Hilton Grand Vacations — One Unified Booking Experience
Transforming 4 legacy booking systems into one seamless, scalable platform
This wasn’t just a UI redesign — it was a shift from chaos to clarity. Owners were exhausted trying to decode rules that changed depending on where they were booking. I unified multiple legacy systems into a single predictable booking model, reduced cognitive load across the entire journey, and built the design system foundation that enabled engineering to scale this far beyond just this release.
Context
Unifying fragmented legacy systems into a single scalable booking platform across 40+ ownership models.
Enterprise Design · Systems Thinking · Scalable UX
My Role
• Principal Product Designer (Super IC)
• Scrum Master + cross-team facilitator
• Led alignment across design, product, engineering, and vendor teams
Team
PM, Tech Lead, QA/UAT, In-House Engineering, Offshore Dev Team (Pune)
Tools & Timeline
Figma, FigJam, DevOps, GPT-5, Lovable, Figma Make, Contentful
Apr 2023 – Jul 2025 (2+ years)
Problem Space
Travel & Hospitality
Enterprise SaaS
Goal: Modernize a decade-old, acquisition-heavy booking ecosystem into a unified platform that owners could trust — while enabling engineering to scale future features without friction.
Problem
Owners were forced to navigate three different booking experiences with conflicting rules, different CMS backends, and no shared ownership model. None of it worked consistently — especially on mobile.
The result: confusion, abandoned bookings, and a massive support burden.
Core Problem Statement:
Owners couldn’t reliably see what was actually bookable or understand why things disappeared. Conflicting inventory logic, points systems, and permission rules made availability feel random — not trustworthy.
Business Goal:
Unify booking → increase reservation completion → reduce support load.
Below are examples of the fragmented legacy interfaces:
HGVMax Booking Interface
Bluegreen Booking Interface
Diamond Resorts Interface
Research & Insights
I conducted mixed-method research: owner interviews, shadowed support call escalations, attended onsite owner events, analyzed Facebook owner communities, and reviewed platform usage data.
Key Insights
80% of owners were already Hilton Honors users
Familiar Hilton.com patterns lowered cognitive load immediately.
The problem wasn’t missing features
It was ambiguity — inconsistent rules, behaviors, and mental models.
Search was the biggest blocker to booking
Backend conflicts + short booking windows made availability feel unpredictable and untrustworthy.
Research Evidence
Below are examples of research artifacts, observed behaviors, and data visualizations that informed these insights and shaped the direction of the new One Console experience.
Define & Hypothesis
I needed to normalize booking behavior across 40+ ownership types so owners only had to learn one mental model — once.
How might I unify booking into a single predictable interaction pattern that works regardless of ownership type, rule model, or acquisition source?
Hypothesis:
If I collapse booking flows into one interaction model and personalize entry, owners will find availability faster, use points more effectively, and complete bookings with more confidence — resulting in higher reservation success rates.
Design Principles: Calm UI · One Pattern Mental Model · Permission-Aware Visibility · Hilton.com Familiarity Lowers Friction
Ideate & Explore
I explored three possible design directions:
  • Match Hilton.com exactly — easy to learn, but limited long-term flexibility.
  • Create a new ownership-only UI language — novel, but too complex for users already familiar with Hilton patterns.
  • Build a modular, tile-based booking system — flexible, scalable, and reusable across every ownership type.
Decision: The modular tile system won. It could scale across 50,000 + resort contentful templates, adapt to new ownership rules without rebuilds, and evolve alongside Hilton’s broader ecosystem.
The Pivot Moment
The turning point came when I eliminated competing booking models and committed to a single, universal tile-based structure.
That decision shifted the platform from rigid and reactive → to adaptable and future-proof.
New inventory types, ownership rules, and acquisitions could now be absorbed with minimal disruption — and zero user confusion.
Prototype & Test
I validated interactive prototypes through internal walkthroughs and structured usability sessions.
