UPSELL

Overview

The Upsell division at Hyatt focused on helping guests discover and purchase pre-stay add-ons and room upgrades tied to existing reservations across select properties worldwide.

The experience began in email, where guests were presented with personalized offers that they could choose to add to their stay. We used Movable Ink so the services shown to the guest could be generated at the moment the email was opened, allowing offers to reflect what a property actually had available rather than showing static promotions that may no longer be relevant.

This project was not only about increasing conversion through a guest-facing upsell flow. It also addressed an operational challenge behind the scenes. Before this experience was streamlined, awareness of available services was inconsistent for guests, and communicating, tracking, and managing service requests was not ideal for hotel teams. The solution needed to work for both sides, helping guests discover relevant add-ons while ensuring those selections could be surfaced clearly in the backend so front desk staff could easily pull up the information on arrival.

A major challenge was introducing upsell opportunities without disrupting the core hotel booking and checkout process. Any friction in that journey could create a cascading impact on conversion and guest trust. The experience therefore had to feel lightweight, intuitive, and well-timed while still creating meaningful business value.

Because this work supported a large global hospitality ecosystem, even small improvements in clarity, inventory awareness, and flow design had meaningful business and operational implications.

Hi-Fi Mockup Video of the Sketch Prototype used for UserTesting via Invision Prototyping.

Goals for This Project

The goal of this project was to improve the user experience for discovering and purchasing add-ons and room upgrades while also supporting the hotel teams responsible for fulfilling those selections.

Designs needed to adhere to ADA and accessibility standards while providing the shortest, most intuitive path from viewing an email to completing a purchase. At the same time, the experience had to avoid introducing unnecessary friction into the booking and checkout process, where even minor interruptions could negatively affect the broader reservation journey.

Another key goal was to make the upsell system operationally realistic. Some offers, such as premium services or limited inventory experiences, could not simply be promoted to every guest at scale without creating fulfillment issues for the property. The solution needed to present relevant, available services without overwhelming hotel staff or creating mismatched guest expectations.

User testing revealed inconsistencies in the live experience that negatively impacted the guest flow. A key objective was to address these issues, improve how users moved through the experience end to end, and ensure guest selections were seamlessly integrated into Hyatt’s backend systems for staff visibility and follow-through.

The Problem

There were two connected problems to solve. The first was on the guest side. The existing experience introduced friction at a key moment in the flow, making it harder for users to understand what had been added, continue browsing, and move forward with confidence.

The second was operational. Before the experience was improved, service requests and add-ons were not always communicated or managed in an ideal way for hotel teams. Guest awareness of available services was inconsistent, and the backend experience needed to better support how those requests would be viewed and acted on at arrival.

This meant the challenge was not simply to design an upsell page. It was to design a service experience that balanced guest choice, business value, operational feasibility, and the sensitivity of the booking and checkout journey.

Research & Strategy

I worked closely with marketing, finance leadership, and cross-functional stakeholders to help define the opportunity and shape a solution that would improve the guest experience without creating downstream issues for hotel operations. This meant aligning around business goals, revenue opportunities, merchandising considerations, and the operational realities hotels would face if the experience introduced services that were difficult to fulfill. Because the work touched both guest-facing and operational systems, the solution needed to improve the booking journey while still remaining practical for properties to support at scale.

We reviewed existing friction points in the live experience, explored alternative approaches for cart behavior and notifications, and used a mix of moderated and unmoderated research to understand how guests naturally interacted with the flow. I conducted unmoderated usability testing with global users through UserResearch.com to evaluate how the experience performed across international markets, with a focus on consistency, accessibility, and whether users could move through the flow clearly and confidently. These sessions also included qualitative follow-up questions that helped uncover user expectations, decision-making patterns, and areas where the experience felt unclear or too aggressive. I also conducted moderated usability testing with local users, which allowed for deeper observation, direct probing, and a better understanding of where guests hesitated, how they interpreted prompts, and what made the flow feel more or less intuitive. One important insight was that users preferred to remain in control of when they moved forward rather than being pushed too quickly through the experience.

