Improving conversion rates with map based discovery and reduced complexity for travel booking at Marriott.com
.avif)
Date Completed
February, 2018
Overview
Marriott is the world’s leading lodging and hospitality brand, yet its digital booking experience falls short of delivering on its brand promises — “Travel Brilliantly” and “Life is Beautiful.” High abandonment rates for both reservations and rewards program enrollment point to an experience that is overly crowded, cognitively demanding, and misaligned with the expectations of modern travelers.
To address this, I designed a reimagined booking experience centered on simplified visual navigation and map-based discovery. The new approach surfaces Marriott’s most under-leveraged asset — its expansive global footprint — and reframes the booking process as a visually rich, application-grade experience that invites exploration. Users can now browse by city or country, see hotel availability geographically, and complete bookings in a clean, intuitive flow that reduces friction and supports autonomy.
I led this project end-to-end, consulting with a network of UX professionals to shape strategies for peak travel-planning experiences. The work draws on both user-centered design principles and contemporary behavioral theory to ensure alignment with Marriott’s business goals.
Design Frameworks and Theoretical Basis
This solution is informed by two key frameworks:
- Self-Determination Theory (SDT) and the METUX model, which identify autonomy, competence, and relatedness as essential psychological needs for user motivation and wellbeing. The design supports these by enabling choice and visual control (autonomy), reducing cognitive load and increasing clarity (competence), and delivering emotionally resonant moments of brand engagement (relatedness)
- The Power of Moments (Heath & Heath), which argues that extraordinary experiences arise from elevation, insight, pride, and connection. The redesigned booking flow creates those moments through immersive visuals, intuitive interaction, and confirmation states that feel more like celebration than receipt.
Process
To better understand Marriott as both a business and a brand
I began this initiative with domain research and a structured business model analysis — an approach grounded in my graduate training in UX design and strategic thinking. This early research helped identify design opportunities that could reinforce Marriott’s core strengths: loyalty, scale, and premium experience.
Business Model Analysis
Marriott International is the largest hotel chain in the world, with over 30 distinct brands and more than 6,500 properties globally. The company operates using two interlocking business models, both of which rely heavily on loyalty and repeat engagement.
Primary model, asset heavy
Marriott’s scale — offering over 1.2 million rooms worldwide — ensures it benefits from the full power of economies of scale. The company directly owns or operates many of its properties, giving it control over both the physical product and the branded experience. This asset-heavy approach provides strong operational leverage and enables Marriott to position its properties strategically across global markets.
Secondary model, loyal buyer
Marriott’s long-term profitability depends on fostering customer loyalty. A significant portion of its customers will not even consider switching to a competitor — a behavior cultivated through years of investment in experience design, brand equity, and one of the most comprehensive loyalty programs in the industry. Marriott’s strategy is not simply to win bookings, but to create customers who default to Marriott as their go-to travel brand.
This model made it clear that a redesign of the booking experience needed to go beyond usability. It needed to strengthen emotional commitment, reinforce Marriott’s global presence, and create delightfully efficient pathways to conversion — all while serving both business and leisure travelers.
Discovery Through Survey
To complement the business model analysis and gain direct insight into traveler behavior, I designed a custom user survey focused on the booking experience. The goal was to surface pain points, booking preferences, emotional drivers, and strategic opportunities for loyalty reinforcement.
The survey explored:
- Common friction and abandonment triggers
- Emotional and informational inspiration to travel
- Preferences around browsing tools, map-based discovery, and agent support
- Booking priorities for both business and leisure travel
- Underlying psychological needs related to autonomy, trust, and control
The questions were grounded in Jobs-to-Be-Done (JTBD) methodology and Self-Determination Theory (SDT), helping ensure the research focused not only on what users do, but why — and what emotional needs shape those behaviors.In addition to the live survey, I created a survey planning document that outlines the rationale for each question. This artifact reflects how I structure research in a product design setting and showcases my ability to connect theoretical frameworks to practical design decisions.
The survey
With a stronger grasp of Marriott’s business and loyalty-driven model, I moved into user-centered discovery.
The goal at this stage was to develop a richer understanding of the emotional and practical realities travelers face when booking accommodations — especially on a platform meant to reflect a premium experience.
User Interviews
I conducted in-depth, in-person interviews with three leisure travelers, using a semi-structured script grounded in Self-Determination Theory (SDT) and the experiential framework of The Power of Moments. My objective was to uncover emotional highs and lows from past travel planning, explore digital behaviors, and listen for moments of confusion, delight, and unmet need.
