Wandora
Helping tourism operators increase direct bookings, reduce reliance on third-party platforms and deliver a better customer experience.
Wandora was built to give small tourism operators a way to reclaim some power from large booking platforms. With commissions that often exceed 30% and limited access to customer data, many operators feel they’ve been commoditised and can’t stand out from their competitors. Wandora gave business owners tools to optimise their own channels for direct bookings, helping them reclaim the customer relationship, better understand their own business and boost their profit margins.
Deliverables: Product Strategy, User Research, UX & UI Design, Brand Identity, Design System, Front-end Development, Fundraising
Project Type: Zero-to-One, Web Platform, SaaS, B2B, B2C
Team: Founder & Product Lead (me),
Business Goal
To create a scalable, venture-backable platform that starts with tourism but could extend into adjacent service-based industries facing similar marketplace disruption. The aim was to build defensible IP in progressive optimisation of booking flows, driven by cohort-based behavioural data. We wanted to be the first to market with a system that didn’t just facilitate bookings but actively learned and improved conversion opportunities in real time.
User Goal
For operators, the goal was a single source of truth for bookings, admin and insights. To be effective, customers needed a familiar and secure way to access and book from any of the operator's channels, including websites, social media profiles and offline materials. By leveraging QR codes and proven conversion tactics from the big platforms like scarcity, urgency messaging, instant confirmations and clean mobile-first UI we could help operators compete on equal footing.
Design Process
I set out by understanding the challenges faced by tourism operators and their customers through market research, surveys and ongoing interviews. This informed a user-centred, iterative approach that balanced strategic planning with rapid design and development.
01. Research & Discovery
I conducted market research that included interviews with 48 independent tourism businesses, ranging from experience providers like adventure sports, walking tours and winery tastings to accommodation providers such as caravan parks, holiday parks, camping grounds and retreats. For booking customers, I sent out a survey that received over 300 respondents. This research revealed that operators had a deep distrust of marketplaces but relied on them for visibility while customers used the marketplaces to discover and compare services but generally preferred booking directly when they felt it was easier or safer. I also audited existing operator solutions and booking marketplaces to identify opportunities, making note of trusted UX patterns and clever conversion strategies that were worth replicating.
02. Ideation & Strategy
Facilitated ideation workshops with a group of five operators which informed the thinking behind our MVP. Scoped and developed our initial feature set including a booking widget (inspired by Intercom) that could be easily embedded using simple HTML or linked directly from social media or marketing materials. I also created and prioritised a backlog of additional features and initiatives for a 12-month roadmap, including actionable operator insights, payment processor enhancements and AI-driven booking flow optimisation using behavioural data and cohort analysis.
03. Wireframing & Prototyping
As a strong proponent of a ‘measure twice, cut once’ approach, I focused early efforts on ensuring the booking widget was viable. Created low-fi wireframes and interactive prototypes for testing with real operators and customers, with particular attention paid to speed of booking and accessibility for non-technical users. Feedback from user testing informed refinements to core flows and patterns. To accelerate launch, I hand-coded the prototypes in React with Tailwind, enabling seamless adoption into the live platform.
04. Brand & Design System
Designed a brand that balanced credibility and energy without overshadowing the operator’s own. The visual language needed to be flexible, work across sectors and appeal to both operators and bookers. I created a suite of assets including logo, marketing collateral and comms. On the product side, I used Figma to create a design system of atomised components with accessible typography, colour and foundation layouts. To support conversion, I utilised familiar patterns from marketplaces that users already knew and trusted.
05. Development & Testing
I developed the booking widget using React, TypeScript and Tailwind; with Stripe handling payments and a PostgreSQL database powering the backend. To keep the MVP lean, operator dashboards were built using Glide, allowing me to replicate the style of our design system and plug in real-time data. Onboarding operators included generation of custom shortlink and QR code images to drive bookings across their owned channels, both online and offline. Extensive cross-platform and device testing ensured reliability and seamless performance for bookers.
06. Measure & Review
To continuously refine the product and prioritise the roadmap, I implemented quantitative analytics, user insights and conversion tracking by using tools like Google Analytics and Hotjar. This data-driven approach was complemented by regular recurring qualitative feedback which I gathered from conversations with both operators and bookers (including those who did not convert). Together these insights created a robust feedback loop that guided improvements and informed the product feature set as well as strategic business decisions.
Outcomes
Wandora launched with 20 pilot tourism operators across Victoria and New South Wales and quickly received positive feedback from both operators and their customers. This early traction enabled me to secure pre-seed funding from a leading global venture fund at a $1.85 million valuation to scale sales efforts and build out the product roadmap. During the pilot, operators saw an average increase of 340% in direct bookings, significantly reduced abandonment rates and an average time to book of under 2 minutes.
Post launch, we began getting inbound interest from non-tourism service providers who faced similar booking conversion challenges. To test product market fit in different markets, we broadened our brand positioning and acquisition strategy to include adjacent service-based independent providers, including personal trainers, academic tutors and massage therapists.
Reflections
My experience with Wandora taught me a great deal about business, sales and the importance of scalability. As a product designer, I focused heavily on ensuring the product met the needs of operators and their customers. While the feedback in that area was consistently positive, I ultimately had to wind down the company because I neglected to scale the sales function and get the product into the hands of more operators. I’m proud of having built the product from scratch and grateful that this experience has reinforced my belief in technology and design’s power to solve real-world problems.
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