A luxury travel app for the whole trip

The challenge

Updates arrived by email, WhatsApp and phone calls, so the app never felt like the natural place to go. Making the app more helpful seemed like the obvious answer, but when we heard back from the trip planners themselves, they were clear that more customer questions would only add to their workload. Their time is best spent planning and booking trips, not answering everyday queries. We also needed to find where the gaps were, and how the app could fill them in a way that made sense.

That changed the brief. Any idea had to protect the trip planners’ time without losing the human touch that set the company apart.

Initial questions

• Where are the gaps in the journey?
• How can the app answer everyday questions, without adding to the trip planners’ workload?
• How might we turn the end of one trip into the start of the next?

The process

Mapping the journey

With no personas to work from, we created an assumption-based persona from research into the company and its market. I used the persona to map the customer journey end to end, from looking for trip inspiration to arriving home. Laying it all out confirmed what we suspected: the app played only a tiny part in a much bigger journey.

Finding the gaps

The app was only useful after the customer had booked a trip through the company, where they could see upcoming trips and payments made. Even then, the customer could get this information through the original channels like email and WhatsApp anyway, so the app actually had nothing new to say.

I leaned on the journey map and the trip planners’ insight. The quiet periods looked likely to be when customers had the most questions: best places to eat, what to do, what to pack, whether to extend their stay, all bespoke to their interests and needs. Most of these questions were also the ones that trip planners had the least time for.

A journey, not a booking

The biggest shift was treating the journey as a loop rather than a straight line. For a luxury brand that relies on repeat customers, the end of one trip is the best moment to start thinking about the next.

A change of direction

The first round of concepts was deliberately grounded in reality, designed around what the app and the company could realistically support. Then the client changed their mind. Rather than a realistic app, they wanted a dream vision of it, with no restrictions, that they could pitch to their senior leadership team.

That meant plenty of work had to be undone. We stepped back and rethought the concepts from scratch, carrying over what we could, especially what we’d learned about the customer journey and the trip planners’ time, and pushing every idea much further.

An ideas board for every stage

With the new brief, another designer and I worked on an ideas board laid out along the customer journey. For each stage, from inspiration to coming home, we mapped out every idea, however ambitious.

We then narrowed them down, testing each idea against three questions: would it help customers, would it save trip planners time, and does it feel right for a luxury brand? Only the ideas that passed all three made it through to review with the product owner. These then became the core ideas to work from.

The concept

With the shortlist in place, we had a much clearer picture of how the app could be useful across the whole journey. The concepts were designed around each stage of the loop, so there was always a reason to open it.

The headline idea: an assistant that hands over to a human

Planning a trip with a real expert was the company’s biggest selling point, so the AI couldn’t replace that. This was the trickiest balance: it had to inspire customers and capture what they wanted, while leaving the detail and expertise to the trip planner.

New customers can chat with an AI assistant that learns their interests as they talk, gradually shaping a draft of their dream trip. Once the idea takes shape, the AI hands it over to a real trip planner, who receives the draft before ever speaking to the customer. That replaces a long onboarding call with a head start.

The same assistant runs through every stage for everyday questions, like what to pack or where to eat. It’s designed to sound like the company’s own experts, calm and knowledgeable, and is always clearly labelled as AI. If a customer wants to add something to their trip, like an excursion or a few extra nights, it passes them to a trip planner with a short summary, so planners spend their time on the conversations where their expertise is most valuable.

Before you fly and while you’re away

Once booked, the app becomes the place to look forward to the trip, with itinerary previews, stored documents, local insights bespoke to them, and everything they need to prepare, all in one place instead of scattered across different channels.

During the trip, it becomes a companion with the day at a glance, live updates, emergency contacts, travel information and local recommendations, so customers have help to hand without needing to call their trip planner.

Back home, the loop closes

Once they’re home, a Spotify Wrapped-style recap lets customers relive their holiday. While the memories are still fresh, the app suggests ideas for their next trip, shaped by where they’ve been and what they enjoyed, giving returning customers a reason to open it before any booking exists.

Challenges and compromises

As pitch work, the timeline was short, so I had to be selective and work from assumptions. The change of direction made it tighter still: with a good chunk of the grounded work undone, we had to redesign quickly, choosing polished, high-fidelity concepts over edge cases and technical realities, because the client needed to see the vision.

Looking back

Ten high-fidelity app concepts were presented as part of the pitch, but the client chose another agency.

If I did it again, I’d push to speak to a handful of customers early, to test the assumptions behind the persona before building on them. I’d also keep some of the grounded thinking alongside the dream version, so the client could see both the vision and a realistic first step.

The biggest lesson was where the strongest ideas came from: looking beyond the app itself, at the months before a trip and the weeks after.