How customers interact with and respond to information businesses share has shifted significantly over the past few years. This isn’t showing any sign of slowing down!

As part of ongoing updates to their brand, Inntravel’s marketing team were reconfiguring their customer journey to become more responsive and dynamic. Head of Marketing Sarah Fussey, who I had last worked with at Great Rail Journeys, initially got in touch in summer 2023.

The problem: too much information, too many formats

Central to my initial project with Inntravel was redesigning vast swathes of post-purchase holiday information — hotel contact details, food and drink recommendations, background information on destinations, directions and more — into a more user-friendly format. 

Previously, this was sent to customers in large, 30+ page paper documents, which were replicated in an online portal. This meant that: 

• Inntravel was not using resources optimally – their customer portal contained the same information, in the same format, as paper customer docs 

• Resources were difficult to maintain – pages of recommendations meant that it was hard for the team to keep track of outdated info

• Customers were being provided with redundant information due to lack of previous customisation – for example, directions to hotels they weren’t staying in

• Essential holiday info was buried under redundant or nonessential content

It was important to Inntravel to solve these issues without compromising their position as a trusted expert on their holiday destinations. Any form of reformatted information needed to demonstrate the company’s passion for travel and avoid becoming a soulless, factual rundown of trip specifics. 

The approach: customers are ‘users’ even if they aren’t engaging digitally

We often think about user experience as a uniquely digital concern. However, I think the fundamentals apply to absolutely any information you are providing your customers – a UX-based approach is a useful starting point for both paper and digital experiences. 

As such, my approach centred around a few content design principles: 

• Identifying a purpose for each channel: paper documents should contain trip essentials and a high-level introduction to the trip. Meanwhile, the online portal should expand on this and allow customers to dive deeper into the sights, history and culture of their destination in anticipation of their holiday. 

• Building a clear information hierarchy: ‘must-have’ information like day-to-day itinerary overviews and emergency contacts should be accessible to customers at a glance, especially from paper docs (which Inntravel customers like to take on trips for reference). 

• Ensuring content maintenance is sustainable: Inntravel offers a large number of itineraries, and the team works very hard to make sure all customers receive the best possible information ahead of their trip. To minimise the amount of maintenance needed, I limited recommendations surrounding specific businesses (that could move on or fold) and removed time/date-specific references from supporting content.

The solution: a new framework for destination content

Collaborating with the website team and Inntravel’s in-house designers, I drew up a framework for identifying where particular pieces of information should sit. 

After getting some feedback on this from key internal stakeholders and tweaking a little, I used the framework to redesign Inntravel’s paper customer documents and provide some reformatting suggestions for their online portal. 

The redesigned paper document template: 

• Reduced the number of pages from 30+ to 4-8, depending on the length of itinerary

• Provided a ‘tube map’ day by day view of the holiday for at-a-glance info

• Focused on a couple of high-value recommendations

• Offered space for a 200-400 word introduction to the destination

• Signposted customers to the online portal for more in-depth destination information, in line with Inntravel’s aim to shift to a more digital customer journey over time

I presented my recommendations to senior stakeholders, who were enthusiastic about their potential. Currently, Inntravel is looking at the mechanics of rolling out the content framework and the new customer document template across their business.

Project 2: helping Inntravel’s naturally green credentials shine through

Inntravel’s focus on walking and cycling holidays (plus extensive use of trains and other local public transport options) offers customers a naturally greener way to travel. The marketing team were keen to emphasise this more on the Inntravel website’s sustainability pages.

To help them achieve this, I carried out an extensive piece of competitor analysis based around the content and structure of other travel businesses’ online sustainability information. This proved exceedingly helpful for some key strategy and content decisions Inntravel is set to implement in the near future.

And that’s not all…

I continue to work with Inntravel on a number of new projects — stay tuned for updates!