Alleppey Houseboats Club

Allappey Houseboatclub App

Customer booking App for alleppey houseboats and Kumarakom houseboats.

OVERVIEW

Alleppey Houseboat Club are the first aggregator website for Alleppey Houseboat & Kumarakom Houseboats . Alleppey Houseboat Club hail from Kerala, who uphold the popular tag of tourism, God’s Own Country. Alleppey Houseboat Club is a leading online service portal in Kerala, specializes in providing solutions for Kerala Backwater Tourism.

Alleppey Houseboat Club are one of the best tour operator in the industry backed by years of experience, which helps us to offer best houseboat packages to visitors across the world who wish to experience the backwaters.

ROLE & DURATION

Product Design
Product Thinking, Information Architecture, Interaction, Visual design, Prototyping & testing

Three Month

Project Goal

Need to create a Houseboat customer booking App for alleppey houseboats and Kumarakom houseboats.

introducing a new and evolving user experience combined app. Check there bookings, manage itinerary, pricing and availability.

KEY OBJECTIVES

1. Research and understand the user needs and why people want to go on a Houseboat.
2. Provide concepts and recommendations for the digital experience.
3. Deliver on a UX/UI that focused on personalization and knowing the user.

Problem Statements

A customer need to compare houseboats
A customer expects hussel-free payment methods.
A Customer can get to know ratings while booking Houseboat.
View Information such as Rooms, Facilities, Location, Policies & Facilities.

A Customer view only verified Houseboats while booking the Houseboat.
A Customer can request a special preference to the Houseboat operator.
A Customer can get to know room type while booking Houseboat.

How it works

Search Houseboat

Check Houseboats.

Select your Houseboat

Check availability.

Select Cruising Date

Houseboat Available to book.

Pay & Confirm

Enjoy a perfect houseboat experience.

Design Process

DISCOVER

Market research
Competitor Analysis
Field Study
Interviews
User Research

DEFINE

Affinity
Analysis
Personas

IDEATE

Brainstorming
Task flows
Information Architecture

DESIGN

Wireframing
Prototype

Market Research

The first step in this project was to establish an understanding of the market and industry in which Alleppey Houseboats Club Operates. I performed generative research in order to learn more about the Houseboat industry and the target audience.

Demographics

The market is primarily segmented by age and family status, as these different groups have different preferences when looking at vacation houseboats.Groups are broken into younger couples, older couples, and families.
Single individuals are generally not interested in renting houseboats.
Adults under the age of 35 are 50% more likely to Book Houseboat online using a mobile device
The most economical houseboat rentals sleep 14 to 18 or more individuals and are rented by 2, 3, or 4 families at a time (or up to 9 pairs of couples).

Statistics

Honeymoon booking for couple is 41 %
Family booking it is 21 %
Business group booking upto 28 %.
Houseboat booking is mainly online now and its 44 %
Offline booking percentage will reach directly to 56 %.

Trends

Aged 21 to 39, young couples without children look for romantic getaways as well as high-energy activities.
Aged 40 and up, although some within this age bracket will still be very active and self-identify with young couples, older couples without children look for romance and relaxation.
Couples or individuals with children. They require a mix of relaxation for parents and high-energy activities for children. They may also require creature comforts for the children, such as entertainment centers, which couples can do without on a vacation.

Mobile Opportunity

The percentage of people booking holidays online has seen a notable increase in 2017, rising from 76% to 83%.
Desktops are still by far the most common online booking method, but their popularity is starting to decline as the percentage of people booking on their PCs decreased from 92% in 2016 to 85% in 2017.
This rise in mobile’s popularity could be due to the improvements in mobile usability. The number of people finding the mobile booking process easy has increased from 44% to 60% year on year, although this shows that there is still significant room for improvement

Over 16.7 million tourists visited Kerala in 2018 as against 15.76 million the previous year, recording an increase of 5.93 per cent.

Competitor Analysis

While doing research found some indirect competitors who have some strength and weakness on there app I used this method to compare other booking app in the market. The analysis helped me to come up with the most important features to add and changes done the app.

Strengths:

Highly-rated mobile app.
Marketing strategy — strong advertising.
Building strong brand awareness.

Weakness:

Difficult Book Houseboats
Information chaos — too much unnecessary information on the site which makes the more important harder to be discovered.
Strong competitors.
Most Apps Houseboat listed under Hotels
Number of houseboats listed is very low

Opportunities:

There is no dedicated Houseboat booking App in the market.
Dedicated Houseboat Booking services that help Alleppey Houseboat Club to better meet their customers needs. New services can expand Houseboat Booking business and diversify their customer base.
New markets allow Alleppey Houseboat Club to expand their business and diversify their portfolio of products and services.
The other market players have low number of Houseboat listed

Threats:

International competitors are numerous and difficult to combat, because they can have many competitive advantages.
Competitors that a large majority of consumers would prefer to book directly with there app

Field Study & Stakeholder Presentation

User Survey

Analyzed the user survey and obtained quantitative data which gave us the insights about online booking and user needs. Here are questionnaires along with the obtained data.

Observations – User survey

Key Issues Identified

Simple Houseboat booking process and Easy navigation
Cancellation Options
Previous Bookings with saved drafts
Ratings Precise in data provided
Quick Support
Booking price and Holiday hike tax Variation

Proposed Solution

The main pages that user navigates through the booking process after selecting a location are Listings, Houseboat and Review & book. Keeping these three options visible throughout the process will make it easy for users to navigate and certainly the process looks pretty easy with just 3 steps.
Availability of pay at Houseboat option allows user to reserve the houseboat and incase if there is any change in the plan he can just cancel the houseboat booking and there will be no hassle for refund, in some cases this feature is a persuasive decider between other competitors.
At times user may lose internet connection in the middle of the houseboat booking process or accidentally closes the application or payment timeout or in any such situations if the current houseboat booking has got saved automatically as a draft for a certain time will make it easy for the user to resume and complete process from where it has got interrupted. Availability of my booking through out the process will allow user to check or import some details from any of the past houseboat bookings if needed.
Houseboat listing page is very important page which makes user to finalize the houseboat booking so the information displayed here should be very accurate and effective, through the brainstorming session I’ve identified the most important details after location that a user looks for in hierarchical order. High Quality images of houseboats, Ratings, Amenities, Pricing, Extra activities, and Policies(if made visible).
User may have many quarries while booking a houseboat at first time, if there is a call support for the users throughout the process he can clarify all the quarries and complete the houseboat booking with a happy and relaxed mind.
Displaying the price Inclusive of all taxes right from the first page to the end page prepares the user to pay the displayed amount and the deal for the houseboat booking reduces small amount and that makes the user to end up on a happy booking.