To structure this research, I created a detailed interview plan that included:
- Open-ended storytelling prompts
- Targeted questions about loyalty, decision-making, and agent alternatives
- Rationales for each prompt, mapping to Marriott’s experiential brand goals
Task-Based Observational Study
To complement the interview insights, I observed each participant attempting to use Marriott.com to book a hotel for an upcoming leisure trip. No scripts or prototypes — just the live site, their own devices, and a real-world booking scenario.
The findings surfaced
- Unclear pricing and poor visual hierarchy, which led to task abandonment
- Hidden filters and ineffective sort options, which limited exploration
- Frustration with map view, which reset unexpectedly and lacked useful travel context
- A successful flow, completed by a more digitally confident user — revealing how much the current system favors technical familiarity over clarity
User Insights
From in-home interviews with three frequent leisure travelers:
- Travelers associate planning with emotional risk — “I worry about getting lost” or making the wrong choice.
- Visual discovery matters: participants look for nearby attractions, dining, and a sense of place when choosing a hotel.
- Brand loyalty is low unless the experience feels truly differentiated — several mentioned a preference for Airbnb over chain hotels.
- Trust and clarity are big concerns: previous bad experiences with pricing and lack of support shape future decisions.
Experience Breakdown
Observed behavior while using Marriott.com to find a hotel:
- Users missed key filtering and sorting options — often because they weren’t clearly surfaced.
- Confusion about pricing presentation caused hesitation and abandonment.
- Map view was opened frequently, but users found it unreliable, disorienting, or broken.
- Visually confident users completed tasks quickly; others got lost and gave up.
Interface Observations
Marriott’s destination results page presents several usability challenges — many of them rooted in visual hierarchy and interface feedback. The screen is dense with UI elements: text, icons, and dropdowns layered across six separate functional sections above the fold. These elements are not clearly grouped or prioritized, and it’s difficult to tell at a glance which are interactive and which are not.
Perhaps most noticeably, the dominant visual element on the page is a bold black checkbox labeled “Show available hotels only.” This checkbox unintentionally anchors the top of the visual hierarchy — drawing focus away from more critical content, such as search results or sort controls. It reflects a broader problem: lack of visual rhythm or hierarchy to guide the user through the page.
The page also lacks clear confirmation of search context. There is no persistent breadcrumb, title, or header to reassure users that they are viewing results for their intended location. This breaks the heuristic of “visibility of system status”, which is especially important on pages where users jump between filters, tabs, or views.
In one example, a large arrow labeled “30 UNIQUE BRANDS” calls attention to a brand filter, but feels disconnected from the user’s task of browsing and selecting accommodations. It reads more like a marketing push than a helpful interface control.
The net result is an interface that feels overwhelming, under-signaled, and inconsistent with the expectations users bring from competing travel platforms.
To move from discovery into synthesis, I reframed key insights from interviews and usability sessions into structured themes.
I began the analysis phase by identifying a set of high-level questions — each supported by a rationale and a method of organizing insights. These questions helped guide the way I interpreted user feedback and mapped it to potential design opportunities.
- What aspects of searching and browsing for hotels are contributing to bounce rates?
Rationale
Searching is a fundamental part of any digital booking experience — but when filters, pricing, and navigation are unclear, users disengage. Our goal is to design a solution that is so intuitive it becomes almost invisible.
Method
I analyzed task-based session transcripts through the lens of Self-Determination Theory (SDT), looking for points where user autonomy, competence, or confidence broke down.
- What do travelers identify as peak positive and negative moments in the travel planning process?
Rationale
In The Power of Moments, Chip Heath describes how we remember experiences: not as a sum of every detail, but as a handful of emotionally significant peaks and low points. These moments shape how users remember — and talk about — their journey.
Method
I coded interview responses for emotionally charged events and moments of frustration or clarity. I used principles like the peak-end rule and duration neglect to group experiences around key memory anchors.
- What are the functional, social, and emotional “jobs to be done” for travelers booking hotel stays?
Rationale
Understanding the deeper motivations behind why users choose — or abandon — a booking experience helps ensure the solution goes beyond surface-level usability and supports real goals.
Method
I wrote job statements for each participant, synthesizing their emotional needs and functional tasks into structured JTBD frameworks. These were used to guide later ideation and prioritization.
Translating Discovery into Design Direction
After conducting interviews and observing real-world booking behaviors, I moved into the analysis phase — where qualitative data was turned into actionable insights using structured frameworks.
To do this, I employed a method known as qualitative coding. I first transcribed each interview and task session, then segmented participant responses into individual statements. These statements were entered into spreadsheets and mapped across the theoretical models I had selected — such as "Positive Defining Moments" from The Power of Moments, and psychological need categories from the METUX model derived from Self-Determination Theory (SDT).
