Case study
Host & Guest Experience
Evolve Vacation Rental · Service Strategy
Situation
Evolve Vacation Rental had built its business helping hosts market and maximize their properties. Growth now depended on hosts delivering experiences that lived up to the quality of their listings.
Evolve wanted to improve the guest experience by raising the level of hospitality hosts delivered, not through contractual obligation or tighter standards, but by improving how hosts were educated, communicated with, and coordinated.
Complication
Evolve had surface-level marketing personas but no real understanding of who their hosts were or why they rented their properties.
The service gap.
Every host got the same experience regardless of whether they were a hands-on local owner or a remote investor managing dozens of properties.
Action
I delivered an experience strategy that gave Evolve a new way to see their hosts and a clear model for how to transform each of them into hospitality providers.
Host segmentation.
Synthesized ideas and in-flight product features into a prototype experience for evaluative research. The research surfaced four distinct host segments: what motivated them, what they were capable of, and what they needed from Evolve to succeed.
Service design.
Designed a multi-actor service architecture across seven actors, anchored by a new Hospitality Coach role with supporting tools, value exchanges, and performance metrics to help hosts grow into the role their guests desired.
Execution package.
Delivered strategic experience pillars, an experience evolution roadmap, moment briefs, and product requirement documents written for product teams to build against, not just draw inspiration from.
Outcome
- Redefined how Evolve understood its hosts, replacing marketing personas with four research-backed segments
- Designed a multi-actor service architecture and a new Hospitality Coach role to support each host segment's hospitality needs
- Delivered an end-to-end experience strategy and execution-ready product roadmap