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Why We’re Unhappy With Travel Booking Sites

Posted by Kaleel Sakakeeny on April 8, 2011 at 2:00am
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To most, “travel agent” means the company on the corner with a couple of big glass windows, lots of fading brochures lying around and inside, a faint whiff of yesterday.

But the term “Travel Agent” also refers to giants like Expedia, Travelocity, Orbitz, Thomas Cook, AAA and lots of others, referred to as OTA, or Online Travel Agents.

And while a recent survey by econsultancy, a digital marketing company, confirmed that 85% of travelers use the web or the Internet to research and book vacations, they found that customers are not as satisfied with the on line booking experience as they want to be.

It seems the designs and back end data bases do not support actual, real-life behaviors of the traveler.

Or as Hotelmarketing.com put it web-based travel agents “need to be able to match more real world situations more closely.”

It seems poor online content and inflexible booking engines are the chief complaint of the online-booking traveler, often driving him or her back to the traditional “bricks and mortar” travel agent.

One client in the test tried to book a family trip to Jamaica. Despite changing the budget limits, dates and resort options, he was continually met with “an error message and zero results.”

Econsultancy notes, that If this played out between a traveler and a human travel agent, the exchange would go like this:

Customer: “Do you have any vacations in resort A for Budget X, please?”

Travel Agent: “Sorry, no.“

Customer: “OK, how abut vacations in Resort B for Budget X?”

Travel Agent: “Sorry. No.”

Customer: “How about budget Y on these dates?”

Travel Agent: “Ah, no.”

And so on

For online booking engines and travel agents to be able to serve real world requests and not just data-driven options, they have to learn some part of the following:

• Have the capacity to show a vacation package. For example, how about displaying a vacation choice that may be a hundred bucks or so above the amount entered?  A human travel agent can do this.

• Offer travel options. Searching for a Family Travel vacation should provide a range of choices, defining “family”: Parents and teens? Grandparents? Older children?

Don’t assume “family travel” means two parents and 1.5 kids. Online date bases have to be more flexible. Traditional travel agents are.

• Web-based results need to be more detailed in terms of room descriptions.

• For reasons none of us really understands, flight pricing fluctuates considerably, thanks to complex algorithms. Online travel agencies must be able to be more upfront about this, be more helpfully predictive so travelers don’t have to keep coming back for repeat searches.

Basically, travelers who use the web to make travel plans are asking for more options and a human reality check.

They want more flexibility and want the weight of the data to work for the traveler, not against him or her.

In essence, they want the responsiveness of a real travel agent and, as one reader commented, an Amazon or ebay-like set of alternative and “recently viewed” options.

Not too much to ask, we think.

Tags: AAA, Expedia, Orbitz, booking engines, resorts, travel agents, travel booking engines, travel web sites-
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Comments

  • Travel Rob April 21, 2011 at 6:53pm
    In response to Kat Morgenstern-I think a lot of small hotels need that supply of customers that some online booking companies provide.It's a way for them to compete against the bigger chains on the same site..It gives them instant credibility.
    I also think it's good for the customer because those hotels are concerned about the review score they get.
  • Kat Morgenstern April 21, 2011 at 6:10pm
    One factor that is often overlooked when discussing the pros and cons of online travel booking is that fact that when using an online booking engine you are engaging in a transaction with a machine, which may or may not work correctly (danger of double bookings or reservations that got lost in cyberspace and never actually registered with the hotel). One can't ask for any extras - room out to the back or away from the kitchen etc, and most importantly, there is no support network if anything goes wrong. Of course that is not a problem while things work out the way they should, but the moment something goes wrong or one isn't happy with the hotel for whatever reason or wants to change something, usually one just has to eat one's losses when booking through an engine, while a real agent has a local network that offers support to the traveler, 24hours a day if need be. If I use a booking agent I call the hotel to verify that my booking has gone through and ask whatever questions I have directly. So, what does the booking engine do? It gives me a better rate - but at the cost of the hotel owner. I don't care about that when booking at a multinational chain hotel, but small family enterprises suffer from booking engines in the same way as small farmers do from the buying power of supermarkets, even if they get more business.
  • Travel Rob April 21, 2011 at 3:33pm

    I used to always book hotels and apartments direct when going to Europe.In the last few years, I have used

    Pricelines booking.com and couldn't be happier.The reviews are real,unlike some at Trip Advisor because

    the person only can give the review after staying at the place.The prices are really competetive and one can't

    beat the search features.Thats one online booking site that's really done a great job. As for Airfares, one really

    needs to check a lot of places these days. The aggregators like Momondo  have done better than the OTA's but other sites like Airfarewatchdog have been pretty good at finding some bargain fares.

  • Kaleel Sakakeeny April 20, 2011 at 11:04pm

    Well, those are very kind and appreciated words,  Allie (if I may). Thank you very much.

    Sometime we end up accepting with wisdom what we rejected in ignorance, perhaps the human travel agent?

    best wishes,

    Kaleel

  • Allie McCoy April 20, 2011 at 9:29pm
    This is a rare and precious article, Mr. Sakakeeny, because it does not assume that my preference for a live agent must indicate that I am merely old-fashioned.
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