This allowed me to systematically tag user quotes according to where they aligned with—or failed to meet—user needs such as autonomy, competence, and relatedness, or where they reflected peaks, pitfalls, or missed opportunities in the experience. This structured analysis made it possible to identify patterns across participants and extract insight not just from what users said, but how they felt while trying to book travel online.
To do this, I transcribed the interviews and task-based sessions, then deconstructed each participant's statements into discrete, attributable observations. These observations were organized using two distinct cognitive frameworks:
- The Power of Moments:
Used to identify emotionally significant high and low points across each user’s travel planning story, surfacing moments of:
- Sensory elevation
- Friction or confusion
- Surprise and unmet expectations
These patterns are important not just because they shape user satisfaction, but because they influence memory, word-of-mouth, and repeat behavior.
Experiences are not remembered evenly — people remember peaks and endings far more than the middle.
This aligns with Forrester Research, which found that only $1 of every $10 in revenue comes from customers who feel they had a negative experience. The other $9 comes from customers who felt positively engaged. Yet most organizations spend 80% of their customer-facing resources on eliminating problems — not creating moments that matter. This insight became a foundational lens for how I evaluated both usability breakdowns and emotional opportunity areas within the Marriott booking experience.
- Self-Determination Theory (SDT) via the METUX Framework
SDT offers one of the most empirically grounded models for understanding user motivation, sustained engagement, and psychological wellbeing. At its core are three basic psychological needs:
- Autonomy – feeling agency; acting in accordance with one’s own goals and values
- Competence – feeling capable and effective
- Relatedness – feeling connected to others or part of a larger purpose
These needs are not just abstract principles — they function as levers that product designers can intentionally support or undermine. Research shows that increasing autonomy improves engagement, increasing competence improves motivation, and increasing relatedness improves overall wellbeing.
In practice, these needs act as proximal criteria: measurable, actionable signals that tell us whether an interface supports the user or erodes their confidence. I used the METUX model to evaluate each user’s experience through this lens, identifying points where Marriott’s booking flow either enhanced or hindered these essential psychological drivers.
Application of Frameworks Across Participants
The following documents show the coded output of the analysis process. Each participant’s statements were transcribed, segmented, and evaluated across the categories from The Power of Moments and the METUX model. The result is a structured snapshot of how each user’s emotional and cognitive experience was shaped by the booking interface.
These artifacts reflect not only what was said, but how those statements were interpreted through a behavioral lens — surfacing emotional highs and lows, motivational breakdowns, and opportunities for improved support of autonomy, competence, and relatedness.
UX Research Insights Database
To synthesize findings across all six participants, I built a unified insights database using structured fields from both the METUX and Power of Moments frameworks. Each entry reflects a distinct observation or coded quote — tagged by participant, motivational need, emotional moment type, and design relevance.
The result is a fully searchable insight set that connects research themes to practical implementation areas like UI, content, layout, or support. This artifact became the foundation for prioritization and planning during ideation.
Mapping Opportunity into Flow and Architecture
After identifying patterns in user motivation and breakdown points during research, I began shaping early structural models. Rather than jumping straight into screens, I first explored macro-level structures — how the system might better reflect users’ goals and emotional rhythms.
I started by sketching two proposed views: a linear booking flow and a supporting sitemap. These weren’t critiques of the current site, but rather speculative explorations of how Marriott might better scaffold the decision-making journey from different user perspectives.
.svg)
Designing for Booking Mindsets
Building on insights coded through METUX and Positive Defining Moments, I recognized that users approached booking with distinctly different motivations and starting conditions. Some users were goal-oriented and decisive. Others were exploratory or seeking inspiration. A few arrived mid-journey, needing immediate results.
To support this variation, I developed three primary user contexts:
I have a location already planned and need to find a hotel nearby
These users benefit from a focused, list-based results view. They’re ready to make a decision — they just need trusted options, clearly ranked. Nearby attractions are helpful, but secondary.
I’m focused on price or what’s nearby my hotel
These users are actively comparing. They benefit from a dual-mode layout where they can see prices in context — mapped against neighborhood features, attractions, and transit access.
I’m already at my destination and need to find something nearby
These users need immediacy. The system should detect their location, show what’s nearby, and surface options sorted by walking distance, price, or availability — all within a single, minimal interface.
Contextualizing the Booking Flow
These mindsets led directly to a rethinking of structure — not just screen layout, but the logic of the flow itself. Rather than force all users through the same funnel, the revised structure supports adaptive entry points, each one tailored to the user’s mental model.
