Back
Reimagining the digital experience for the UK's leading escorted coach holiday operator
Date
2026
Industry
Travel
Type
Digital Experience
Skills
Experience Strategy
Experience Design
Data Analysis & Insight
Team
Louie Stewart-Poynter
Back
Reimagining the digital experience for the UK's leading escorted coach holiday operator
Date
2026
Industry
Travel
Type
Digital Experience
Skills
Experience Strategy
Experience Design
Data Analysis & Insight
Team
Louie Stewart-Poynter
Overview
Leger Holidays is the UK's leading escorted coach holiday operator, offering 300+ tours across Europe and beyond. This project reimagined the digital experience to support a full brand repositioning, moving Leger from a functional, brochure-led site toward a premium, inspiration-first platform designed to grow online conversion.
The challenge
The existing site was organised around internal product logic rather than user mental models, with the phone remaining the dominant booking channel. The challenge was to redesign the coach holiday experience to support a premium rebrand without alienating a loyal and established customer base.
Results
The project delivered a UX strategy, information architecture and wireframe suite designed to serve both discovery-led and high-intent mindsets. Deliverables were handed over to client's partner as a foundation for the full site build. User testing is planned before rollout.
My role
Senior Experience Designer. Led Discovery and Definition, synthesising data from CRO, Hotjar and site search to extract insights. Facilitated client working sessions to align on user and business priorities. Delivered the experience strategy and IA through to wireframe handover.
Overview
Leger Holidays is the UK's leading escorted coach holiday operator, offering 300+ tours across Europe and beyond. This project reimagined the digital experience to support a full brand repositioning, moving Leger from a functional, brochure-led site toward a premium, inspiration-first platform designed to grow online conversion.
The challenge
The existing site was organised around internal product logic rather than user mental models, with the phone remaining the dominant booking channel. The challenge was to redesign the coach holiday experience to support a premium rebrand without alienating a loyal and established customer base.
Results
The project delivered a UX strategy, information architecture and wireframe suite designed to serve both discovery-led and high-intent mindsets. Deliverables were handed over to client's partner as a foundation for the full site build. User testing is planned before rollout.
My role
Senior Experience Designer. Led Discovery and Definition, synthesising data from CRO, Hotjar and site search to extract insights. Facilitated client working sessions to align on user and business priorities. Delivered the experience strategy and IA through to wireframe handover.
Starting with a full site audit
Before working with the client's own data, I ran a full heuristic audit of the existing site, reviewing navigation, IA, page templates and the booking flow against established UX principles. This gave an independent view of where the experience was falling short, forming the foundation everything else was tested against, rather than only optimising within the current structure.
Starting with a full site audit
Before working with the client's own data, I ran a full heuristic audit of the existing site, reviewing navigation, IA, page templates and the booking flow against established UX principles. This gave an independent view of where the experience was falling short, forming the foundation everything else was tested against, rather than only optimising within the current structure.
A full heuristic analysis was conducted to identify issues across Discoverability, Usability, Relevance and Experience
Helping the client adopt a user-centric mindset
With no scope for primary user research, I worked closely with stakeholders across marketing, tech and customer service to reconstruct user mental models and get the team thinking from a customer point of view.
Together, we untangled a flat product taxonomy built from internal terminology, and identified the functional and emotional needs the new experience needed to address across both high-intent and low-intent journeys.
Helping the client adopt a user-centric mindset
With no scope for primary user research, I worked closely with stakeholders across marketing, tech and customer service to reconstruct user mental models and get the team thinking from a customer point of view.
Together, we untangled a flat product taxonomy built from internal terminology, and identified the functional and emotional needs the new experience needed to address across both high-intent and low-intent journeys.
Client workshop focusing on product taxonomy, user needs and core user journeys
Output from the workshop helped inform the new product architecture, created to align better with user mental models
Research and immersion
In the absence of scope for primary user research, I combined secondary research — synthesising CRO test results, call transcripts and site search data — with direct conversations with stakeholders across customer service and tour operations.
Together, these surfaced the key blockers to online conversion: missing information that left customers with unanswered questions, availability queries, and a lack of clarity on what to expect on a Leger tour.
Research and immersion
In the absence of scope for primary user research, I combined secondary research — synthesising CRO test results, call transcripts and site search data — with direct conversations with stakeholders across customer service and tour operations.
Together, these surfaced the key blockers to online conversion: missing information that left customers with unanswered questions, availability queries, and a lack of clarity on what to expect on a Leger tour.
Key insight
Customers become far more open to door-to-door collection service once they discover their pickup time is early in the morning — but this only surfaces two weeks before departure, creating avoidable last-minute friction. Helping customers understand this benefit earlier online could turn a source of frustration into a considered choice.
