The Hotel Booking Experience Needs a Fundamental Rethink
Despite billions invested in travel technology, the direct hotel booking experience remains significantly worse than it should be. Here's what
I spent significant time on the Dalata Hotel Group project redesigning the booking experience for Ireland's largest hotel operator. The work was instructive not just for what we built, but for how deep the structural problems in hotel booking UX run.
The OTA Benchmark Problem
Hotel brands are competing against OTA booking experiences built by teams that have A/B tested every pixel of their interface with millions of users over many years. The gap between the best OTA booking experience and the average direct hotel booking experience is significant — and it costs hotels a material percentage of their direct booking revenue.
The Dalata redesign was explicitly benchmarked against OTA experiences — not against other hotel brand websites. The objective was to make the direct booking experience genuinely competitive with OTA alternatives, not just better than it was before.
The Room Selection Moment
The room selection screen is where more direct bookings are lost than at any other point in the funnel. The reasons are consistent across properties: too many similar-sounding room types, descriptions that prioritise square footage over how a guest will feel in the room, photography that shows the room from one standard angle, and pricing comparisons that are hard to parse.
The Dalata room selection redesign focused on three specific improvements: clearer room differentiation (what makes this room worth the price difference?), contextual photography (show me what I'll actually see from the window, not just the bed from the corner), and transparent pricing (total cost including breakfast, including taxes, for my dates).
The Dual Brand Challenge
Dalata's two brands — Clayton (business-focused, urban, premium) and Maldron (leisure-friendly, approachable, value-conscious) — required a booking experience that reflected their distinct positioning while sharing the underlying infrastructure.
The design solution was a token-based theming approach: a single booking engine with brand-specific visual expressions applied through the design system. A Clayton booking felt premium and editorial; a Maldron booking felt warm and accessible. The same underlying structure, different design language.
What Direct Booking Needs
- Differentiate your room types with editorial language, not specification lists.
- Show local photography — the neighbourhood, the view, the breakfast — not just the room.
- Make the price comparison between room types transparent and obvious.
- Prominently surface the direct booking benefits (best rate guarantee, flexibility, loyalty points) on the room selection page, not just the homepage.
