Between February 2023 and June 2024, I led the redesign of Guestline's self-service check-in kiosk as the sole designer, partnering with a Product Manager, a Development Lead, and six engineers to turn an early pilot into a scalable hospitality product.

The pilot had proven guests were willing to check themselves in, but it offered little real value beyond that. Guests re-entered booking details they'd already given, optional steps like pre-authorisation and key cutting were buried, there were no upsell opportunities, and lobby queues still formed with staff regularly stepping in. Hoteliers were asking why they should invest in a kiosk that just replicated the front desk, slower. The challenge was turning a validated concept into a guest-centric, white-label product that could genuinely cut wait times and generate revenue.

I audited the full guest journey end to end, from booking through pre-arrival, arrival, and departure, and found the same story everywhere: duplication, hidden flows, and disconnected communication. That shaped four principles for the redesign: clarity, autonomy, accessibility, and brand adaptability. Redundant screens were combined, optional services made transparent instead of hidden, the interface rebuilt to WCAG-compliant standards with large touch targets and high contrast, and a white-label system built so any hotel could apply its own branding without breaking usability. Check-in went from 8–10 fragmented screens down to four; check-out could be completed in as little as a minute.

The results: check-in time dropped 35% (from ~7 minutes to 4.5), self-service adoption doubled from 30% to 50%, guest satisfaction rose ~35%, and upsell conversion reached ~20%, opening a new revenue line for hotels. Staff interventions were cut in half. Point A Hotels captured 3,000 guest emails within 90 days of rollout that would otherwise have gone to OTAs, and Classik Hotel Collection in Berlin hit 100% voluntary kiosk adoption within four weeks of launch, the first hotel in Germany to do so.