If your travel or event platform is bringing in strong traffic but conversions remain low, you're not alone, and your UX/UI design might be playing a bigger role than you think.
With the rise of AI-generated search overviews, many platforms are seeing traffic shifts, but not all of it translates into action. As user behavior evolves, even small friction points can have a big impact on how visitors interact with your site.
In 2024, travel and hospitality sites achieved an average conversion rate of close to 6% on desktop, where mobile was a mere 2.7%, even though mobile was driving the maximum traffic share worldwide. That's a massive gap and it has little to do with screen dimensions. It’s about friction, broken flows, and UX/UI design decisions that silently sabotage the user journey.
In this article, we’ll explore five common but overlooked design missteps in the travel and event industry and show you how small, thoughtful changes can lead to big results. Whether you're looking to improve engagement, streamline bookings, or simply create a smoother journey for your users, this is a great place to start.
Key Takeaways
- Mobile is a major opportunity, but only if your design supports fast, seamless interactions.
- Hero sections should prioritize clarity and action over aesthetics.
- A polished, on-brand logo builds immediate trust with your audience.
Mistake 1: Ignoring the Context of Spontaneous Mobile Booking Behavior
As of 2024, mobile devices are responsible for more than 65% of visits to online travel and event platforms. However, the conversion rates tell a different story: mobile bookings come in at 0.7%, while desktop bookings land at 2.4%. That's a conversion difference of close to 3.5x — an enormous lost revenue stream for travel agency website design teams who continue to regard mobile as an afterthought.
What's happening?
Too many travel & event UX/UI designs still feel like shrunken desktop sites. Multitasking users on the go— checking dates between meetings or browsing events mid-commute — are slammed with modal popups, overloaded filter menus, and CTA buttons that float just out of thumb reach.
How to Fix It?
- Implement dynamic sticky booking bars, collapsible filter trays, and fast-action CTAs to support fast mobile behavior.
- Use fewer modals and rely on progressive disclosure to keep interactions simple and focused.
- Design effortless transitions, responsive tap states, and immediate feedback to build trust and reduce bounce.
- Organize layout hierarchy around user priorities, not default CMS structures.
Mistake 2: Designing Hero Sections That Prioritize Aesthetics Over Action
There's a fine line between making a beautiful visual and reducing your conversions. With travel website design, that line is crossed far too frequently.
Creating a positive first impression is essential, especially in the travel and event space, where emotion plays a big role in decision-making. And yes, immersive hero sections with full-screen videos and dreamy landscapes can inspire wanderlust. But design and function work best hand in hand.
Here’s the truth: users decide how they feel about your interface in 17 milliseconds. A Google study confirmed this, revealing that sites with low visual complexity and high prototypicality (aka “It looks how I expected it to look”) are seen as more trustworthy and appealing.
Take a look at any of the best travel website designs and you will notice they place the primary goal (booking or event registration) front and center, immediately accessible. Think sticky CTAs, dynamic price previews, real-time availability, and social proof — all above the fold.
How to Fix It?
- Design your hero section around what users want to do next like booking a trip, checking dates, or viewing availability.
- Swap static scenic shots for pricing modules, social proof, or real-time availability. Tailoring headers to local attractions or user intent can boost engagement.
- Conduct usability tests to understand how users scroll, where they engage first, and where friction occurs.
Mistake 3: Fragmented Booking Flows
Booking a trip or event should be effortless, but too many sites still break up that process with cumbersome multi-step flows. When customers are forced to bounce from search to package information, then off-site to pay, and then wait for confirmation, it reduces their enthusiasm and trust. Long forms, slow page reloads, and confusing seat selectors only add friction at the moment they’re ready to commit.
The answer is simple: keep your booking process brief and to the point, preferably within three steps. Apply progress bars to inform users, and allow them to save or resume where they'd left off if they must interrupt. This respects how travelers behave, especially on mobile, where patience and time are limited.
“Great travel and event UX/UI design removes any barriers in the user journey. When the process flows smoothly, users feel confident and are far more likely to complete their booking.”
{{Kyrylo Lazariev}}
How to Fix It?
- Condense the booking process into three clear, essential steps to reduce friction and prevent drop-off.
- Add progress indicators so users always know where they are in the journey and what’s coming next.
- Enable save-and-resume functionality to give users flexibility, especially for complex itineraries or event bookings.