Gathering and prioritising requirements
Insights from the audit, data synthesis and client conversations were consolidated into a structured requirements tracker — capturing confirmed requirements, relevant findings from past testing, and dependencies where a recommendation relied on data the client still needed to provide, each tagged by priority. This kept the design grounded and gave the client a live, shared view of what needed to happen on their side.
Gathering and prioritising requirements
Insights from the audit, data synthesis and client conversations were consolidated into a structured requirements tracker — capturing confirmed requirements, relevant findings from past testing, and dependencies where a recommendation relied on data the client still needed to provide, each tagged by priority. This kept the design grounded and gave the client a live, shared view of what needed to happen on their side.
Screenshot of requirements tracker created after immersion phase
The solution
The new experience needed to address the practical questions that were driving customers to the phone, while educating new customers on Leger's strongest differentiators, like its unique joining point network and door-to-door service.
Defining the new site structure
With user needs and business priorities established, I defined a new sitemap, a set of experience priorities to keep every decision grounded, and identified the highest-priority pages and features to take through to wireframe — designed throughout to serve both a low-intent, discovery-led mindset and a high-intent, ready-to-book one.
Defining the new site structure
With user needs and business priorities established, I defined a new sitemap, a set of experience priorities to keep every decision grounded, and identified the highest-priority pages and features to take through to wireframe — designed throughout to serve both a low-intent, discovery-led mindset and a high-intent, ready-to-book one.
Sitemap created in the Definition phase
Information architecture was defined for the core user journey, spanning key pages like the Holiday Search Results page, Holiday Detail Template and the booking flow
Enhancing the search experience
Search was simplified to capture destination and dates, dropping 'Air' as a standalone option once established as a travel mode rather than a distinct intent.
Destination search was also enhanced with autocomplete search, surfacing results across countries, cities, regions and rivers — a direct response to site search data, which showed users searching in far broader terms than the existing search tool catered to.
Enhancing the search experience
Search was simplified to capture destination and dates, dropping 'Air' as a standalone option once established as a travel mode rather than a distinct intent.
Destination search was also enhanced with autocomplete search, surfacing results across countries, cities, regions and rivers — a direct response to site search data, which showed users searching in far broader terms than the existing search tool catered to.
Wireframes of the new Holiday Search tool
A results page optimised for usability
The redesigned holiday results page addresses various user needs identified in the immersion phase through new features like quick view, map/image toggle and solo-adjusted pricing.
A results page optimised for usability
The redesigned holiday results page addresses various user needs identified in the immersion phase through new features like quick view, map/image toggle and solo-adjusted pricing.
Wireframes of the new Holiday Search Results page
Rethinking the booking flow
A Leger holiday involves several decisions — room type, optional excursions, seat preference — that traditionally sit inside one linear checkout. I proposed splitting this into a flexible "Configure Your Holiday" step, breaking decisions into simple chunks and filling gaps like accommodation and excursion detail, followed by a deliberately lean checkout. Knowing many customers still call to build confidence before booking, I also proposed an enquiry form as an alternative route to offline support — with language reframed contextually depending on where the user is in their journey — and recommended a structured testing plan to validate the riskiest assumptions before committing to build.
Rethinking the booking flow
A Leger holiday involves several decisions — room type, optional excursions, seat preference — that traditionally sit inside one linear checkout. I proposed splitting this into a flexible "Configure Your Holiday" step, breaking decisions into simple chunks and filling gaps like accommodation and excursion detail, followed by a deliberately lean checkout. Knowing many customers still call to build confidence before booking, I also proposed an enquiry form as an alternative route to offline support — with language reframed contextually depending on where the user is in their journey — and recommended a structured testing plan to validate the riskiest assumptions before committing to build.
Diagram showing key steps in the existing vs proposed booking flow
Wireframes of the new PDP Dates module and first step of the Configure Your Holiday flow
Wireframes of the new Configure Your Holiday flow
Final designs
I worked closely with the Lead Designer to ensure all UX thinking carried through seamlessly into the UI design.
The output was a new design system built on the updated brand guidelines, a componentised library and fully designed pages, handed over to the client's external development partner ready for build.
Final designs
I worked closely with the Lead Designer to ensure all UX thinking carried through seamlessly into the UI design.
The output was a new design system built on the updated brand guidelines, a componentised library and fully designed pages, handed over to the client's external development partner ready for build.
FInal designs of the Homepage. Credit: Louie Stewart-Poynter
FInal designs of the Search Results Page. Credit: Louie Stewart-Poynter
FInal designs of the Coach Holiday Detail Template. Credit: Louie Stewart-Poynter
Contact
Have a challenge to solve?
Let’s talk!
Tiana Ho
©
Tiana Ho
2026
Contact
Have a challenge to solve?
Let’s talk!
Tiana Ho
©
Tiana Ho
2026
This work is confidential
Enter passcode to continue