Hotelied was a hotel booking platform built on the premise that valuable guests should be rewarded with great rates at amazing hotels. What does a valuable guest look like? How about this: someone who travels often, works in a high-spend industry, or loves to talk about their favorite hotels. By linking their social- and travel-related accounts to Hotelied (including Instagram, LinkedIn, frequent flyer programs, and many more), users could unlock special, discounted rates and packages at 5-star hotels and resorts around the world.

As the only designer at the company, I led all of our creative efforts, including digital design, print collateral, marketing, and investor presentations. Following the initial launch of the site, I worked with the engineers at our agency, Big Human, to iterate on the look and feel of the interface as we received feedback from our early users, who loved the truly personalized experience that Hotelied uniquely provided in an industry where our main competitors were Kayak and Expedia.

In terms of outcomes, although we ultimately fell short on funding, we nonetheless had a lot to be proud of:

• 80,000 active users within 7 months of launch through strong press, social media, and effective email marketing
• $2M annual booking pace within 14 months of launch
• Wide-scale embrace by competitors of our social travel features, including group travel and travel prompts