Context

Premier Inn serve the public but also businesses. And it's these businesses that face the challenge of providing comfortable and convenient accommodation for their traveling employees, often needing to manage bookings for groups or extended stays while adhering to budget constraints. Traditional booking methods can be time-consuming, lacking centralised oversight, and potentially leading to inconsistent experiences for employees. The added pressure of the travel industry's fluctuating travel costs and the need for flexible booking options add complexity to the process, making it difficult for businesses to effectively manage their travel programs or plans at scale.

Solution

The result was Business Booker by Premier Inn, a true 0-to-1 platform conceived as Beta to transform business travel management.

Action & Build

The project began with intensive user research, moving beyond basic requirements to uncover genuine workflows and pain points. The complex problem was translated into a viable product narrative with a clear market fit. Through listening sessions, workshops, and interviews with a UX researcher, rich qualitative data was gathered, informing the creation of precise user personas and journey maps. This insight drove rapid prototyping and key interaction testing, ensuring continuous validation. Constant iteration was maintained through a rigorous stakeholder feedback loop encompassing Business Operations, Product, Engineering, and Design. The primary objective was to launch a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) delivering immediate value, prioritising foundation over unnecessary complexity, and embracing flexibility for iterative growth.

Contributions were made to the Design System, documenting necessary pattern variations and collaborating across existing platform teams. Following the MVP’s successful rollout to 500 businesses, a nine-month growth phase commenced. This phase involved co-authoring the product roadmap with Product, Research, and Engineering, prioritising high-impact features such as ‘Reporting’ and ‘Group Booking’ based on a simple matrix: high impact, low build threshold. As the product matured, the design narrative shifted towards long-term scalability, focusing on a mature design system and consistent voice and tone.

Impact

The key measure of success, achieving genuine Product-Market Fit, was met. Having cleared this high bar, the Business Booker moved out of Beta and officially launched. Within six months, the platform successfully onboarded 28,000 corporate businesses, spanning SMEs to large enterprises.