Research shows the global parent-child travel market was valued at $15.2 billion in 2023 and is projected to reach $28.4 billion by 2032. This growth represents a significant opportunity to capture market share by addressing the UX friction points that currently drive families to competitors.

Our target users are Millennial parents seeking to book family getaways. This creates a unique business opportunity for booking sites to differentiate themselves as not only an intuitive booking site, but also a trusted and transparent family travel experience.

Eliminate planning stress for overwhelmed parents

Effortlessly plan and book family travel, ensure a transparent, reliable, and stress-free experience.

Increase the rate of completed family travel bookings

The significant opportunity lies in leveraging existing assets to construct a family-centric frontend that anticipates needs, simplifies complex decisions, and creates a sense of ease and reliability. This requires a strategic shift from a static, solo-travel-focused platform to a fluid, personalized, user-centered travel platform.

A key factor in parents' frustrations comes from the lack of family-centric design. An example of this on the Search Results page is the filter component. The current component is one vertical container housing multiple filter groups with checkboxes, input fields, etc., all of which are non-collapsible. The issue is that parents are required to scroll a significant amount before finding the few filters provided for family travel.

My approach was to empower parents through customization options, which follows Nielsen's principle that users should have control and freedom over their experience. I redesigned the filter feature into a row of chips containing dropdowns. This allowed for more space to implement other features, but also to reduce cognitive load for users.

Ideally, our back-end would adapt to our users' search criteria and reorganize our dropdown options to prioritize the most relevant information for our users.

Our competitive research indicates that top-performing platforms implement a dual-pane interface design, balancing detailed listings with prominent map integration. However, Booking.com currently uses a disconnected user experience, featuring only a small map thumbnail (253x150px) that functions more as a navigation link than an integrated discovery tool. Based on these findings, I designed multiple iterations, including dual-pane interfaces prioritizing a functional map discovery tool, to address this UX gap.

The outcome is an integrated browsing experience that eliminates page transitions, delivering a cohesive dual-pane interface where users can explore properties and their locations simultaneously.

During research, I noted Booking.com's card components were severely inconsistent and often hard to navigate because of a lack of or poorly placed information. To target our user, I decided to highlight key pain points that would cause frustration or confusion, and prioritized these points when redesigning the component.

Understanding that users evaluate properties rapidly, the card redesign emphasizes scannability over detailed content. Enhanced visual elements, including larger images, improved text contrast ratios, and an intuitive 1:2 column structure, allow users to quickly identify relevant properties without cognitive overload.

The result is a family-focused design that aligns with busy parents who value simplicity, but also a site that benefits all other users with improved consistency, intuitive page navigation, and modern industry-standard practices.