Comments on: 10 things that annoy me when booking holidays online

By: Vacation Rentals

Vacation Rentals — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 05:31:01 +0000

The issues that you have described are mostly technical. Currently these booking engines don’t do much to update their system before they get the final confirmation of booking. they have lot of affiliates that generate sales for them and to update all that information in runtime cannot simple for all the travel related websites out there as they don’t have the infrastructure.

By: Jim Clark

Jim Clark — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 16:34:24 +0000

Thanks for the list, useful, holidays are more stress than relaxing thats the problem these days!

By: Eugene

Eugene — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 08:02:16 +0000

I am looking for some idea and stumble upon your posting decide to wish you Thanks. Eugene

By: Graham

Graham — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 23:10:07 +0000

time outs would be a security issue. Availability depends on how many booking agents the allotment is offered too. Blame the gds

By: Travel Advisor

Travel Advisor — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 08:48:52 +0000

Comment has been moderated.

By: Pokin

Pokin — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 01:59:03 +0000

Great list! I really hate the timeout issue. That’s happened so many times when I’ve put in all my details, flight times, picked seats and all of that stuff then I hit submit and the thing times out. AARRGH!

The other one that bugs me a lot is when you get an email with an advertised price - $99 or something and I have yet to ever be able to figure out how to create an itinerary that even close to that low fare. If that at least give you something that can be used as a starting point. Throw your customers a bone!

By: Syl

Syl — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 08:29:53 +0000

@Tana: Hi there. It simply means that there are still websites that use query forms, calendars, booking engines, that are not fully compatible with firefox. A classic: You cannot choose your dates from the calendar because you use firefox. Now that FF recently broke a world record of downloads, there has been enough buzz to remind to every webmasters (and every deciders) that websites should designed for FF too.

@Jaal: Interesting issue about websites selling at different rates according to the origin of the client. I did not know it is a current practice in India. Does it mean that an Indian b2c site will recognize the client according to its IP and will show a different price because of its IP being outside of India?

@Alex Ander: Thank you.

By: Tana

Tana — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 03:10:55 +0000

Hi, Sylvain!

I was wondering about #4, “Not being able to use a booking engine with Firefox!”
What do you mean? Booking engines that don’t look good or function properly on firefox? Or are you thinking about some kind of search engine that could be integrated to your browser -just like those from Amazon, eBay, etc?

Excellent blog!

Cheers from Buenos Aires!

Tana

By: Jack

Jack — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 12:37:07 +0000

I know it’s hard to find specials during the Holidays, I find the best times are a month or 2 after school starts.

By: Jaal

Jaal — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 14:57:03 +0000

Differentiation in Rates based on Nationality … is an issue for Online Travel Portal / Systems !!!!

For Nationality making reservation online from portal which are not allowed to make reservation for them or based on difference in rates as per Nationality of Booker,

I will seek your reply and suggestions on my below queries / comments :
1) If the entire transaction would have been different, I mean if a Indian client had bought a Hotel on Middle East Market Rates (higher then Asian), than would the hotel have refunded them money on check out ???
2) How do we control reservation, if a foreign national working in India books his vacation through an Indian Travel Portal (having Indian credit card) ????
3) How do we control reservation of Indian Corporate booking their employee or consultant, who is working in India but is a Foreign national through their regular travel agent in India ???? Since, company has to make payments, they will book through their regular contracted travel agent only, than in such case who needs to pay the difference ???

How do we control / avoid such reservation ????