You Are Made to Travel.
Do You Like to Travel?
“Traveling — it leaves you speechless, then turns you into a storyteller.” — Ibn Battuta
Travel is amazing! Having a cup of coffee at The Champs-Élysées Paris, soaking in Bule Lagoon and enjoying the breathtaking view of Iceland, and experiencing dinner in the endless desert in Dubai, travel brings people fantastic memories and give us a chance to explore every corner around the world.
You can’t deny that you love to travel. You can’t say that you don’t expect to experience all the wonderful cuisines and cultures while traveling. However, the annoying chores and complicated procedures you need to go through before traveling are genuinely troublesome. So, that’s the reason travel agencies have become a necessity nowadays.
From deciding where to visit, which airline to travel with, the place to stay, the vehicle to use, to the attractions to see, travel agencies aim to help you handle all these challenging works. In the past, you need to search for tons of information online and compare which choices are more economical, but now you have online travel agencies like Expedia, Booking.com, Tripadvisor, etc., to assist you.
But, are they useful? Is it easy for first-time users to book their travels? Let me take you to walk through the process, and then we can assess it together.
What’s Expedia?
I’d like to use Expedia as today’s example. Expedia is an online travel agency that aims to be the ultimate travel companion for all travelers. The message it wants to convey is that people are made to travel. Expedia offers all the services mentioned above. Helping you compare all the options and prices simultaneously, Expedia reduces lots of complicated procedures for searching and booking vacations.
By being the ultimate travel companion, Expedia provides a website and mobile app for customers to easily book hotels, flights, cars, attractions, cruises, and even valued packages.
Below is Expedia’s website interface.
Expedia’s Website
This is what you’ll see, at first sight, a clear and straightforward design. If you have a destination already, you can just choose the location and the date you are interested in, then click “search,” it will show you all the options they have like displayed below:
As you can see, it’s easy to compare all the hotels since Expedia lists the prices clearly, with both total and per night. Besides, you can see the features and intros of the hotels easily without clicking them. Furthermore, you can use a “filter” on the left just like you’re requesting your needs with a real agent. You can filter by the budget, rating, property type, neighborhood, amenities, etc. With these detailed filters, Expedia makes it much easier to find the hotel you like. There’s also a “sort by” on the upper right that allows you to decide based on your primary concern. Moreover, if you’re familiar with Geography, you can use the “map” on the upper left to choose directly.
However, what if you haven’t decided where to go?
If you haven’t decided where to go and want something discount, click “Made to Travel” on the home page, and it will bring you to a beautiful discount world. Just choose one and begin your adventure since humans are made to travel!
Expedia’s Mobile App
Next, let’s book a flight on Expedia using its mobile app together. It’s a super intuitive interface, too. After you open the app, you’ll see the categories on the top. I chose flights and then selected the destination and date, just like booking on an airline app, but the difference was Expedia showed multiple airlines for you to choose from. Of course, the app also has “filters” to help you make your best choice faster.
UX Design Analysis
After going through the booking procedures of Expedia with website and app, I think overall it’s a pleasant experience due to three main reasons.
First, the design is user-centered. That means it is intuitive to use; for example, by seeing the categories put on the top of the home page, I can understand the meaning and get to the page I want quickly. Moreover, it’s easy and comfortable to read. Even with lots of options and descriptions on one page, Expedia designed it with an organized arrangement and ideally used the font and color. For instance, it uses yellow color for the discount label to catch users’ eyes and also tell them it’s a limited offer.
Second, the design is responsive. I tried to use my phone and open the pages on Expedia instead of the app, and it turned out the site adapted well to my phone. It’s very mobile-friendly since the font is easy to read, and photos’ sizes are great to see. Also, the bottoms are designed for touch-clicking. Moreover, Expedia uses an AI bot — a virtual agent to help customers solve problems 24/7, which I like a lot since if I have a question, I can always ask the virtual agent to find the page I want, like where to see my airline credit.
Third, the conversational content makes Expedia like a friend of mine.
The website’s content totally matches Expedia’s identity — an ultimate travel companion. Just like recommending a vacation to a friend, Expedia tells you all the options and helps you find your favorite one.
Moreover, the beautiful content and breathtaking photos inspire people to go on a vacation. Learning each place’s little background while deciding where to go is the best way to find a destination. Expedia is trying to convey the message that everyone is made to travel.
