Africa Travel Resource
Helping the conservation of Africa through safari holidays
Africa Travel Resource is one of the industry leaders in luxury safaris. Clients come to ATR from all over the world to book their holiday of a lifetime. Their holidays are hugely complex, so building a website that could deliver an immersive user experience was vital. ATR need to captivate their audience and instil desire and confidence in their offering in order to increase instant chat and offline enquiries.
- Lead time:
- 18 Months
- Sector:
- Travel
- Target Type:
- B2C
- Demographic:
- High Net Worth
- Project Goal:
- Generate Enquiries
- Services:
- UX Design, UI Design, Web App Development, DevOps
- Awards:
- 2019 Drum Award for Best Use of Photography
- 2019 Wirehive 100 Award for Agency Team of the Year
- 2019 UK App Award Nomination for Best Design/UX
- Scope
- Adobe XD wireframes
- Adobe XD prototypes
- Web app development
- Front-end development
- Resource
- 1x User Experience Designer
- 1x User Interface Designer
- 2x Front-end Developers
- 2x Back-end Developers
- 1x DevOps Engineer
- 1x Project Manager
- 2x Quality Assurance Testers
A strategy for conservation
ATR follow a tourism-for-conservation strategy and as one of their fundamental values, it was critical that their new website reflected this. In ATR’s own words, ‘Our mission is to deliver remarkable sustainable safari experiences that you cannot wait to broadcast to your family, friends and colleagues. In this way you inadvertently become an ambassador for conservation in Africa and help spread the word.’
The challenge
If you’ve not been on safari before, then the buying process is going to be unlike booking any other holiday. Key to enabling customers to build their dream holiday is to take them on a process of discovery and to help them build their knowledge around the possibilities. From there, we needed to develop a digital rapport between the visitor and ATR, measuring success with engagement metrics such as number of visits, chat interactions and favouriting.
Photography
Placing the images at the heart of the website creates an immersive and engaging user experience.
Interactive maps
We created an interactive map to enable users to better understand their trips, locations and itinerary when planning their route.
Sharing expertise
ATR have a wealth of knowledge about Africa and need to communicate this to users in a digestible format.
Big data and artificial intelligence
Over the years ATR have invested heavily in developing a huge database. This includes a massive set of lodges, but also the monthly migration patterns of animals, weather trends and experiences. Leveraging big data and AI, we were able to harness this vast data set to help users to discover and curate their own safaris – an industry first.
Natural language search
We created a dynamic natural language search and interactive map combination that acts as the navigational driver for the website. The search adapts based on the user’s choices and allows them to explore content at a depth that is suitable for their knowledge level and their point in the buying cycle. With over 16 million possible holiday combinations, the search is unbelievably complex, factoring in everything from migration patterns of animals, to the different experiences available in each region, to the conservational impact of lodges and locations.
The search has been designed to support customers in a way that mimics the way that ATR advisors work, encouraging repeat visits to the website with a more specific search on each visit. The search drop down options help to scaffold the user’s search by providing suitable options tailored to the selections so far. This style of search breaks the mould of a standard holiday website. It can be used by a customer at any point in their buying cycle and helps guide the selection of the right lodges, experiences and locations for them. The visual element of the map makes trips extremely sharable, encouraging customers to show family and friends and inadvertently become ambassadors.
Positive change
ATR are in a position to change the way that safari holidays are sold, to put the user first and to take responsibility for the holidays they sell and the impact on Africa’s people, animals and the environment. Their new website helps them to achieve this.
