the implementation of the solution/s. In addition we ensure the quality of the outcome following a process of Verification and Validation at each stage.
We partnered with third party companies to provide our user the right combination of in-house content and relevant information about the destination.
3X
engagement rate.
+20%
time spent in the app.
+38%
people visiting a place thanks to ‘My Trips’.
+28%
app Adoption YoY.