IHG — Rebuilding the page where a booking becomes revenue
A ground-up redesign of IHG's payment step — projected at $26.5M in first-year desktop revenue and 73.6K additional bookings.
Projected first-year revenue on desktop from the payment page redesign, alongside 73.6K additional bookings.
[ The problem ]
Payment is the last page in a booking flow serving 14+ hotel brands, and the one where every point of friction is measurable in money. The existing page buried the stay summary, treated loyalty enrolment as an afterthought, and offered a single way to pay when guests across the estate expected several. Every guest who hesitated here had already chosen a hotel, a room and a rate. Losing them on the final step was the most expensive drop-off in the funnel.
[ Goals ]
Confidence — stay details, price and policies visible without leaving the page. Completion — fewer fields, fewer decisions, clear errors. Enrolment — join IHG One Rewards as part of booking, not instead of it. Choice — card, PayPal, Sofort, Alipay, WeChat Pay and reserve-without-card in one pattern.
Approach
The page was rebuilt from wireframes up. Early rounds set the two-column structure: guest and payment on the left, a persistent hotel-and-receipt rail on the right that carries dates, room, rate, nightly average, additional charges and total through the whole scroll. A design crit in May 2022 and two rounds of user testing shaped the details — quick enrol moved into the member-rate block, the Chase card offer found a position that did not interrupt the form, and 'how would you like to pay' became one selector for six methods. Round two of testing benchmarked the page against Hyatt, Booking.com, Expedia, Best Western and Airbnb. The final set covers member, non-member, implicit and explicit states; cash, points, points-and-cash, free-night and flex-night rates; saved and edited cards; Canada and China field variants; business rewards; and error messaging localised into four languages. Everything shipped as an experiment against the existing page.
[ Scope and constraints ]
[ The work ]
The surfaces.
Guest details and quick enrol
Let a guest book as a member without leaving the page, and make the member rate they picked feel earned rather than gated.
Quick enrol became a single checkbox inside the member-rate block, with sign-in beside it. The guest form was cut to the fields payment actually needs; address extras collapsed behind one link.
Enrolment happens as part of booking. The form is the shortest in the flow, and the hotel card sits beside it so the guest never loses the stay they are paying for.
How would you like to pay
Offer card, PayPal, Sofort, Alipay, WeChat Pay and reserve-without-card as one decision, not six sections.
One selector row with the chosen method's fields beneath it. Card-network marks sit on the card number field itself; the reserve-without-card path explains what happens instead of asking for a number.
Six payment methods share one pattern, so regional additions plug in without redesigning the page.
The receipt rail
Keep dates, room, rate, nightly average, additional charges and total in view for the whole scroll.
A persistent right rail: hotel image and details on top, an itemised summary of charges beneath, with additional charges and taxes expandable in place rather than on a separate page.
The total is never more than a glance away. The rail became the pattern the confirmation page and the rest of the flow inherited.
Member value without interruption
Show what the stay earns and present the co-branded card offer without breaking the path to the button.
The Chase card offer was positioned between guest details and payment as a self-contained module, tested for placement. An earnings estimate joined the rail so points appear as a benefit of paying, not a separate programme.
Card and loyalty messaging kept their visibility while the form kept its rhythm.
Mobile
Carry the same structure to a single column without losing the receipt.
The hotel card and total move to the top of the page on mobile; the summary of charges collapses to a tappable total that expands in place. Payment selector and terms keep their desktop pattern.
One set of components across desktop, tablet and mobile, with the mobile total always reachable.
Error messaging, worst case
Recover a guest who has submitted an empty form, in any of IHG's languages, without making them hunt.
A summary block lists every failed field at the top of the form; each field repeats its own message inline. Copy was reviewed in English, German, Spanish and Russian so line lengths held.
The worst-case state reads as a checklist rather than a wall of red.
Reservation confirmation
Increase confidence with clear payment and stay details, and give upsell and cross-sell a place that does not feel like a second checkout.
Reskinned the page around transparency — stay and payment details first — with upgrade and add-on options presented alongside rather than interrupting, and continuous A/B testing on desktop and mobile.
Improved upsell and cross-sell visibility contributed to an increase in average daily rate.
[ The system underneath ]
[ Results ]
$26.5M | Projected first-year revenue, desktop 73.6K | Additional bookings projected 6 | Payment methods in one selector 4 | Languages for error messaging
The redesign is projected at 73.6K additional bookings and $26.5M in first-year revenue on desktop. Beyond the number, the page set two patterns the rest of the flow inherited: the persistent hotel-and-receipt rail, and a single selector for every payment method. Quick enrol at the point of payment gave the loyalty programme its cleanest acquisition moment.
What I carry forward
The highest-value changes on this page were subtractions — a field removed, a decision deferred to the confirmation page, an offer moved out of the way of the form.