Overview

Between June 2023 and November 2024, I led the design of Guestline’s GuestStay Portal — a brand-new self-service website for hotel guests. As the sole designer, I partnered with a Product Manager, a Development Lead, and 4 engineers to define, design, and launch a responsive platform that enables guests to pre-checkin, manage bookings, add upsells, and access invoices, all fully integrated with GuestStay Kiosk and DBM

Key outcomes:

• Pre-checkin adoption increased, cutting kiosk check-in to under 1 min for prepared guests.

• Pre-arrival upsells drove incremental revenue.

• Guests accessed past invoices themselves, reducing admin requests.

• Consistent UX across GuestStay Portal, Kiosk, and DBM.

Context & Challenge

The kiosk pilot had shown how duplication and hidden flows frustrated guests, but for the portal, the main issue was expectation mismatch. Guests who completed “pre-checkin” online often believed they were already fully checked in, only to be asked again at the hotel. This created confusion and dissatisfaction at arrival.

There was also a data dependency: the portal only worked for direct reservations through DBM, since OTA channels like Booking.com often withheld real guest emails. Without email addresses, hotels couldn’t send invitations to the portal, meaning OTA guests missed out on the time-saving benefits. Hoteliers saw this as both a limitation and a lost revenue opportunity.

Discovery & Insights

After interviewing hoteliers across the UK and Germany (Guestline’s core markets) and testing first impressions of the pre-check-in flow with potential guests via Maze, we uncovered several key insights:

• Many guests assumed pre-check-in was the full check-in, which created confusion on arrival.

• Manual data entry frequently introduced errors, forcing staff to step in and correct details.

• Guests often contacted hotels post-stay for invoices, generating unnecessary admin.

• Hotels wanted branding flexibility and tangible proof of ROI.

• Competitive analysis showed that most portals simply digitised forms, offering little in the way of upsells or customisation.

Objectives

What success would look like soon became clear: the GuestStay Portal had to save guests time, reduce pressure on hotel staff, and prove its value as more than just a digital form. To achieve this, we set the following objectives:

• Boost pre-check-in adoption to reduce lobby congestion and set clear guest expectations.

• Ensure a fully responsive experience across mobile, desktop, tablet, and kiosk for consistency at every touchpoint.

• Embed upsells and upgrades seamlessly into the portal, turning convenience into revenue.

• Enable self-service reservation management, so guests can modify details and dates without staff intervention.

• Provide easy post-stay access to invoices, cutting down on calls and admin load.

• Offer flexible hotel branding (logos, colours, tone of voice) while safeguarding usability and accessibility.

Together, these goals framed the portal not just as a guest convenience, but as a driver of efficiency and revenue across the entire GuestStay ecosystem.

Approach & Design

Defining principles & hypotheses

I carried over the shared design principles of the GuestStay ecosystem — clarity, autonomy, accessibility, brand adaptability, and responsiveness — and applied them to the self-service portal. These principles kept the Portal consistent with DBM and Kiosk, while focusing on reducing arrival friction, enabling upsells, and empowering guests with self-service tools.

Streamlining the flow

Pre-checkin: Guests complete details online, saving time and cutting errors. Data flows directly into kiosks, pre-filling fields and reducing arrival to under 1 minute.

Upsells & upgrades: Guests can add extras (breakfast, late check-out, parking, upgrades) during pre-checkin.

Reservation management & invoices: Guests can view, edit, or cancel bookings, and download past invoices without contacting staff.

Building the responsive, white-label system

From the start, GuestStay Portal was designed as part of the global Guest Design System. This ensured the same UI and UX principles applied consistently across the Portal, Kiosk, and DBM. The portal was fully responsive — scaling seamlessly across mobile, desktop, and tablet — while remaining flexible enough for hotels to apply their own branding (logos, colours, typography) without compromising usability.

Rewriting communications

To prevent expectation mismatches, vague prompts like “Check in now!” were replaced with accurate, brandable templates such as “Complete our secure and fast check-in form before you arrive”

Outcome

The launch of the GuestStay Portal delivered measurable benefits for both guests and hotels:

• Pre-check-in adoption rose significantly, easing congestion at arrival. Guests who completed pre-check-in could complete kiosk flows in under a minute, transforming the lobby experience.

• Upsell revenue increased, as guests purchased upgrades and extras (e.g., breakfast, late check-out) directly in the portal before arrival.

• Invoice requests were reduced, with guests able to access and download past invoices themselves, freeing hotel staff from repetitive admin.

• Reservation management became self-service, allowing guests to edit or cancel bookings with clarity on policies.

• Guest satisfaction improved, with clearer communication reducing the “double check-in” frustration and creating a sense of autonomy.

• A unified design system was rolled out across GuestStay Portal, Kiosk, and DBM, giving hotels consistent branding and guests a seamless experience across every touchpoint.

Reflections & Next Steps

The GuestStay Portal was launched as a standalone product, parallel to the kiosk, to give guests a responsive, self-service hub accessible before and after their stay. It saves time for guests, generates new revenue through pre-arrival upsells, and reduces hotel admin by giving guests autonomy over bookings and invoices.

Crucially, it was built on the same design system and backend foundations as the kiosk. While the first release positioned them as separate products, we are now iterating towards a fully unified GuestStay ecosystem — where portal, kiosk, and DBM share not just structure and branding flexibility, but a single seamless experience across touchpoints. This evolution will allow hotels to deploy one cohesive solution under the GuestStay umbrella.

The next phase is already underway: AI-powered personalisation. The portal will begin to anticipate guest needs — suggesting upgrades based on past stays, recommending late check-out when flights are delayed, and reminding returning guests of their preferred add-ons.