Case study / Staycationer / 2026

From three hours
to a few minutes.

An internal SaaS tool that helps an operations team search 200+ villas, check real-time availability, and answer customer enquiries faster.

2–3 hrsbecameMinutes

Role

Senior UX Designer
& Developer

Scope

Discovery · UX Strategy
UI · Development

Timeline

1 week

Product

Internal SaaS
TravelTech

Staycationer homepage offering two clear paths: check dates or manage properties

01 / The challenge

A customer enquiry shouldn't take three hours to answer.

Responding to a simple villa enquiry meant moving between spreadsheets, Airbnb listings, property records, and brochures - repeating the same process across multiple properties.

01Customer enquiry

02Search spreadsheet

03Open listings

04Check availability

05Find brochures

06Respond

2–3 hrs

Average manual effort per enquiry

200+

Villas potentially requiring checks

4 tools

Spreadsheets, Airbnb, PDFs, records

How might we help the team find relevant, available villas without manually searching multiple systems?

02 / Framing

I started with the workflow, not the interface.

The real friction wasn't availability alone. It was the repeated movement between disconnected sources of information.

The product didn't need more information. It needed the right information together at the right moment.

Operational frictionProduct decision

Searching spreadsheets

→Searchable property inventory

Opening listings one by one

→Automated availability checks

Too many irrelevant villas

→Location + bedroom filters

Scattered property context

→Unified records + brochure

Waiting without feedback

→Progress + explicit status

Risk of deleting inventory

→Confirmation before deletion

03 / Product architecture

Two jobs.
Two clear paths.

Operational users care about completing tasks quickly, not exploring a product. The architecture stayed deliberately shallow.

Primary path

Check availability

Dates → Filters → Check villas → Review results → Open Airbnb or brochure

Admin path

Manage properties

04 / Core journey

Filter first.
Process second.

The core screen asks only for the information required to narrow the search. It shows the number of matching properties before the availability check begins.

Availability search with dates, bedrooms and location filters beside an empty results state

Before

Spreadsheet → Airbnb → Airbnb → PDFs → comparison → response

After

Staycationer → available villas → response

05 / Decision-ready results

Availability is not the decision.

A result combines capacity, location, host, final price, price breakdown, brochure, listing link, and last-checked time - enough context to decide what to send the customer next.

The interface moves the user from “Is anything available?” to “Which villa should I recommend?”

Completed availability check showing a villa, price breakdown and links to Airbnb and the brochure

06 / Designing for operations

The customer journey depends on clean inventory.

A lightweight admin system keeps the underlying records searchable, structured, current, and safe to change.

Searchable inventory

Property inventory table with search, property information, brochures and actions

Fast retrieval

Filtered property inventory showing a search result for Aldona

Design decision / 01

Reuse the same structure for Add and Edit.

Familiarity reduces learning. The system can also derive the Airbnb listing ID rather than asking an administrator to duplicate it.

Structured form for adding a Staycationer property

Edit property form reusing the same information structure

Error prevention

Make the consequence visible before the action.

Deletion affects both inventory and availability history. The confirmation identifies what will disappear and requires a deliberate second action.

Delete property confirmation over the property inventory

07 / A lightweight design system

Consistency over decoration.

PrimarySurfaceTextDestructive

01Text field02Date picker03Select04Search05Primary action06Table07Result card08Modal09Progress10Empty state

08 / From UX to product

I didn't stop at the prototype.

Design and development happened together. Background processing shaped status feedback. Real data shaped hierarchy. Implementation exposed edge cases that static mockups would not.

01Understand02Frame03Design04Build05Test06Ship

09 / Business impact

Time returned
to the business.

Before2–3 hours

Manual shortlisting across multiple systems

AfterMinutes

Search and availability in one focused workflow

Delivery1 week

From understanding the problem to a working product

“We were quoted lakhs and months to solve this problem. Dhawal built it in one week.”- Staycationer founder

Reflection

Operational products create value when they remove work - not when they add features.

Understanding the workflow first revealed where technology could remove repetition and where people still needed visibility and control.