GetMyBoat is a marketplace for boat rentals. Most of the time platform existed it used the following model for bookings: the renter sends an inquiry → the owner provides an offer → the renter books it. Observations of user behavior and feedback from users made us realize that we need to rethink the booking process by adding an alternative way of making reservations.
Company: GetMyBoat - the biggest marketplace for boat rentals.
My role: leading the project with the team of two designers. Duration: 4 months. Platforms: web, iOS, Android.
Examining our reports we realized that last-minute bookings made up a very considerable chunk of all the bookings that we received. Around 35% of all bookings, renters made on the day of the trip or 1 day before the trip.
With the current booking model (the renter needs to send an inquiry and wait for an offer, and the owner sends an offer and waits for booking) we were missing up to 15% of bookings due to delayed replies.
In addition, owners were overwhelmed by submitting offers (only around 4% of all offers are booked). Some owners refused to work with GMB because of the way booking worked. We were missing an opportunity to grow the number of boat owners.
“Delayed replies from owners resulted in up to 15% of missed reservations.”
To get a deeper understanding of how owners work with the booking modal we run interviews, a thematic analysis of the platform reviews, and examined offers to look for common patterns.
Here are some key findings that we discovered:
Adding a new, instant way of booking trip was going to affect most of the existing sections of the website and the apps. Our plan was to start with the owner's side of a new booking model. Develop it in detail while forming a general understanding of the renter's side. Ship the owner's side of the project for beta testing and work on the feedback, while finishing the renter's side of the new booking model.
Project timeline.
Instabook Calendar Tab
Instabook offers will be available for all renters and can be booked at any moment. To make sure owners won’t get overbooked we decided to combine instabook with an existing calendar and adjust the mechanisms that we have in place to prevent double-bookings.
The concept of instant booking is pretty widely used on many platforms. But the boating services are absolutely unique in the sense that booking of private charters involves more details and flexibility than, for example, excursions or hotel services (or any other services offering instant booking).
Our initial thought was to concentrate on the owners who contribute the most to the GMB business. A group of owners in Miami (bigger owners or brokers, who make several trips per day and use flexible pricing models). However, the more we spent time ideating and brainstorming with the team, the more clearly we saw that we hit the dead end.
“Charter prices can depend on multiple factors: the day of the week, time of the day, holidays, demand in general, itinerary, add-ons, crew, fuel, etc.”
There was no way to build an instabook feature that will satisfy the needs of these bigger owners and launch before summer. After many days of working in this direction, we saw that we went in the wrong direction and lost a lot of time. It was frustrating. But we needed to move forward…
We lost a lot of time and realized that to complete this project by the summer we really need to concentrate on essentials.
We looked at the most simple examples of trip pricing and trip schedule. Based on the core needs we defined the functionality:
With this simplified version of the instabook feature, we looked at the different owners and found a group that can adopt it. Boat owners who work on lakes usually have a smaller fleet, simpler pricing, and often do only one trip per day.
Small boat owner persona.
The team kept on running into questions about implementation and how instabook fits with existing functionality (calendar, booking settings, listing editor).
To better align the team’s vision I collected all the scenarios of instabook trips and made a model. After that, we had a brainstorming session and discussed in detail the use cases and the best way to handle them to make sure:• Instabook is easy to learn for new users,• Instabook fits easily with the mental models of the existing owners.
4 hours- CAD$ 250
9:00am 9:30am 10:00am 10:30am
Captain Provided
Owner preview of the instabook option.
4 hours- CAD$ 250
9:00am 9:30am 10:00am 10:30am
Captain Provided
Departure time is in less than 24 hours
Not Bookable
Owner preview of the instabook option.
4 hours- CAD$ 250
9:00am 9:30am 10:00am 10:30am
Captain Provided
The date is unavailable
Not Bookable
Owner preview of the instabook option.
4 hours- CAD$ 250
9:00am 9:30am 10:00am 10:30am
Captain Provided
The listing is unpublished
Not Bookable
Owner preview of the instabook option.
Owners provide duration, departure times, charter type, price, description, and dates for an instant booking option.
Instabook options preview syncs with availability schedule, listing status (published/unpublished), and settings to determine if the option is currently bookable.
The hardest part about the renter instabook project was making sure the new way of booking is clear for renters and it does not conflict with the old way of booking - sending inquiry for an owner. We spent some time exploring the way we can express these two concepts to the renter.
CTA versions for two different ways of booking.
We run several tests (1-click and usability tests) to see how two ways of booking a trip will work together. And found a version that performed the best of all on all the tests.
Listing CTA’s 1-click testing.
A renter can select the date and see the list of available instant booking options for that day with details and prices.
After selecting an option the renter can view trip details, description, and price breakdown. If the renter likes the offer, s/he can provide group size, select departure time, and proceed to payment.
Instabook for owners was released in April 2022, and the renter part was released in May. Following the initial decision, the sales team contacted owners operating on the lakes who met our criteria (one trip per day schedule, responsive owners with updated calendars). Around 80% of all owners contacted by the sales team successfully adopted the instabook feature and published instantly bookable trips.
Since the introduction of the feature, we noticed the following interesting behavior:• Listings with the instabook option have on average 12% higher booking rates compared to the listings without the instabook option.• Initially we thought that instant booking will be most popular with the return users. But reports showed us that 70% of instant bookings were made by new users. This means that renters have enough trust to book trips (that cost on average between 500 USD to 1200 USD) without consulting the owner first.
While instabook was piloted on a relatively small group of owners and didn’t make a big impact on the gross summer revenue; we managed to introduce and test a new streamlined way of booking and observed successful adoption by both owners and renters. To move forward with this project we still need to introduce calendar hourly availability. However, we can estimate from our observations that the introduction of the instabook feature to all our major owners can result in up to 20% increase in revenue.