Mistake 4: Lack of Personalization Based on User Intent or Origin
Users arriving on your travel agency website from Instagram, email, or a Google flight search all have extremely different intentions and mindsets. But instead of honoring where they're coming from or what they've done previously, most sites throw the same exact static landing page at them.
Personalization is essential to increase retention rates and keep users moving smoothly through the booking flow. That means the app or site is showing relevant information in real-time, pre-filling filters, location-based suggestions, or time-sensitive offers. Returning users appreciate interfaces that remember their preferences and gently nudge them forward, creating a seamless experience that respects their time and intent.
How to Fix It?
- Display tailored content based on traffic source such as show Instagram visitors colorful event clips, email subscribers exclusive offers, and searchers quick booking options.
- Use location-aware defaults and pre-filled filters to speed up planning and keep users engaged.
- A/B test different flows for social, organic, and paid traffic to uncover top-performing design paths and scale what works.
💡Pro Tip: Use geo-intent and behavioral insights to optimize search and ticket sales features, essentially doubling down on what drives real engagement. Additionally, contact best AI consulting firms to implement AI solutions for better personalization and creating "aha moments" for your potential clients.
Mistake 5: Keeping the Travel Logo Design As The Last of Your Worries
When clients land on a booking page from Google Flights or a social ad, they spend milliseconds scanning for credibility. If your travel logo design looks like a generic template or doesn’t align with the booking experience (think neon colors on a luxury retreat site or a cartoony font for a business travel app), you’re creating visual dissonance. That dissonance costs conversions.
“We’ve seen travel sites with gorgeous UI fall flat because the logo felt like an afterthought.”
{{Ostap Oshurko}}
Great logos carry through the UI/UX. Look at Kayak's clear orange icon: bold, legible at 32px, and immediately recognizable on apps, tabs, and even smartwatches.
Or Hipcamp's clean serif logo, matching its adventurous, user-contributed interface.
A thoughtful, solid logo directs visual hierarchy, informs color palettes, and establishes emotional trust more quickly than copy. Users automatically link refined branding with safety, authenticity, and ease. Dull logo execution, conversely, makes everything from pricing to payment types feel less trustworthy.
How to Fix It?
- Design logos for real-world sizes like 32px, 64px, and 128px to ensure they stay sharp, readable, and recognizable across all devices.
- Ensure logos integrate seamlessly with light/dark modes, mobile menus, and overlays while avoiding overly detailed icons that blur on scroll.
- Perform visual consistency tests as a part of design research. Check how your logo fits with the rest of your UI elements.
What Are The Best Travel Website Designs Doing Differently to Maximize Conversions?
The top travel website designs don’t guess what potential clients want. They use usability testing, user behavior insights, and smart UX/UI design solutions to deliver exactly what travelers need, right when they need it.
Take Booking.com. Their flow is a case study in efficiency: the search bar is front and center, CTAs are always visible, and intuitive navigation ensures users never get lost. It’s not flashy, it’s focused. The result is a frictionless path from browsing to booking that serves the primary goal.
Then there's Airbnb, which personalizes the travel UX design by surfacing local attractions based on user location, seasonality, and history. Its travel app design anticipates needs by showing saved stays, recent searches, and trip suggestions tailored to individual behavior, improving engagement and helping travelers explore more.
Expedia stands out by making complex travel planning simple and intuitive. Their booking engine allows users to easily bundle flights, hotels, and activities in just a few clicks. With fast-loading date pickers, real-time pricing updates, and clear, persistent calls to action, the entire process feels smooth and effortless.
Tripadvisor builds trust by integrating millions of user reviews, ratings, and photos directly within the search and booking experience. This social proof empowers users to make confident decisions without leaving the site.
These experiences are engineered with the help of design and innovation consulting firms who understand that great UI/UX design supports both user satisfaction and business KPIs.
Ready to Turn Browsers Into Bookers?
The gap between a pretty travel website and a high-converting one is wide, and costly. Fragmented booking flows, bland landing pages, outdated travel website design, and missed personalization opportunities — these silent factors chip away at your conversions without you even noticing. The best-performing platforms obsess over UI/UX design, understand their users’ intent, and refine every interaction through usability testing and insight-driven design solutions.
That’s exactly what we do at Lazarev. We design high-performing digital experiences that reflect what real users want. Explore our Travel & Event solutions to see how we help brands stand out. Reach out when you're ready to design smarter, scale faster, and convert better.
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