ihCities

01 · Why it matters

A five-star trip shouldn’t need a five-star hotel

Travel planning is split across dozens of apps, sites, and agencies. A good concierge pulls it all together: the dinner reservation, the tour, the ride, the hidden spot only locals know. But concierges live almost entirely in luxury hotels, and they’re expensive.

it’sHospitality already ran in-person concierge services for hotels and restaurants. To reach more travelers and more venues, faster, the team built two products: ihCities, an app for travelers to explore a city and manage their trip, and ihPro, a portal for the businesses serving them.

Even if you don't stay at a five-star hotel, your trip should still feel like one

02 · Research

Learning from the front desk

Because the company worked inside local hotels and restaurants every day, research didn’t start from a survey. It started on the floor. The product team went into hotels and shadowed the people who keep them running: concierges, front desk staff, general managers, and catering and food managers. Watching their actual day showed which tools would make them faster, and which ones guests were quietly missing.

Those visits, plus conversations with guests and owners across Washington, D.C., surfaced a few things:

• Neighborhoods win togetherA restaurant netting 4 to 6% profit usually had another within 1,000 feet doing just as well.So recommendations should lift the whole block, not just one venue.
• The trip starts before check-inInternational travelers plan 7-night stays up to 88 days ahead.So the experience begins at booking, not at the front desk.
• Concierge is rare, and it matters98.1% of hotels don’t have one, and hotels with a helpful one earn 1 to 2 more stars in reviews.So give every guest a concierge, and every hotel the reviews that come with it.

Out of every 100 hotels

Has a conciergeDoesn’t

98.1%Of hotels have no concierge at all

The market in Washington, D.C.

+20% a year, expected tourism growth

24.6M

Visitors to Washington, D.C.

$5.9B

D.C. tourism revenue

$1.9T

U.S. tourism revenue

44%

of people aged 18 to 35 travel with their children

Visitor and revenue figures for 2019

03 · The people

Three travelers, one city

Leisure travelers, often families, juggle a pile of tools to plan. Business travelers need to track every expense. And the leaders running hotels and venues need to coordinate staff, vendors, and paperwork, often on paper.

The part travelers never see

This is where the shadowing paid off most. The managers behind the scenes were juggling vendors, contracts, and orders by hand. So for the businesses, ihPro handled the unglamorous work: exchanging, signing, and tracking documents with vendors through a DocuSign integration, with the data flowing back into payroll, HR, and ordering. Design worked right alongside the developers to map how it all connected, starting on an actual whiteboard in the D.C. office.

04 · Designing it

Four tabs, and a guide

The app came down to four simple places: Home, Explore, Planner, and Check In. Wireframes tested that structure first, starting with a question in the very first sketch: “Name the bot!”

The bot got a name: Charlie. Charlie knows your plans and fills the gaps. Got dinner at 7:30? Charlie suggests a night tour of the monuments, then books the bus, the bike, or the walking route with one tap. Meeting tomorrow at 3:45? Charlie will call your ride about 30 minutes before.

Check in to the city

Every hotel, tour, or group got its own ihCode. Enter it, and that place shows up in your trip, with a direct line to the people there. “Your pillows are on the way” feels a lot better than waiting on hold with the front desk.

05 · The result

A concierge for the whole city

ihCities launched in Washington, D.C., with a handful of restaurants, tour operators, travel companies, and hotels on board. Visitors got one place to plan, explore, and ask for help. Venues without a concierge desk got a way to offer one, and the reviews that come with it.

Growth came the hard way: deep integrations with each venue, and a team on the ground making them work. In its first year, the app went from zero to about 10,000 monthly users.

Monthly users, December to December

0 → 10KPeople using ihCities each month, over 12 months

10K5K0

About 10,000

DecMarJunSepDec

Start and end of the first year shown; growth came from venue integrations and a team on the ground in Washington, D.C.

Then came the bigger step: integrating with Hyatt’s hotel systems. Guests could use their digital room key, reach the hotel’s concierge, and get Charlie’s help around the city, all in one app. ihCities became the hotel’s concierge beyond the lobby. From there, the technology was folded deeper into its partners’ own systems, and it’s still in use today.

The front desk, the room key, and the city, in one pocket