Scaling Agoda’s Activities Funnel
AGODA | Global Head of Product Design, Agoda
Timeline: 2022-2025
Team: 3 product designers + Senior Product Design Manager
My Role
I led the product design team behind Agoda's Activities & Tours product — taking it from zero to one of the fastest-growing travel booking platform in Southeast Asia. As Head of Design, my focus was on building the right conditions for designers to do their best work, partnering closely with product, engineering, and commercial stakeholders to shape a product that was both intuitive for travelers and built to compete at scale.
Leadership
Cross-Functional Alignment
Air Cover
Team Setup
The Opportunity & Strategic Approach
Untapped Category
Klook, Viator, and GetYourGuide had built entire platforms around experiences. Agoda had none.
Captive Customer Base
Millions of accommodation bookers — already on platform, already traveling — with no native way to book what they'd do when they arrived.
Trusted Brand in Asia
Agoda had the regional credibility competitors lacked. The brand advantage was real. The product to back it didn't exist yet.
Platform Stickiness
Activities represented a chance to own more of the trip — deepening relationships, increasing return visits, and making Agoda the place to plan, not just sleep.
Incremental Revenue at Scale
A new vertical with no cannibalization risk. Every booking was net-new revenue the business wasn't capturing.
A Clear North Star
Become a top 3 OTA for Activities in Asia by 2028 — not by adding a tab, but by building a product that could compete with category specialists on their own terms.
Building an Activities design team from zero — and setting it up to compete with global players.
Vision Setting
I worked directly with product and business leadership to define what a top-tier activities experience should feel like — not just feature-complete, but genuinely useful and trustworthy for travellers planning real trips. That meant setting the design north star early, before execution began, and keeping the team oriented toward it across every phase of delivery.
User Centricity
Rather than designing by assumption or benchmarking alone, I championed a research-led approach from day one. I commissioned the user journey research that surfaced 28 pain points across the funnel, identified two distinct user types with fundamentally different needs, and ensured every feature was mapped to a real user problem before it was built.
Team & Scale
I structured a dedicated Activities design squad — separate from the accommodation funnel — and appointed a Senior Design Manager to lead day-to-day. My role focused on milestones, quality, and coaching, creating the conditions for the team to make great decisions independently rather than escalating everything upward.
The Design Strategy & Key Decisions
Make it easy to find the best thing for your trip
Users approached search in fundamentally different ways — by destination, category, or activity name. The existing search was too rigid. We introduced free text search, personalised recommendations, and map-based discovery, and surfaced Activities inside the hotel funnel at the exact moment bookers were most likely to consider them.
Help users make confident decisions
Research showed users found Agoda's detail pages "boring" and left to verify on Google or Tripadvisor before booking. We redesigned the full detail experience with better information hierarchy, offer comparison clarity, AI-summarised reviews, and a clear at-a-glance summary that answered the most common pre-booking questions upfront.
Deliver a reliable post-booking experience
Trust doesn't end at purchase. We pushed hard for a post-booking experience that equipped customers with clear instructions, pick-up information, itinerary details, and direct access to the activity operator. Most competitors left post-booking communication fragmented and stressful — this became a meaningful differentiator.
The Outcome & Business Impact
Flights launched from zero in 2019. Here's where the product stands today.
Doubled
Bookings per day
Reached within year one of launch and built from ground up
61%
Bookings became attached booking
Activities became a cross-sell engine, not just a standalone product
Top 3
OTA in APAC
Grew to top 3 OTA in bookings in Activities & Tours
How we got there
From rigid search to free text discovery
The original search only accepted city names. We introduced free text search across destinations, activity names, and categories — plus personalised suggestions and recent searches — dramatically reducing drop-off at the top of the funnel.
Map-based and contextual discovery
Users had no spatial way to explore activities. We introduced map view and location-aware recommendations, and surfaced Activities inside the hotel funnel — reaching accommodation bookers at the exact moment they're open to planning what to do.
Detail pages users didn't want to leave
Research showed users found Agoda's activity detail pages "boring" and left to verify elsewhere. We rebuilt the experience with an at-a-glance summary, clearer offer comparison, AI-summarised reviews, and UGC photos — giving users confidence to book without searching elsewhere.
Offer comparison users could actually parse
Multiple ticket types with unclear differences were causing drop-off at selection. We redesigned offer comparison to surface inclusions, pricing clarity, and availability in a scannable format — reducing the cognitive load of choosing between options.
Reviews that actually built trust
Agoda's review surface was thin and anonymous. We rebuilt it with AI-summarised highlights, multi-dimensional scores, sourced attribution from Viator, and UGC photo galleries — turning reviews from a checkbox into a genuine trust signal at the point of decision.
Post-booking that felt complete, not abandoned
Most competitors left post-booking fragmented. We built an EBP that gave customers pick-up details, a full itinerary, what to bring, and direct access to the operator — making Agoda the single source of truth from booking to the day of the experience.
Glimpse of Outputs
