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Case Study

From ticket to trip: How Traveling.com grew accommodation into a double-digit share of total revenue

Goals

  • Traveling.com had built a platform for booking transportation, but travelers who booked a ticket still had to go elsewhere to book their accommodation. The team wanted to offer accommodation inside their own booking flow, so they could extend the traveler journey they were already part of and earn more from traffic they already had.

Results

  • Search Bar Integration grew to be a double-digit share of their total revenue.
  • Travelers booking transportation were ready to book their stay as the natural next step.
  • For people who saw accommodation options surfaced, there was an increase in transportation ticket sales.

"We've always seen transportation as one part of the travel experience. Accommodation was the natural next step. If you want to create the best experience for travelers, you need to help them complete their journey, not just get them to their destination."

Michael Cvitkovic
VP of Product at Travelier Group

Mapping a Better Journey

Traveling.com

Beyond Transportation

For years, Traveling.com focused on helping travelers book the way to their destination.

What started as a bus booking platform expanded into ferries and trains, always chasing the same goal: the best possible experience for travelers. 

But transportation is only one part of a trip. 

A traveler searches for a bus from Lisbon to Porto. They book the ticket. And then they go somewhere else to find a place to stay. The revenue from that booking is never captured.

The Traveling.com team focused on how they could help travelers plan more of their journey while creating more value for the business. 

Finding the right fit

The team experimented with surfacing accommodation through a white-label product and Stay22 maps on their search results pages. The travelers who clicked converted well. The problem was that not many people clicked.

 

When they tested the Search Bar integration, it delivered 8000% more value than the previous map placements. 

 

Traveling.com wanted to extend the traveler journey beyond transportation. After experimenting with several approaches, the team found that the Search Bar Integration was the solution that fit most naturally into the existing booking experience.

 

Michael says: "The implementation was incredibly simple. Once we decided to move forward, it was essentially a checkbox, a link, and a redirect."

 

"The implementation was incredibly simple. Once we decided to move forward, it was essentially a checkbox, a link, and a redirect."

Michael Cvitkovic
VP of Product at Travelier Group

Prove it or kill it

The Traveling.com team ran a two-week A/B test. Half of users saw the accommodation options powered behind the scenes by Stay22. The other half went through the standard booking flow without any accommodation opportunities being surfaced.

 

The goal was clear: integrating Stay22 had to create value without hurting the core transportation business.

 

Untitled design (26)

The results

The demand for accommodation validated that travelers booking transportation were ready to book their stay as the natural next step.

 

The data also pointed out that for people who saw accommodation options surfaced, there was an increase in transportation ticket sales.

From one platform to the whole portfolio

What started as an experiment soon became something bigger. The results gave Michael a data-backed case, and he brought it directly to product managers across the rest of the Travelier Group.

"It wasn't a matter of selling. It was: we've seen the share of revenue this is driving and you really should try it."

Michael Cvitkovic
VP of Product at Travelier Group

Closing the Loop on the Traveler Journey

Traveling.com didn't build a new product, redesign their booking flow, or hire a team to manage hotel inventory.

They added a second revenue stream to the traffic they already had by helping their users to find somewhere to stay.

In a year, the Search Bar Integration grew to be double-digit share of their total revenue.

 

Michael also described how Traveling.com worked with the Stay22 team:

 

“It wasn't just shipping a feature and moving on. The team stayed close and made sure it actually worked the way it needed to for our customers.”


 

 

"It wasn't just shipping a feature and moving on. The team stayed close and made sure it actually worked the way it needed to for our customers."

Michael Cvitkovic
VP of Product at Travelier Group

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