Booking App Store

A marketplace for accommodation partners to discover and connect third-party tools

An MVP App Store for accommodation partners existed but was stuck—leadership saw potential but lacked direction. I started from scratch with user research, helping the team prioritise and fully redesign the marketplace and how third-party products connected through a standardised "Connect with Booking" SSO flow.

Situation

The existing App Store showed all tools in one long list. There were a few filters, but all manually preselected and, as the product grew, they became outdated and hard to maintain. Partners didn’t know which apps to choose or why. The experience felt broken and incomplete, with edge cases and dead ends throughout the flow. And once partners found something, each tool had its own login and data-sharing flow, causing confusion and drop-off during activation.

Original App Store: all tools in one long list, limited context.

Task

Start from scratch with research to understand what was working and what wasn’t. Use findings to help the team prioritise and redesign both the marketplace experience and the integration flow for each third-party product. Coordinate between business partners, other Extranet teams, API and integrations teams, product, leadership, and engineers to align on direction.

Action

Research & Discovery
Planned and ran user interviews and usability tests with accommodation partners to understand their needs and pain points. Ran multiple cross-functional, technical, and business workshops to align on goals and co-create solutions. Research uncovered critical pain points: wildly varying trial periods, unclear billing terms, forms and phone calls required to start trials, and automatic charges without explicit consent. These findings shaped three design principles—Be in control, Be informed, Be confident—that guided all decisions.

Journey map for a persona, created based on interviews and research.

Marketplace Experience
Redesigned the browsing experience with meaningful categories, featured use cases, and detail pages showing transparent pricing, trial terms, and what data would be shared. Partners could now assess value and understand commitments before connecting.

Improved tool detail pages with clearer value propositions and structured information.

Standardised Connection Flow
Designed a single sign-on flow with predictable permissions, clear trial terms, and explicit consent before any charges. Created a provider-facing interface for generating the “Connect with Booking.com” button. To validate the approach before full integration, we used a Wizard of Oz method for Phase I, manually processing billings while the technical infrastructure was built.

Connection flow using standardised SSO: predictable permissions and clear steps.

Provider-facing interface for consistent authentication flows.

Result

• Successfully launched at ITB Berlin (World’s Leading Travel Trade Show)
• Significant increase in trials started, with 100% of purchases made with intent
• Decrease in customer support tickets about billing errors
• Partners could discover and connect tools faster with transparent information and a predictable flow
• Providers had a consistent integration path, reducing fragmentation and support overhead
• Research artefacts became long-term references across the track. From business to engineers, teams would gather around journey maps to discuss flows, ideas, and improvements