Testimonials
“I’m an avid user of your reports and recommendations. I have leveraged your articles and findings throughout my career in B2B, B2C, and hospitality.”
Travel Accommodations
Travel Accommodation UX Research
Understand how travelers search for somewhere to stay, compare properties and complete a booking. Baymard’s accommodation research combines usability findings, guidelines and benchmark examples to help teams support property discovery, explain booking details and present the information travelers need before reserving.
Help travelers move from a place to stay to a clear booking
Choosing accommodation involves balancing location, property features, room options and price. Different travel sites also serve different search needs, from exploring many destinations to booking one hotel. Use research to shape that journey and make the information behind a reservation easier to find and understand.
Key UX challenges for travel accommodations
Match search to the booking context
Explore why search needs differ between booking platforms, hotel chains, rental sites and individual properties, and how that changes the role of booking search.
Help travelers narrow their options
Use travel research on filtering and property discovery to help people identify relevant accommodation and compare options that meet their practical needs for a stay.
Explain the booking price and details
Help travelers understand pricing and the information required to reserve, using accommodation research on the issues people encounter while moving from selection to checkout.
Accommodation research, in numbers
These totals describe the current travel accommodation research library.
290+
Travel accommodation UX guidelines
4,000+
Industry UX performance scores
3,000+
Industry best practice examples
Travel Accommodations
The findings from Baymard’s large-scale testing of OTA, Hotel, & Property Rental sites provide you with 290+ UX guidelines, along with 4,000+ UX performance scores and 3,000+ best practice examples from OTA, Hotel, & Property Rental sites.
The UX research covers the entire browsing, selection, and booking process, including:
- How users perform their accommodation search depending on their travel context
- Evaluating and comparing the results, use map views, property and room details, etc.
- What users think and where they get stuck during the booking and checkout flow itself
- Online Travel Agencies (OTA): Booking.com, Expedia and Trip.com.
- Large-Brand Hotel Chains: Best Western, IHG, Hilton, Hyatt, Marriott and Shangri-La.
- Small Boutique Hotels: The Artezen Hotel, EsmeHotel.com, NobleDEN Hotel, The Nolitan Hotel, Prince Akatoki London, Sixty LES Hotel, and The Sohotel.
- Whole Property Rentals: Airbnb, HomeToGo, Kid & Coe, Plum Guide, Sonder, TurnKey, and Vrbo.
8 × Themes
Research across different ways to book a stay
Baymard’s accommodation study examined 15 websites spanning online travel agencies, large hotel chains, boutique hotels and whole-property rentals. The research published in 2022 involved 992 hours of work and more than 317 qualitative usability test sessions, providing evidence about how travelers searched, assessed properties and completed bookings.
The research library connects these usability findings with guidelines and manually scored benchmark examples. Coverage includes booking search, filtering, property and room information, pricing and the reservation process. Teams can use the evidence to account for differences between accommodation businesses while exploring practical ways to help travelers understand the stay they are considering.
Explore accommodation booking examples
Browse accommodation case studies to compare how travel sites handle search, property information and booking. The examples provide context for your own design decisions; book a demo to see how the research connects different booking approaches with practical guidance.
How teams use Baymard’s research
Testimonials
“Baymard has helped so much: UX was a brand new role at my company when I was hired. I was researching, planning, and designing UX & UI for 5 different products, all by myself. After showing real-world, bottom-line results from a UX centered approach to our products, we have expanded our UX team and greatly improved our UX-to-product process. Baymard’s research database was a critical component to my (and my company’s) success. Thank you!”
Testimonials
“I can not tell you how much help your benchmark studies have been for our company, e-commerce and UX teams. We have used and continue to use these reports for baseline benchmarks as we build test protocols or eye tracking scripts etc. in lab.”
Looking for an expert review of your site?
A travel accommodation UX audit applies the research to your website through an expert review of discovery and booking journeys.
See the accommodation research in action
Book a demo to explore guidance for booking search, property comparisons and clearer reservation details.