Marketplace · 2024
Booking a resort day should feel like the holiday, not the paperwork
End-to-end UX/UI for a marketplace selling resort day passes, hourly hotel rooms and amenity access — from first discovery to a QR code at the gate.
Role
Lead Product Designer — end-to-end UX/UI
Timeline
2024 · 12 weeks
Team
1 designer · 2 engineers · founder
Platform
Responsive web (mobile-first)
0 → 1
Product designed & shipped
3 steps
From discovery to booked
QR + WhatsApp
Instant confirmation
01 · Overview
Resorts sit half-empty on weekdays while city dwellers hunt for a pool, a spa or a quiet workspace for the day. Tribely connects the two — day passes, hourly rooms and amenity access sold like simple products instead of hotel bookings.
I owned the entire experience: the marketplace mental model, the discovery and filtering system, the booking flow, pricing presentation and the post-booking confirmation journey on QR and WhatsApp.
02 · The Problem
What we were trying to solve
Day-use inventory was being sold through channels built for overnight stays — buried pricing, phone-call confirmations and forms that asked for check-in dates that didn't exist. People abandoned before they ever saw a price.
Pain point 01
Pricing hidden until the end
Existing flows revealed the total only after sign-up and date selection, so users bounced at the first surprise fee.
Pain point 02
Overnight-stay mental model
Check-in/check-out language and calendar pickers made no sense for a 6-hour pool pass, creating hesitation and support calls.
Pain point 03
No proof of purchase at the gate
Confirmations arrived as emails resorts never checked — guests were held at reception while staff searched inboxes.
03 · Research
What the users taught us
I interviewed day-guests and resort managers, shadowed the front desk of two partner properties, and audited how competing platforms handled day-use inventory.
Price is the first filter, not the last
Users decided whether to keep scrolling based on the visible per-person price — anything upfront-priced earned a tap.
Guests plan on WhatsApp
Groups coordinated the outing in a WhatsApp thread; a confirmation that could be forwarded there removed a whole re-typing step.
The gate is the moment of truth
One failed check-in poisoned trust in the platform for the entire group — proof of booking had to be instant and offline-friendly.
04 · Design Process
From tangled problem to shipped solution
Stage 1 — Problem Identified
Day-use is a different product, not a shorter stay
Stakeholder interviews and funnel walkthroughs showed the core issue wasn't visual — the entire flow borrowed a mental model (overnight booking) that didn't fit the product being sold.
Stage 2 — Problem Scoping
Scoping to the discovery-to-gate journey
We cut scope to the one journey that mattered for launch: find a property, understand exactly what a pass includes, pay, and get in. Loyalty, reviews and host tools were parked for later releases.
- Journey mapped from first search to gate check-in
- Success metric agreed: completed bookings, not sign-ups
Stage 3 — Solution Shaping
Designing around upfront pricing
Low-fi flows put the per-person price on every card, every detail page and every button. IA, card anatomy and the 3-step booking flow were wireframed and pressure-tested with the founder and engineers weekly.
Stage 4 — Impact Testing
Five-user tests on the booking flow
Clickable prototypes went through moderated tests. The biggest fix: users didn't trust 'free cancellation' buried in fine print — surfacing it beside the price button removed the last hesitation before payment.
- Task completion measured on the full discovery-to-payment path
- Copy iterations on inclusions, cancellation and timing
Stage 5 — Solution Deployed
Shipping with a component foundation
Final UI shipped with a lightweight component library — cards, chips, price rows, booking steps — so engineering could extend the marketplace without design bottlenecks.
05 · The Solution
The decisions that shaped it
The shipped product treats a day pass like a product page, not a hotel room: everything a guest needs to decide — price, inclusions, timings — sits on one screen, and everything after payment is built for the gate.
Decision 01
Upfront, per-person pricing everywhere
Every property card leads with the day-pass price and what it includes. No surprises at checkout — the number you tapped is the number you pay.
Decision 02
A 3-step booking flow with no dead ends
Date, guests, pay. Guest details are collected once, cancellation terms sit beside the pay button, and the flow works one-handed on mobile where most bookings happen.
Decision 03
QR + WhatsApp confirmation
Payment instantly returns a QR pass that also lands in WhatsApp — forwardable to the group, scannable offline at the gate, checkable by front-desk staff without an inbox search.
06 · Impact
What changed
Tribely launched with partner resorts live and a booking journey that finally matched the product being sold.
3 steps
Discovery to confirmed booking
Instant
QR confirmation at payment
0 → 1
Marketplace live with partner resorts
- Live marketplace at tribely.in with the full discovery-to-booking journey shipped as designed.
- Upfront pricing removed the biggest drop-off point identified in research — the surprise total.
- Gate check-ins moved from inbox searches to a single QR scan, cutting front-desk friction for partner properties.
- The component foundation let the team ship new property types without new design work.
07 · Learnings
What I'm taking with me
- 01
Borrowed mental models are invisible until you test with real users — the overnight-booking pattern felt 'standard' to everyone building it and wrong to everyone using it.
- 02
The moment of truth for a booking product is offline, at a gate — designing backwards from that moment reshaped the entire confirmation flow.
- 03
Scoping to one complete journey beat shipping five partial ones; everything cut from v1 was easier to add than trust would have been to win back.