Designing Lovo, a social, video-first hotel booking app

Lovo blends social discovery with hotel booking. Creators who actually stayed at a hotel post video of the real thing, and travelers move from that video straight into rooms, availability, and reviews without leaving the app. The design covers more than 100 screens across more than 10 flows, spanning stays, flights, cars, trains, and events.

We started with why hotel discovery feels untrustworthy. Four answers kept coming back. Discovery is fragmented, so people jump between Instagram, listings, and review sites just to pick a place. Listings are generic: polished information that never says what a stay actually feels like. There is no real context, no creator stories or honest moments from the property. And booking is disconnected, because inspiration lives in one app and payment in another.

Lovo does not bolt a video feed onto a booking app. Creator led discovery is the spine of the product. Every hotel carries reels from people who slept there, and a smart decision panel narrows the search by destination, dates, guests, price, and travel style before a single listing loads.

More than ten flows share one visual language, so moving from a reel to a room to a receipt never feels like changing apps.

The first half of the journey. Sign in stays deliberately familiar. Home and compare puts two hotels side by side and ends with a plain verdict, best price or best rating, instead of asking travelers to hold two tabs in their head. Booking runs as a clear step by step: hotel details, guest information, extras, confirmation. The discovery loop keeps reels, comments from verified stays, and comparison on one screen.

The second half is the part most travel apps abandon. Managing an active or cancelled booking with the full refund trail visible. Rating a stay across cleanliness, staff, location, comfort, facilities, and value. Then upgrading to a creator account, with a verified badge, reach and engagement analytics, and earnings on the bookings your video brings in. Travel activity becomes something worth publishing.

Research, define, ideate, design. We audited hotel apps, creator platforms, and booking behaviour, then interviewed travelers and kept hearing the same sentence from people like Sarah, 27: she wants real hotel experiences before she books, not polished listings. Travelers open four or more platforms before committing to a single stay.

The system is DM Sans, one orange (#FE8111) carrying every action, and a near black (#1C252E) holding the type. Restrained enough that creator video stays the loudest thing on screen.