Project 02 of 09 Previous role Travel · Product · Marketing
A different way to get away
Vista Rooms began as a budget-hotel aggregator. Over my time leading marketing and product, it moved toward something quite different: luxury vacation rentals, planned and booked by the people travelling together.
At a glance
Customer research helped shape the proposition as the business moved toward luxury vacation rentals, while collaborative booking and social discovery connected the planning journey.
- Final role
- VP, Product & Service Experience Strategy
- Remit
- Marketing and product
- Company tenure
- 2015–2018
- Base
- Mumbai, India
Direction
Discover an opportunity before committing to a solution.
At Vista Rooms, I led product and service experience strategy, with marketing and product responsibilities. UX research and discovery helped shape the luxury vacation-rental opportunity and influenced the pivot from budget-hotel aggregation.
My responsibilities grew from product strategy into service experience and, ultimately, a VP role spanning service experience and marketing. The remit expanded well beyond a single product surface.
That is a different design problem from polishing a booking screen. The proposition, the customers it serves and the experience needed to support it must move together. My work connected discovery to the direction of the business.
Booking
Design for a decision shared by several people.
I redesigned group bookings with real-time collaboration, contributing to 38% higher vacation-rental sales. The product work addressed booking as a shared activity rather than treating every visit as one person making an isolated choice.
For a group holiday, the experience has to accommodate a decision that moves between people. Real-time collaboration brought that collective activity into the booking proposition. The sales result reflects the wider business and product effort, to which this work contributed.
- Group booking experience
- Real-time collaboration
- Product direction informed by UX research
Marketing
Connect discovery with a useful next step.
I launched an Instagram booking app and international, multilingual campaigns, improving advertising ROI by 60%. Leading marketing alongside product made the connection between acquisition and booking an explicit part of the remit.
The underlying design question is continuity: does the promise made in a campaign connect to something a traveller can understand and act on? A stronger acquisition experience includes what happens after someone becomes interested.
Design practice
Make customer insight part of everyday prioritisation.
I coached teams in research and design thinking, embedding customer insight into Agile product decisions as the company grew.
Research creates more value when it influences the next decision. In this role, the practice-building work sat beside product and marketing delivery, helping teams keep the customer’s perspective present as priorities evolved.
Reflection
A new proposition needs a connected experience.
The work brought together business direction, collaborative booking, social discovery and team capability. Each is part of the same question: how does a different kind of travel proposition become understandable and usable?
This work reflects the Vista Rooms chapter from 2015 to 2018, as the proposition and the organisation evolved together.
Experience lens
A getaway is a group decision
A simplified way to read a shared holiday booking: from the moment a place catches someone’s eye to the moment a group commits to it together.
Illustrative service blueprint. An original model for exploring the experience across customer, service and operations.
| Discover | Plan together | Book | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Customer What the person does | Spots a place worth sharing | Negotiates with friends or family | Commits to the trip |
| Frontstage What they see and touch | Social discovery | Shared, real-time planning | Booking and confirmation |
| Backstage What makes it work | Listings and availability | One shared booking state | Reservation and stay set-up |
Stage 01 of 03 · The design question
Where are people already finding places to stay?
- Customer Spots a place worth sharing
- Getaways often begin as inspiration: a photo, a recommendation, a place someone saves and sends to friends before anyone has checked a date.
- Frontstage Social discovery
- Meeting people where they already browse, such as Instagram, shortens the distance between “that looks lovely” and a real option the group can consider.
- Backstage Listings and availability
- Inspiration only helps if the place shown is real, described honestly and actually available for the dates people have in mind.
Stage 02 of 03 · The design question
Can the group decide inside the product, not around it?
- Customer Negotiates with friends or family
- People compare options, juggle dates and settle on a place together, usually in a chat thread that has nothing to do with the booking site.
- Frontstage Shared, real-time planning
- Collaborative group booking brings that negotiation into the product, so everyone looks at the same options at the same time.
- Backstage One shared booking state
- Several people acting on one booking need a single, consistent view of the choices, the dates and who has agreed to what.
Stage 03 of 03 · The design question
Does the booking still feel like a decision the group made?
- Customer Commits to the trip
- Someone has to press the button, but the decision belongs to everyone. The moment of booking should reflect that, not hide it.
- Frontstage Booking and confirmation
- A clear confirmation that everyone can see turns a long conversation into a settled plan, and gives the group something to look forward to.
- Backstage Reservation and stay set-up
- Behind the confirmation, the reservation has to be secured and the stay prepared, so the place people chose is the place they arrive at.
Professional work, 2015–2018. Editorial imagery illustrates the proposition.