Strategy also extended beyond the interface itself. Because some services had limited inventory, the merchandising model needed to be inventory-aware. We needed to make sure the offers being shown were not only appealing from a marketing standpoint, but also timely, relevant, and realistically aligned with what a hotel actually had available. Using Movable Ink allowed offers to be generated at email open, helping ensure that the services shown were more current and better matched to property-level availability. This helped support a better guest experience while also reducing the risk of downstream operational issues caused by outdated or unavailable offers.

Design Direction

The design direction focused on reducing interruption while improving clarity. I explored ways to make notifications less disruptive, give users more control over progression, and create a more intuitive path from selecting an offer to reviewing it in cart.

The experience also needed to connect seamlessly into Hyatt’s backend systems so that selections made by guests could be surfaced clearly for front desk teams. This was an important part of the solution because the value of upsell depends not just on purchase, but on successful fulfillment once the guest arrives.

By addressing both the guest-facing flow and the backend visibility of service requests, the solution created a more complete and scalable upsell experience across Hyatt’s ecosystem.

Impact

• Drove a 25% increase in upsell revenue in the quarter following implementation by simplifying the guest journey from email to purchase.
• Improved clarity and discoverability of upsell offers by creating a more intuitive path for guests to browse and select add-ons and room upgrades.
• Reduced friction in the upsell journey by rethinking how notifications, cart behavior, and progression points appeared within the flow.
• Helped connect the guest-facing experience with backend operations so service selections could be surfaced more clearly for front desk staff at check-in.
• Supported more operationally realistic merchandising by aligning guest-facing offers with live property availability and limited inventory.
• Strengthened accessibility compliance through ADA-aligned interaction and visual design standards.
• Established a more scalable upsell framework that could support both business growth and more consistent guest experiences across properties.

My Role

As the Product Designer leading this project, I was responsible for shaping a solution that worked across guest experience, business goals, and hotel operations. I partnered with stakeholders across marketing, finance leadership, and other cross-functional teams to define the opportunity, identify points of friction, and design an upsell experience that could improve conversion without interrupting the core booking journey.

My role also involved ensuring that the experience was not treated as only a front-end marketing surface. I helped define how the solution would connect into Hyatt’s broader ecosystem so guest selections could be captured, managed, and surfaced in the backend in a way that was useful for hotel teams on arrival.

Responsibilities Included

• Collaborated with subject matter experts, marketing partners, finance leadership, and other stakeholders to align on business goals, user needs, and operational constraints.
• Defined requirements from both the guest and hotel staff perspective to ensure the experience created value across the full service journey.
• Helped shape an inventory-aware upsell approach so limited services were promoted more responsibly and realistically.
• Conceptualized and documented end-to-end user flows from email open through offer selection, cart behavior, and backend visibility.
• Created low-, mid-, and high-fidelity mockups for core pages and interaction states.
• Conducted remote and in-person user testing to validate clarity, usability, and guest behavior throughout the flow.
• Identified friction in the live experience and translated those findings into more intuitive design solutions.
• Established KPIs to measure success and guide iteration across engagement, conversion, and abandonment.
• Supported A/B testing across design concepts to ensure project goals were met.
• Ensured designs were responsive, accessible, and scalable across a wide range of screen sizes and property contexts.
• Worked within Hyatt’s existing ecosystem to help integrate the solution into backend workflows so front desk teams could access guest selections more seamlessly.

Tools

Design Tools

Sketch, Zeplin, InVision, Axure RP, Balsamiq, Mural, UserTesting.com, Adobe Analytics, FullStory

Backend Knowledge

Bootstrap, Hyatt’s design system, Hyatt’s backend systems for upselling, Movable Ink

Communication

Slack, RingCentral