How do you create a booking experience as fast as the record-breaking rides at Ferrari World Abu Dhabi, as
epic as the slides at Yas Waterworld, and as personalized as a one-on-one with Batman at Warner
Bros. World™ Abu Dhabi?
Yas Island Abu Dhabi’s premier leisure and entertainment hub – worked with Horizontal
Digital to rise to the challenge.
Learn how we co-created a seamless high-speed online booking experience that put YasIsland.com in pole position in the
competitive travel industry stakes. The new website places holidaymakers in the cockpit,
immersing them in the real-world excitement of Abu Dhabi’s Yas Island, while expertly curating
experiences for everyone from thrill seekers to sports fans, foodies and families.
With over 165 restaurants, 10 hotels, award winning theme parks, world-class shopping, a links golf course, indoor and outdoor concert venues and more, Yas Island is
home to infinite possibilities offering endless options to choose your ultimate holiday. The ask
for the new digital experience was to showcase the vast array of packages in a simplified manner
and to center them around customer intent to make booking a breeze.
The team was also tasked with implementing the latest UI and UX principles to create an
unrivalled customer experience. Personalization of the CX was key to putting the traveler in the
driver's seat, empowering them to book their ultimate holiday.
To achieve all this, the Horizontal team faced a seemingly insurmountable challenge of merging
two mountains - the existing site’s reservations system and the new Sitecore Experience
Platform™ (XP) - to enable a quick and easy checkout flow.
In order to future-proof Yas Island’s business model, Horizontal had to pivot the existing tech
stack to enable the complex back-end packaging of park tickets, hotels, events and services,
while orchestrating a seamless ecommerce experience on the front end.
The project was built on the premise that the thrill of the holiday starts the minute you begin
searching for it online.
Yas Island and Horizontal set out to create a best-in-class, commerce-ready digital destination
that embodied the excitement of the physical destination and enticed holidaymakers to book
island packages and return visits.
Customer centricity places the user at the heart of every decision, and that’s where Horizontal
began formulating its product plan. The discovery phase started with understanding the business
goals through a series of stakeholder interviews and workshops to identify and align on the main
vision of the product.
In parallel, a series of customer interviews were conducted to delve into the psychology of
travelers and to gather insight into the issues they've been facing both online and on Yas
Island itself.
A deep dive into the customer's mind, the business strategy, and in-depth competitor research
and benchmarking, allowed Horizontal to create the product strategy and roadmap for the future.
The team then embarked on the implementation of an insight-informed digital strategy to deliver
visually engaging UI and intuitive UX and a drastically reduced checkout time.
Everything was built on Sitecore’s market-leading technical foundation that delivers
personalized, cross-channel experiences by leveraging customer data, analytics, AI and marketing
automation.
Visitors’ online experience of Yasisland.com has been
transformed into a simple, four-step click-to-checkout flow that beats the speed of some of
the world’s biggest booking engines.
Launched during the peak summer holiday period, conversion rates, sales and engagement on
the new site significantly exceeded expectations as users explored the streamlined
offerings.
The scalable commerce solution will allow Yas Island to create new packages and offers,
staying in step with the latest travel trends and delighting holidaymakers from the moment
they start dreaming about a trip to the minute they arrive on the island and beyond.