Shaping the Future of 

Optional Excursions - Rainbow Tours' 

Innovative Product Shift

Rainbow Tours S.A., a leading tour operator in Poland, draws approximately 1.5 million monthly visits to its website, offering customers to, among other things, book optional excursions to 28 countries. Our collaboration with Rainbow Tours aimed to revolutionize the concept and perception of these optional excursions, known as "wycieczki fakultatywne." Our mission was to make these excursions more appealing and accessible to a broader range of travelers, altering the traditional understanding and appeal of such offerings.

To accomplish this, our work at Startup House encompassed:

• Functional and Visual Benchmarking: Evaluating existing offerings against market standards and conducting a comprehensive UX audit.
• Strategy & Concept Development: Hosting a full-day, co-creative onsite workshop. This involved merging insights from our research phase with a creative session to redefine the optional excursions in both business and design terms, focusing on effective client communication strategies.
• Product Design: Undertaking a four-week intensive development phase for both Desktop and Mobile versions, encompassing Information Architecture, Wireframing & Flows, User Interface design, UI kit creation, and Prototyping.
• User Testing: Implementing online RITE tests and refining the design based on user feedback, ensuring a user-centric approach in our improvements.

Our objective was not just to refresh a product, but to reimagine the way optional excursions are perceived and experienced, inviting new user groups to explore the world with Rainbow Tours S.A.

The Challenge 🚀

The primary challenge lay in reshaping optional excursions, which were traditionally offered only as an add-on to the main vacation package. 

This required a significant shift in the existing customer mental model. Furthermore, the newly developed site had to visually align with Rainbow Tours' main site, yet maintain enough distinctiveness to avoid confusion.

The Journey

Our collaboration began in January 2023. It kicked off with a thorough UX audit of the current solution, coupled with functional and visual benchmarking. Following this, we conducted a full-day co-creation workshop at Rainbow Tours' premises, where we discussed our research findings and brainstormed the future of “optional excursions” from both business and user experience perspectives.

Over the subsequent four weeks, we embarked on the product design phase for both desktop and mobile versions. This included establishing the information architecture, wireframing & flows, user interface design and prototyping.

To ensure our design direction was on point, we interacted with users from all walks of life, letting them experience a prototype of the solution. Through these interactions, we gained insights into their thought processes and how they interact with the product, allowing us to incrementally refine the design to meet the ambitious goal of revolutionizing optional excursions.

The Outcome

In collaboration with the Rainbow Tours team, we adopted a user-centered design approach that served as the backbone of our strategy, ingeniously blending the business's best interests with a focus on human-centric solutions. This approach revitalized the logic behind optional excursions, significantly enhancing their appeal. By introducing innovative features that allow customers to independently purchase optional excursions, we initiated a micro-revolution in the travel industry. This not only improved the customer experience but also expanded our business horizons, opening doors to new customer segments and broadening our market reach.

In addition to enabling customers to search for specific attractions or destinations and choose their preferred pick-up location, we strategically enhanced our platform based on in-depth market trend analysis and changing user demands, as well as drawing inspiration from leading travel industry practices. Accordingly, we introduced categorization by specific interests such as sports, food, and more. This innovative categorization, coupled with insights from our user tests, led us to implement dual naming for better product clarity – presenting 'optional excursions' also as 'attractions'. This strategic decision played a pivotal role in transforming optional excursions into a robust, a standalone product, resonating deeply with our users’ evolving preferences and contributing significantly to our success.

Conclusion

This project marks a pivotal transformation in the perception and usability of 'Optional Excursions.' By adopting a user-centered design approach and employing iterative user testing, we didn't just enhance its functionality; we strategically evolved it from a mere add-on to a dynamic, standalone product. This evolution has unlocked substantial new sales opportunities. Our collaboration with Rainbow Tours is a testament to our dedication not only to creating user-loved digital products but also to driving business growth and tapping into new market potentials. The success of this project goes beyond human-centered design; it's a celebration of how innovative product development can simultaneously fulfill user desires and propel business objectives.