Mandarin Oriental's in-person service is the reason people book. The digital first impression wasn't matching it.
Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group operates a collection of luxury hotels, resorts and private residences across the world's most prestigious destinations. Headquartered in Hong Kong, the group is known for outstanding guest service and Michelin-starred dining.
reply times, down from days
revenue opportunity
researched
Weddings are among Mandarin Oriental’s most profitable business, and the first contact a couple has with the hotel is a web form. That form, and the digital journey behind it, wasn’t built to the same standard as the hotel.
We spent eight weeks with couples, planners and staff across three cities. Reply times ended up under an hour, and the modelling put the value of the change at around £3m.
Weddings are one of the group’s highest-margin segments. Couples spend heavily, book years ahead, and tell everyone they know about the day.
The first thing a couple experienced of Mandarin Oriental wasn’t the hotel. It was a web form, a wait of several days, then a templated email.
Enquiry forms captured too little to give a useful first reply
Planners worked from Excel sheets, static PDFs and email chains
The same questions were answered individually, again and again
Information lived in seperate inboxes rather than anywhere shared
Reply times went from several days to under an hour, with a member of staff still approving every response before it left.
Business modelling put a 10% uplift in wedding bookings at around £3m.
Only one of the four things we built was in the original brief. The research made the argument for the others, and the prototypes proved their value before anyone committed to building.
A mobile-first enquiry form that captures enough information to answer properly
A personalised portal for each couple, with their names and real wedding stories
An AI assistant trained on past enquiries and brand tone, with staff in control of every reply
A planner's portal replacing the spreadsheets and PDFs with one source of truth
01
Interviews in London with couples, wedding planners and hotel staff.
02
A survey across Hong Kong and Singapore, to separate London's problems from the group's.
03
Enquiry form, couples portal, AI assistant and planners portal, built to be tested rather than admired.
04
Couples, planners and staff, then iterated to balance impact against what could actually ship.
I love the idea of innovation and being fast to market, and that’s exactly what Thunk delivered. At the same time, what impressed us most was how this felt less like a surface-level innovation piece and more like a real digital transformation. The prototypes were fast, authentic and on-brand, while also pointing us towards a lasting shift in how we handle enquiries and workflows.
Peter Norris, Digital Global Vice President, Mandarin Oriental
A disciplined hunt for value — the structure to explore the unknown without the usual cost of getting it wrong.
1-hour (remote)
Bring us the thing everyone in your organisation disagrees about. We'll tell you what we'd do, whether that involves us or not.
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One day won't solve everything, but it'll tell you exactly where to start. 'Too many ideas' become one clear plan with the evidence to back it.