Quotes is a RateHawk product that lets travel agents curate hotel offers into a structured proposal and generate a personalized link for their client — helping them close bookings more efficiently.
Originally, Quotes supported only hotels. As part of expanding the service portfolio, we introduced a new service type — transfers.
The initiative was driven by both business and user demand. Agents increasingly asked to include additional services in their proposals, and transfers were identified as a strategic lever to increase Quotes adoption, strengthen the agent workflow, and unlock additional revenue through cross-selling.
The project ran for 2.5 months, from initial discovery to A/B experiment launch.
Quotes is used by travel agents from companies of all sizes worldwide. Around 20% of all RateHawk partners actively use it.
For agents, Quotes isn't just a feature — it's a sales tool. It has to be fast, predictable, consistent with their workflow, and reliable in front of their end clients.
Introducing a new service type meant changing a tool agents already relied on in real sales conversations.
The project aimed to influence two key metrics:
- Increase the share of active partners using Quotes
- Improve FNBC (Forecast Net Booked Commission) — an internal revenue metric
The primary success criterion for the experiment was growth in the number of partners creating Quotes.
The decision to prioritize transfers was informed by prior research and internal analysis. Once the direction was validated, we began a systematic product and UX exploration.
The design work focused on two areas
- Designing the end-to-end flow for adding transfers to Quotes
- Adapting transfer rate cards to fit the Quotes environment
After finalizing the design, we moved into development. The experiment launched as a 50/50 A/B test among active partners and ran for 1.5 months.
The most challenging part of the project was cross-team coordination — transfer rates were owned by a separate product and development team.
Seamless integration into the existing workflow
The core decision was to integrate transfers into Quotes as naturally as possible, mirroring the existing hotel logic. Agents should never feel like they're using a separate subsystem.
Adapting transfer cards to the Quotes context
Transfer cards were built almost from scratch. Unlike hotel cards — part of a legacy UI — they had no strict visual constraints. But that created a design tension: modern transfer cards sitting next to outdated hotel cards.
A strategic compromise on visual consistency
We intentionally accepted temporary visual inconsistency between hotel and transfer cards. Speed of delivery and functional clarity were prioritized over visual perfection — a decision aligned with a planned global UI update that's now in progress.
We followed a structured collaboration process:
- Early grooming sessions before final handoff
- Joint system analysis to clarify edge cases
- A full design package with detailed states and specifications
Because transfer rates were managed by a separate team, coordination required extra alignment. The most complex part was synchronizing dependencies and ensuring consistent behavior across product boundaries.
Despite the cross-team complexity, the development phase progressed smoothly.
The feature launched as a 50% A/B test among active partners.
End-to-end conversion, ATV and FNBC from Quotes showed a neutral-to-negative read, but were out of scope for this experiment due to uneven group distribution.
Beyond metrics, qualitative feedback in partner chats showed strong interest and positive reactions to the new feature.
I was the sole designer on the Quotes team and owned the feature from early drafts to final implementation.
My responsibilities
- Designing the new flow
- Creating and adapting the UI for transfer cards
- Making strategic decisions around legacy UI constraints
- Aligning stakeholders and coordinating cross-team dependencies
Analytics and experiment evaluation were handled by a dedicated analyst, but I worked closely with the team to make sure the UX supported measurable outcomes.
This was a well-executed strategic project — the kind where planning, alignment, and delivery all worked as intended.
A key learning was balancing long-term design quality with short-term business impact. I consciously prioritized functionality and speed over visual consistency, while securing agreement that the inconsistency would be resolved in a future global UI update — now in progress.
Two months after launch, the feature's functional success is clear in both metrics and partner feedback. The project reinforced my confidence in making pragmatic design decisions that serve product strategy — not aesthetics alone.