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Skyscanner 2025: Experience Strategy

The world is noisier than ever. Trust and loyalty are harder and harder to build. Online travel is a sea of sameness and is a race to the bottom of me-too features, clichéd messages, and soulless homogeny. Skyscanner's once-innovative offering is now industry table stakes. We set out on a 6 month journey to redefine our product strategy for the next 3-5 years and to uncover the real market challenges that were getting in the way. This is what a small team of 8 accomplished.

Role

Senior Design Manager

Year

2021

Team

Daniel Gost  |  Ellie Pujol  |  Josh Payton  |  Nikki Godly 

Andre LeMausier  |  James Wesson  |  Gavin O'Carroll

In the midst of the pandemic, we embarked on a journey to re-define the future of Skyscanner.

 

This project centred around defining not only product strategy, but the overall Experience Strategy for the next 3 - 5 year time horizon.

 

Here's what we learned...

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01

The Real Market Challenge

A race to the bottom of me-too features, clichéd messages, and soulless homogeny. Online travel is a sea of sameness.

Our once-innovative offering is now industry table stakes. 
 

02

The Unmet User Need

Travel anxiety is higher than ever and not going anywhere soon. The unmet needs of bookers are tied up with other people.

 

We need to reduce travel anxiety in a two-pronged approach.
Acute: around safety and security. Chronic: around coordination and planning.

03

True Brand Capability

Think about where Skyscanner came from. It wasn’t founded out of some grand romantic passion for changing the world for the better through travel. It was a bunch of friends trying to navigate the irritating intricacies of booking a group ski trip.

We need to make people feel smart.

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Global pandemic or not, travel planning involves lots of effort, coordination, and decision making. ​

 

And people hate that.

During research we discovered our Travellers two sources of anxiety when booking travel: 

 

Acute: COVID-19​

  • High anxiety levels around travel are not going anywhere soon​.

  • Effects will last beyond the timeframe of travel restrictions.​

Chronic: Coordination

  • ​The unmet needs of bookers are tied up with other people.​ Other people are a key park of how most people plan and take trips.

  • Even pure solo travellers often have friends they are meeting at the other end, hosts to connect with, and loved ones wondering where they are and how they are doing.

  • Key amongst these are desire and expectation for booking flexibility and cancelation coverage (to meet financial threshold of comfort) and safety (to meet health threshold of comfort).​

81%

Of adults travelled with other people in the years 2013 - 2018​

15%

Of adults were pure solo travellers.

The solution

Insider intelligence across the entire traveller journey.

The process

Bringing it to life

By focusing on our travellers relationship with travel, we have specific pain points we can tackle.

We are designing for:

  • Main: Bookers & Travel Providers

  • Secondary: Advisors, Planners, Approvers, Travellers, Co-Travellers, Dependent Travellers, Traveller Trackers (those left at home), Travel Providers

Our traveller's main JTBD:

  • Organising time & space

  • Building a mental model

  • Evaluating related, but disconnected options

  • Time boxing & day parting

  • Assessing distance & proximity

  • Coordinating with others

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Opportunity

Solving the "where to stay"

problem

“Explore Everywhere” has long been one of our biggest strengths in flights search, allowing users to discover great deals and destinations.

We can dial this destination discovery up and extend it into a wider variety of locations: neighbourhoods, boroughs, regions, environments, attributes, ambiance, and more. 

 

One of the biggest barriers to planning is understanding how cities are laid out, which areas are most appealing, and how to prioritise things you want to see and do whilst there.

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Opportunity
Affiliate E-Commerce

Link off to partner e-commerce for:
 

  • Books and travel guides relevant to the location

  • Music, playlists and other media about the location

  • Power supplies, plug converters, and useful personal effects

  • Luggage, DOP kits, and useful packing accessories

  • Currency exchange

  • Sun cream, bug spray, travel shampoo and toothpaste

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Opportunity
Anticipatory Design

One of the biggest benefits of having an insider with you is that they can clue you in about your unknown unknowns. 

 

When itineraries have common gaps (between arrival and check-in, during layovers, etc.) we can suggest nearby activities and points of interest timeboxed to minimise waiting around and maximise adventure.

 

We could also let you know when there are security risks you might not be aware of. Tourists are easy prey for pickpockets and scams. It’s also easy to stray into areas you probably shouldn’t in cities you’re not familiar with. Nobody wants to get robbed on holiday. 

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Opportunity
Disruptions

Travel disruptions are an inevitable problem all travellers will encounter at some point. But we can turn these unfortunate events to our advantage, using them as an opportunity to build brand loyalty and trust…

 

And yes, to sell stuff along the way as well. 

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Opportunity
Actionable Advertising

Travel is all about exploring the real world, and Skyscanner should be there to encourage that.

 

While most travel brands are busy making trite TV campaigns and regurgitating tired platitudes, we take a different approach. By focusing on integrating marketing touch points directly into the product, we use everything from out-of-home to online ad-retargeting to drive engagement directly. 

Imagine this: an interactive ad in the tube for Skyscanner's 'Best Time to Book' campaign. Using the Skyscanner app, which uses image recognition it routes travellers to a personalised integrated campaign page.

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Opportunity
Group Planning

Creating simple tools for making collaborative lists, adding notes, and making related but independent booking commitments visible to multiple users is a great way for us to get Bookers to recruit and onboard multiple additional users to our app.

As the family books their travel, they share their itineraries which link together so everyone can see one other's plans. Linked itineraries help the family seamlessly plan the things they’ll do as a group, and the things they’ll do on their own. They can all see one list, which will build up with unique recommendations for each of them.

Conclusion
Insider Intelligence across the entire traveller journey

We were able to take our entire product organisation on a transformative journey, getting the C-Suite to sign off on a new strategy that focused on a clear, succinct vision and not low hanging fruit or incremental changes. 

Skyscanner will be driving to create travel features that our travellers need, such as best-in-class selection, pries and recommendations from partners you can trust. We'll build into the UX transparency, flexibility and convenience to create peace of mind and confidence when booking travel. The future will see us rolling our collaborative itineraries across platforms, making planning, sharing and booking easy. Something that no other travel meta-search is currently doing. 

We are providing a smart, seamless and anticipatory service across the travel moments that really matter and build brand loyalty.