Build a Platform for Mainland Chinese on Localized Overseas Travel Planning
The problem statement of my website is defined as follows: How might we make a mainland Chinese working in Hong Kong (who) address the problem of collecting trip-planning information from multiple platforms and plan their trip with more local relevancy (what) so that they can save time while having a better trip (why)?
The user research at the first stage indicated that mainland Chinese are having trouble in developing localized travel plans, especially when it comes to overseas travel. They need to search for places to have fun, specialty and food, transportation and visa information on different platforms and cross check for multiple times before finally nailing it down. The process is time-consuming for most users and sometimes they are too busy to attend to the trivial things. In addition, the information is generally incomplete or even missing. Thus, the future solution will focus on localized travel planning to satisfy users’ needs.
Besides, I’ve learned from some news coverages that although more HK people decide to travel abroad after the “0+3” policy, travel agencies in Hong Kong doesn’t benefit a lot from this policy. So from the merchant’s side, I also want to build a platform for them to showcase their strength and gain more traffic and business opportunities.
Based on the thoughts above, I developed a skeleton of my website and had an basic idea of what the monetization strategy would be. Basically, users can browse my website for local places, restaurants to visit, transportation information, other people’s travel tips etc. and archive them for further planning. If they are short in time to develop a full plan, travel agencies are here to customize the plan based on the archived items and other preferences. The same for visa application, users can seek travel agency’s help on that as well. In conclusion, my website will serve as a middleman that bridge the both parties. For travel agencies, my website will charge % commission on each sale. For users, there will be a paid membership for those who want to keep up with related news and bargains.
Due to the limited development time, I decide to narrow the project scope to Southeast Asia countries at this stage. Because these countries are geographically proximate to Hong Kong and, according to online information, most travellers choose this region as the first destination after the “0+3”. After the usability test on prototype, I decided to remove a section that was reported unlikely to use by all users to further narrow the scope without compromising the usefulness of the website.
If you want to know more about this project, please click here.
