The Evolution

Vaneet Mahajan - Director - Online Products

 

“When something is important enough, you do it even if the odds aren’t in your favour”—Elon Musk

 

Ever heard the phrase ‘like a deer caught in headlights’? Well, that is how we felt when we were given a goal of ‘personalizing the user’s hotel funnel experience’ in late 2017. The goal was certainly lofty, the problem seemed expansive, and all the limitations that crossed our minds were enough to overwhelm us.

 

Then I remembered ‘First Principles’, a TED Talk by Elon Musk, one of the most innovative thinkers of our time.

 

“When in confusion, think from first principles.” 

 

This is essentially the practice of actively questioning every assumption you think you ‘know’ about a given problem. Based on this, Elon had recommended three steps to problem-solving, which is what we decided to use as a starting point.

 

1. Identify and define your current assumptions.
2. Break down the problem into its fundamental principles.
3. Create new solutions from scratch.

 

Based on multiple sessions with various stakeholders, some personal soul-searching, and closer examination of digital ecosystems that had already aced the game of ‘personalization’ (i.e. Netflix), we zeroed in on the following fundamentals:

 

1. Personalization means that every user sees the right set of hotels that they may like to book, both in-funnel and outside of the funnel.
2. Personalization means that the users see the right set of hotels based on their previous preferences. Appreciation for personalization increases if people realize that their preferences define the set of hotels shown to them.
3. Personalization means that users get contextual information for their search, which helps them in quick decision-making.

 

We worked on the first two ideas and saw a fair share of success. While we had aimed to hit the bullseye with the very first version that we released, it was far from perfect. 

 

Rome was not built in a day and neither was our Personalization Solution Stack. 

 

The road that has led us where we are today has been long, full of roadblocks, dead-ends and more failures than successes. We tested multiple hypothesis and junked numerous data models before we were able to zero in on the three best models that served personalized sequencing to users. It was the team’s commitment to drive continuous and sustainable improvements that propelled us to a stage where we are able to make a real difference to both our user’s hotel purchase experience and our business results, with a cumulative upside of 20% in conversion.

 

Are we done yet? Not really, because we feel the journey has just begun and there are still miles to go. After all, at Go-MMT, we believe that incremental changes are the cornerstones of breakthrough innovations.