Increasing the User Experience Research Maturity of a Middle East Online Travel Agency.

Over the last decade, the Middle East has experienced remarkable developments in the travel and tourism industry. Travel bookings in Saudi Arabia is considered the largest in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) worth more than $25 billion each year. The modern traveler expects the travel experience to be seamless, personalised and affordable. Satisfying the customer has become critical for any business wanting to retain and grow its customer base in the social media age. Customer-centric design is the process of building your product or service based on the wants, needs and challenges of your customers. Customer-centricity is more important than ever before. Being truly customer-centric, however, requires active means of listening to customers through User Experience (UX) research methods such as usability testing, surveys and customer interviews. This study focused on qualitative UX research conducted in the travel industry in the Middle East. The goal of the study was to start a process of UX research for the online travel agency to increase the organisation’s level of UX research maturity. A Middle East online travel agency (OTA) with two brands served as the case study. Brand 1 focused on the United Arab Emirates (UAE) market, while Brand 2 focused on the Saudi-Arabian market. The UX research was conducted with Arabic and English speaking participants in Dubai and Riyadh. The research consisted of nine rounds, using methods suchs as one-on-one interviews and usability testing. The UX research assisted in gathering usability insights, abandonment points and insights into customer behaviour. Staff members in the organisation’s Product and UX teams were interviewed to rate the UX maturity within the organisation before and after this study. This paper highlights the results achieved in increasing the UX research maturity within the organisation, with an increase in alignment between teams, more focus on problem statements and identifying solutions that will impact the customer and improved outcomes. The study resulted in UX research being adopted as a way of working in the Fligths and Hotels digital channels of the OTA and the need to adopt this way of working in other teams in the organisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]