Ali Carmichael of Experience UX explains which reassurance to add before payment, how to fix forms and errors, and how a warmer confirmation page makes booking feel exciting.
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Ali Carmichael has spent 25 years helping organisations, from the Open University to Vitality to Burberry, step outside their own digital products and look back in through their customers’ eyes. He’s spoken at a few HolidaymakerXP events, and the feedback is always the same: relaxed, sharp, and a really good storyteller. On this episode he sits down with Dave to talk about where the holiday park booking journey is heading, and why the industry’s oldest instinct, strip out every point of friction, might be the wrong one to follow.
Ali’s core finding from recent work: people are having a detailed, longtail conversation with an AI assistant first, working out what kind of holiday they actually want. Then they open a browser, type two or three words, usually just the company name, and land on the homepage. That homepage is built for the masses, but this guest has already done the thinking. “People are doing the research over in AI. They’re not clicking through to websites from AI, they’re opening a browser and going and searching,” Ali says.
Push too many people through the booking funnel without answering their real questions, about trust, refunds, what happens if they change their mind, and you get more people at the till and fewer who actually complete. “It’s much more rewarding to get less people through the funnel, but to get more people signed up at the end,” Ali says.
Some of the biggest drop-off points aren’t strategic at all, they’re usability failures that have been solvable for years. Ali connects a flat “payment received” screen to the peak-end theory, the idea that people remember the end of an experience most vividly. Booking a holiday is exciting. The confirmation page should feel like it.
The conversation closes on holiday home sales: lucrative, but really difficult. Ali’s advice is to stop treating the sale as the finish line and keep the relationship going through the app, through email, through the small moments at the park, since some buyers decide in a weekend and others take two years.
“It’s much more rewarding to get less people through the funnel, but to get more people signed up at the end.” – Ali Carmichael, Experience UX
Related reading: Ali Carmichael on the outside-in view of guest experience, behavioural science and the decisions guests make, and our partners and suppliers directory. For app questions, see the Help Centre.
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