Product Ideas · Hotels
Hotel booking apps: three features frequent travellers need
Hotel apps are very good at selling you a room. They are much less good at everything that happens after you have bought one.
The problem
Booking is where the money is, so booking is where the design effort goes: search, filters, photos, prices, checkout. Once the confirmation arrives, the app has done its job — and the questions a traveller actually has are left to an email, a PDF, or the front desk.
For someone who stays in hotels a few nights a month, those questions come up every single trip. They are small, they are predictable, and the app already holds every answer.
Three missing features
- What have I booked? — One screen, opened in a second, that answers the questions people ask at reception: which dates, what room, whether breakfast is included, when check-in opens, whether it is paid or pay at the hotel, and the last moment to cancel for free. Frequent travellers book different rates in different hotels, and can't remember which included what. "Do I get breakfast?" shouldn't mean digging through an email or queuing at the desk to ask.
- Getting there — The hotel's address at the top of the booking, not buried under the upsells, with one tap into Apple Maps, Google Maps or Citymapper for directions — pinned to the actual entrance, with the arrival notes that matter: parking, the door to use after midnight, how to find a hotel set back from the street. The app sold the room and then leaves you to find it. The moment a guest most needs it is standing outside a station in an unfamiliar city, often with a weak signal.
- Remember my filters — Keep the filters a traveller uses every time — free cancellation, breakfast included, within walking distance of where they need to be, their loyalty brand, a price ceiling — and apply them on the next search, on any device. Separate work and leisure sets for the people who need both. Frequent travellers search the same way every time, and every time they set the same five filters again. Remembering them is the cheapest loyalty feature there is.
How we'd build it
The answers live on the phone
The booking is cached on the device the moment it is confirmed, so the summary and the address open with no signal. A Wallet pass or home-screen widget puts "breakfast: included" one glance away, without opening the app at all.
Structured data, not a PDF
The rate plan already says whether breakfast is included and when free cancellation ends. We surface those fields directly rather than rendering a confirmation document and hoping the guest reads it.
Hand off to the maps people use
Deep links to the traveller's own maps app, with coordinates for the entrance rather than the postcode centre. No need to build navigation; the job is getting the right destination into the right app.
Filters saved to the account
Preferences stored against the traveller and synced, always visible and easy to clear, so a remembered filter never silently hides a better room.
Product Ideas pages describe what we think a category of product is missing and how we'd approach it. They're ideas, not a review of any one company's app. Also see: cruise line apps.
Questions people ask
How do I know if my hotel booking includes breakfast?
Look for the rate name on the confirmation — "bed and breakfast" or "breakfast included" against "room only". The booking system always knows; the problem is that most apps don't show it on the booking itself, so it ends up in an email you have to find. A good hotel app puts it on the first screen of the booking, and keeps it there with no signal.
What should a hotel app show after I have booked?
The things you will need on the day: the dates, the room, what the rate includes, check-in time, whether you have paid or will pay at the hotel, the free-cancellation deadline, and the address with directions. All of it should open instantly and work offline.
How do I get directions to my hotel from the app?
In most apps the address is several taps deep, below the upsells. It should be at the top of the booking, with one tap into your own maps app — Apple Maps, Google Maps or Citymapper — pinned to the entrance rather than the postcode centre.
Why do hotel apps make me set the same filters every time?
Because search is usually built for a first-time visitor, not a regular one. Remembering a traveller's filters — free cancellation, breakfast, distance, price, loyalty brand — is simple to build and saves frequent travellers the same five taps on every search.
Run a hotel or booking app?
Tell us what your guests ask the front desk that your app should already have answered.
support@powerslave.devOr see what to put in the first email.