Case Study
Umi Digital
Direct Booking Framework
Developed and implemented direct booking strategies for hospitality brands, combining customer research, conversion optimisation and digital experience design to reduce reliance on third-party booking channels.
Role
Head of UX & Design
Duration
2 Years
Methods
Customer Research
Conversion Optimisation
Experience Design
Skills
Hospitality Strategy | Conversion Optimisation | Customer Research | Growth Strategy
Table of Contents
Situation
Hospitality businesses were heavily reliant on Online Travel Agencies (OTAs) to acquire bookings, resulting in significant commission costs and limited direct customer relationships.
Challenge
Developed a Direct Booking Strategy framework that mapped the end-to-end customer journey from awareness through to booking, stay experience and repeat purchase.
Created customer journey maps and strategic frameworks that helped clients understand how direct bookings could be increased through coordinated improvements across multiple touchpoints.
Worked with sales teams to improve how opportunities were scoped and sold.
Educated marketing, design and development teams on the role they played in supporting the broader customer journey.
Developed supporting processes, training materials and documentation to embed the approach across the organisation.
Actions
Introduced Growth Driven Design principles across the organisation, adapting concepts from Design Thinking, Lean and continuous improvement methodologies.
Developed frameworks, training materials and workshops to help teams understand customer-centred approaches to problem solving.
Encouraged multidisciplinary collaboration earlier in the project lifecycle, bringing sales, marketing, design and development teams together to shape solutions collectively.
Promoted research-led decision making, MVP thinking and iterative improvement rather than large upfront assumptions.
Outcome
Created a shared strategic framework that aligned teams and clients around customer-centred outcomes rather than isolated deliverables.
Improved organisational understanding of customer acquisition, retention and direct booking behaviour.
Established a repeatable approach that supported long-term customer relationship building rather than short-term transactional thinking.
Skills Demonstrated
- Service Design
- Journey Mapping
- Customer Experience
- Stakeholder Management
- Workshop Facilitation
- Systems Thinking
- Strategy Development
- Organisational Change