Traveloka International Train Booking Platform
Organization: Traveloka (2019 - 2020)
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As a product design lead, I held the following responsibilities:
• Liaised with the VP of Product on product direction, timeline, and scope.
• Managed interaction designer, UI designer, and product copywriter for the team
• Planned and scoped UX research
• Planned and scoped product design effort
• Provided design strategy and helped shape the vision of the product
• Monitored and reviewed the progress of the design team
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Abraham Soedjito (VP of Product), Reza Arkan Partadiredja (UI Designer), Henny Rattam (Interaction Designer), Jacqueline Elizabeth (Product Copywriter)
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Traveloka is the leading Online Travel Agent (OTA) in Southeast Asia with top market positions in Indonesia, Thailand, and Vietnam. The company pivoted to be a Lifestyle Platform in 2019, where it strives to provide a comprehensive set of services to further enrich travelers’ experience beyond Flights and Hotels.
https://www.traveloka.com/en-id/
Problem Overview
In 2019, Traveloka was already the market-leading OTA (Online Travel Agent) in Southeast Asia. To expand, the company pivoted to be a lifestyle platform. The direction was to extend our ecosystem use cases from transportation and accommodation (the company's main offerings) into the in-destination experience before going further into general lifestyle use cases.
Among the projects during the early days of the pivot is the International Train Booking Platform, where travelers can book train tickets to travel between cities in foreign destinations. The project is intended to fill the last-mile transportation and in-destination experience gap in our product portfolio.
Solution
The biggest challenge we face in this project is our customers' (Indonesian travelers) unfamiliarity with the concept of international train travel. For instance, in Japan, the percentage of Indonesian travelers who purchase the Japan Rail Pass (JR Pass) is considerably lower than travelers from other regions.
Through the qualitative research I spearheaded, we learned that our Indonesian travelers could not see the value that they get from buying an international train ticket such as JR Pass. Therefore, approaching the design of an international train booking platform with a practical mindset, where we list the destinations and prices, might not give us the traction that we wanted.
Fortunately, we learned through our research that international travelers have the motivation to maximize their experience. One of the ways is to visit as many destinations as possible, a desire that can be helped by in-destination train.
Considering that insight, designing an international train booking platform is less about selling the service of the train but more about selling the experience in the destination. This implication of this direction is the use of an illustrative approach in our design. In our first release, we used destination imagery that captures the scenery and activities in the destination to instill the sense that the train is not mere transportation but a service that they can use to maximize their travel experience in foreign destinations.
In the long run, we envisioned having a content-centric travel planning tool that lets travelers plan their activities in the destination first and later advertise relevant products to their plan.
Impact
The business grew and became number 1 in sales in Indonesia and number 2 in Southeast Asia within 6 months after release.
Links
https://www.traveloka.com/en-id/train/japan.jp