Tour Companion

Empowering Solo Travellers Through Digital Connection

Role: Lead UX & Product Designer
Context: B2C | Native Mobile | Travel & Hospitality

🧠 The Challenge

Trafalgar, a legacy global tour operator, sought to better serve solo travellers—an audience that frequently cited anxiety and isolation as reasons for not booking tours. Despite high customer satisfaction, user research showed:

  • Solo travellers hesitated to book due to lack of connection before departure

  • Tour experiences felt fragmented without a digital thread before, during, and after travel

  • Travellers wanted easier ways to manage bookings, meet fellow guests, and share memories

⚽ Strategic Goal

Launch a native mobile application that supports travellers throughout their journey while fostering a sense of community—reducing solo traveller friction, increasing bookings, and enhancing brand loyalty.

🎯 Design Objectives

Provide a seamless hub for trip information, social interaction, and real-time communication

Address pre-trip anxiety by allowing early connection between travellers and guides

Align the application experience with Trafalgar’s trusted, high-touch brand experience

Increase solo traveller engagement and rebooking rates

✍🏼 Wireframes

🧭 Approach & Methods

🔍 Research & Strategy

  • Stakeholder and guide interviews to understand on-tour and pre-tour challenges

  • Surveys with past solo travellers to uncover booking hesitation triggers

  • Journey mapping for before, during, and after-trip phases

  • Persona development focused on 50+ solo guests

  • Exploration of digital competitors and tour tech offerings

🔧 Design & Prototyping

  • Wireframes for trip dashboard, chat, digital ticketing, and diary features

  • Design sprints focused on onboarding, group chat, and memory capture

  • User testing to validate social features and privacy expectations

  • Tech scoping with engineering to plan itinerary sync, digital wallet integration, and chat architecture

  • Accessibility and OS-specific design considerations for iOS and Android

📤 Takeaways

  • Explore single sign-on to simplify ticket and booking access.

  • Confirm if tour guides can join chats pre-trip, and how often they can engage.

  • Check if itinerary data can update in real time.

  • Enhance chat to support multiple threads and group-specific conversations.

  • Give users more control over what they share from their travel diary.

🎨 Final Design

✨ Key Design Solutions

Solution

Area

Impact

Personal dashboard with tickets, itineraries, & reminders

Trip Management

↑ Booking confidence and app stickiness

Pre-tour group chat & real-time messaging on tour

Group Interaction

↑ Engagement among solo travellers

Personal diary with selective sharing controls

Memory Sharing

↑ Brand affinity and guest storytelling

Optional guide Q&A before departure

Tour Guide Access

↓ Pre-trip anxiety

Tickets easily added to mobile wallets

Digital Wallet

↑ Adoption across 50+ traveller segment

📈 Outcomes &
Business Impact

Metric

Result

📲 Solo traveller booking rate

↑ Significant year-on-year

💬 Group chat engagement

↑ Strong repeat use on-tour

🎫 Digital ticket adoption

↑ Used by >80% of app users

💡 Brand favourability (50+)

↑ Noted in post-trip surveys

🔁 Repeat booking consideration

↑ Increased among app users

🔄 What I Learned

🛬 Before Launch

  • Many solo travellers wanted early access to connect with guides and peers

  • Privacy around diary entries and group chat needed careful control

  • Itinerary data needed to be confirmed as live to ensure trust and relevance

🚀 After Launch

  • Group chat quickly became the most used feature

  • Diary sharing improved emotional connection, especially post-trip

  • Digital wallet access significantly reduced customer service requests

  • Users wanted a richer chat experience, including tour-specific threads

  • Travellers preferred opt-in, granular control for memory sharing

🧠 Strategic Takeaway

Designing for connection is as critical as designing for function—especially in travel. Solo travellers aren't just booking trips, they're seeking belonging. Future enhancements could include:

  • An AI-powered diary assistant to auto-generate entries from trip photos and movement, enriched with local facts and historical context

  • Smart recommendations to continue the user’s travel journey post-tour, encouraging rebooking