Turning Tauck's luxury travel browsers into bookers

Synthesizing Existing Research

I started by reviewing third-party customer research to learn about Tauck's audience. Then I led stakeholder interviews to close gaps. Two user segments emerged: a loyal, older, less digitally fluent group and a younger, high-net-worth cohort expecting a seamless digital experience. Both segments had strategic value and needed design solutions to serve them without alienating either.

Competitive Research

I led a competitive analysis, benchmarking leading hotels and travel brands on search and discovery. I cross-referenced findings with stakeholder pain points for sharper focus. The research was translated into user stories to align the team with a prioritized, defensible scope.

I developed wireframe concepts for search and product page considerations. Each showed critical interaction decisions, helping stakeholders and engineers understand user movement. Presenting multiple approaches encouraged informed decisions and accelerated alignment.

This phase served as a pressure test of the design strategy, allowing the team to discuss ambiguities and identify technical constraints before high-fidelity work began.

Homepage

• ‍Before: The search experience created immediate friction. A disorienting upward animation, disappearing search terms, and a predictive autocomplete that buried the primary CTA below the fold left users assuming there were no further results.‍
• After: I eliminated the animation and live search component, repositioned the CTA for immediate visibility, and realigned the interaction model with user expectations: search by destination, travel type, and departure date.

Search Results & Filters

• ‍Before: Filters hidden behind a fly-out menu forced users to work against the interface. The inability to combine filters within a category compounded the friction, and poor color contrast introduced critical legibility failures.
• After: I used behavioral analytics to justify surfacing primary filters inline on the search results page, moving low-use filters to the fly-out, and removing disabled filters from view entirely.

• ‍Before: A rigid itinerary layout forced users through a limited viewing sequence, making it difficult to navigate the trip schedule and map on their own terms.‍
• After: I redesigned the itinerary experience to give travelers full autonomy — free scrolling through the schedule and a toggle between map and list views put users in control of how they explored the journey.

• ‍Before: "Hotel Highlights" was a misnomer that misrepresented a diverse stay experience spanning hotels, boats, and multi-option accommodations, with no chronological context to orient the traveler.‍
• After: I renamed the section "Overnight Accommodations" and restructured the layout to sequence stays chronologically against the trip itinerary. Visual treatments including ribbons and labels were introduced to clarify upgrade paths and extended stay options.