Key Pivot:
Switching from a step-based flow to a vertical scroll pattern removed ambiguity in decision-making and increased task confidence — especially during pre-payment and availability steps.
Findings:
Comparing legacy “stepper” flows vs. unified vertical flows showed measurable gains:
• Faster scannability
• Fewer hesitation points
• Less branching confusion
• Clearer progress visibility for users
Final Solution — Customer Experience Outcomes
What “Great” Looks Like for Owners
The redesigned experience delivers a predictable, intuitive, and accessible booking journey. By aligning design logic across ownership types, every step now feels familiar, faster, and more trustworthy.
Unified Search & Booking
One search experience now powers every ownership type — consistent logic, fewer surprises, and a single mental model for all users.
Contextual Points Display
Points are surfaced early and in context, making trade-offs transparent and booking decisions easier.
Role-Based Visibility
Irrelevant options disappear automatically. Each user only sees what applies to their ownership level, reducing noise and confusion.
Responsive Card Patterns
A single card model scales seamlessly from desktop to mobile, maintaining clarity and hierarchy across devices.
WCAG Compliant Design System
Accessibility is built-in. The same scalable system extends into marketing, email, and consumer sites — ensuring visual and functional consistency across Hilton’s digital ecosystem.
Final Solution — Engineering & Delivery Outcomes
What 'Great' Looks Like for Engineering Velocity
The unified design system didn’t just improve the customer experience — it streamlined the entire delivery pipeline.
Engineering Impact
  • Interaction behaviors clearly annotated Eliminating interpretation gaps.
  • Figma taxonomy + naming rules Standardize grooming, async collaboration and efficient merge reviews
  • Every UI state explicitly defined upfront Happy path, errors, edge cases - eliminating mid-sprint surprises
  • New developers onboard faster The design system becomes the documentation.
  • Tech leads can break down work Into predictable, assignable components instantly.
Design System Scale
I built a unified Design System that became the foundation for Hilton digital product teams — not just booking.
Scale: ~1,000+ Figma frames → one universal pattern library powering marketing, transactional web, email, and owner-product surfaces across the org.
How I built it:
  • Used Atomic Design principles for scalable component inheritance (Atoms → Molecules → Organisms → Pages)
  • Introduced a “Quarantine” workflow to validate new or modified components before promotion.
  • Structured the DS across Foundations, Components, Forms, Widgets, and Layout Patterns — mapped 1:1 into Storybook.
  • Weekly engineering alignment ensured fidelity between Figma + code (governance > visual opinion)
  • Developer feedback shaped component evolution based on real production complexity
Outcome:
This DS reduced decision overhead for designers + engineers and became a repeatable system-of-record for future Hilton product creation.
Impact
Business + Platform Outcomes
25%
Reduced Support Calls
Reduction in booking-related support calls.
40+
Unified Ownership Types
Ownership types unified into a single permission-driven experience.
8+
Products Powered
Hilton’s first cross-platform design system, now powering multiple products.
  • Higher reservation completion through one simplified booking model
  • Faster engineering velocity from 1:1 Figma → Storybook mapping + state clarity
Outcome Summary:
Fragmented legacy flows were replaced with a clean, vertical, mobile-first system that reduced cognitive load — and created a scalable architecture ready for future acquisitions.
Reflection — Where This Evolves Next
1
Predictive Availability
Surfacing what’s actually possible before a user even searches.
2
Proactive Recommendation (ML)
Move booking from reactive selection → guided, probability-based suggestions
3
Smart Personalization Layer
Use browse history, notifications, recent searches, and prior reservations to surface relevant destinations, promotions, experiences, and events tailored to each owner.
4
AI Agent as Call Center Reducer
A conversational booking assistant that helps owners find resorts, time windows, and point-viable options faster — reducing call center dependency and accelerating self-service booking confidence
Closing — Reduce Cognitive Load. Increase Velocity
When cognitive load goes down — decisions get faster, development gets cleaner, and scale unlocks.
Clarity isn’t just UX — it’s the engine for platform growth and team velocity.