At the very first interaction, users are asked: “Where are you starting from?” That choice then guides how search, filtering, and content are presented — aligning not just with their travel logistics, but with their emotional and cognitive state.
This reframe shifts the experience from transactional to relational. It allows the product to meet users where they are, offering confidence, flexibility, and relevance — three needs consistently surfaced in the research.
Applying Cognitive Design to Screen-Level Decisions
As I moved from flow structure into screen-level decisions, I began organizing opportunities around specific touchpoints: the landing page, the search results page, and the hotel details page.
Each set of recommendations is grounded in both user research findings and principles from the text Designing with the Mind in Mind — particularly the insight that:
“When people navigate through software or a website, they scan quickly and superficially for items related to their goal… They often don’t even notice unrelated elements.”
This idea — that attention is shallow but purpose-driven — became a guiding principle for optimizing clarity, reducing noise, and designing layouts that support quick decisions.
The landing page
Three of Marriott’s five key metrics can be impacted directly by focusing above-the-fold content on two things: rewards program enrollment and hotel search.
- Present the search form and rewards CTA immediately — nothing else competes for attention
- Message a clear reason to join the rewards program, with a “learn more” modal containing benefit details and fields for signup
- Route search results directly to either list, grid, or map views — user preference or last-used mode should persist
Search Results Page
Most users are price-sensitive and scan for quick comparisons.
- Make price sorts immediately visible and intuitive (e.g. “Lowest to Highest,” “Tonight’s Deals”)
- Use modal-style overlays for hotel previews and room config, so users don’t lose context when they explore
- Surface hotel + flight bundles clearly, and support booking them with affordances familiar from aggregators: sort by soonest departure, lowest total cost, etc.
Hotel Details Page
This is the commitment moment — but users still want the option to revise.
- Allow full editing of prior selections (dates, guests, rooms) from this screen without backtracking
- Support visual decision-making with a grid of tappable, lightbox image cards for room types
- Ensure that checkout form fields support browser-based autocomplete and payment autofill
With the landing page flows and sitemap established I felt ready to jump into prototyping
Map views, browsing and autocomplete
During the prototyping process I found that by adding form options for country and city displayed in a map view, browsing could be supported for all Marriott destinations worldwide. As an asset heavy business working to maximize throughput, this works toward Marriott's goals without adding much in the way of visual complexity. This single addition allows customers to browse the chain of rich media in google maps and imagine and fall in love with the idea of traveling to some far away place they might not have otherwise.
The importance of browsing should not be overlooked. The question companies should always be asking in the age of digital media is, where can I find value in experience with what I can access without having to build it myself. Google maps is one perfect example, and as a company dealing in global destinations, this is low hanging fruit for customer experience.
Utilizing video for emotional impact
To express the beauty and joy of travel, video that captures the company's core brand message was combined with subtle animation and placed at the beginning and end of the user experience as part of the strategy of building a peak positive experience based on the principle of duration neglect. The booking experience opens with an animated slider of background video transitioning with scaling and fading to express the refined aesthetic Marriott represents. The selection of images is emotional and instantly communicates relatable moments travelers enjoy.
For the final step in the booking process I edited a fast paced series of clips together that captures the excitement and joy of travel. This "big finish" works toward the goal of leaving the user with a several minute long overview of what an exciting, beautiful and comfortable experience they can look forward to when they reach their destination.
Using interactivity for visual navigation
Visual navigation works to make the gulfs of execution users commonly face from page to page more intuitive. Using a design familiar to users of mobile apps goes one step further than breadcrumbs at the top left of a page by communicating where the user is in the process of booking visually through the animation of those steps. Studies have shown that tool-like interactivity can support the users sense of competence in ways that contribute to an overall positive experience.
This solution moves the user through the process with zero page load delay and half second animations from page to page. The process of booking is made into a clear progression while allowing for errors and moving back a step. Editing choices made in a previous step are intuitive. Simply close the current panel, make changes and continue th process without using the browser back function.
Reflections & takeaways
This initiative’s goals are among the most common for digital properties, and the user centered process worked out several opportunities to improve customer experience. Implementing affordances for browsing opened up the experience for map based exploration in ways that are consistent with the joy of travel. A mobile pattern based solution for booking free from page load delays works together with animation and video to express a higher fidelity digital property.
Feedback from user interviews generated more potential directions for building peak positive experience through content strategy than reducing negative experiences in usability. To meet the target goals for Marriott of improving conversion rates for booking, luxury and lifestyle collections, and rewards program memberships, producing original content may be key to success.