Comparing Hotel Booking Websites: A Functional Essay.

Discuss about the Comparison of Website Functionalities.

At present, the use of the internet technology has changed the way of conducting the business operations of the organizations. Maximum of the people of the present world are dependent on the internet for the hotel booking purpose. The online hotel booking services are helping a lot to select and book the hotels efficiently. In this project the websites of the hotel booking sites will be analyzed and compared. The business segment selected for the report is the hotel sector. The hotel booking websites will be compared and analyzed regarding their efficiencies. The websites are using for promoting the hotel business as well as conduction the business operations like booking, payment etc. Three hotel booking websites have been selected for analyzing the functionalities of the websites of those hotels.

Some parameters have been set for the comparison among the three websites chosen for this particular project. The analyses of the comparison based on the parameters are given in the section below:

Information Content:

The availability and reliability of the information in the websites are the main factors of attracting the customers towards the services of the hotels. The users of the websites are using the websites for fetching the relevant information regarding the hotels around the world. The three hotel booking websites are good enough form the perspectives of the information contents of the sites. All the sites have the details about the locations of the hotels, price, discounts and other facilities available in the hotels. Cheapoair.com has the main focus in the area of the cost of the rents of the hotels. However, all the other relevant information regarding the hotels is also available in this site. The main demand of the customers is the value for money while finding a hotel. These sites are able to provide the facilities of values provided by the hotels against the money spent by the customers. No irrelevant information is given in the websites. All the three sites have photos of the hotels, rooms, interior, exterior designs and other facilities available in the hotels. Regarding the relevancy of the information about the hotels, the customers should get the latest updates in the websites regarding the hotels. In this area also, all the three websites are very efficient. There is no delay in the updates regarding any types of new modifications or changes in the hotels showed in the websites. Trivago.com shows a result of the price of a hotel in different booking partners. The users are able to select the most affordable one.

Information Content

The main aim of the hotel booking websites is too attract and engage the customers at their site. In order to do that, they are offering very attractive web design and lots of attractive photos in the websites. The cheapoair and trivago.com has the main focus in the area of the best price hotels for the customers. They are trying to provide the results of hotel search at the best price. The users are also able to sort their results as per their own choices. Besides these, the sites are also providing some discount offers and customer loyalty offers for the valuable customers. While talking about the discount offers, the trivago.com is the best one to attract the customers through the discount at their website.

The first thing to attract the visitors towards a website is the visual appearances of the web site. It is about the attractive designs, images used at the pages of the site and the other visual effects of the sites. The three websites chosen for this research study have been compared with respect to the visual appearances. The visual appearances of all the three sites are very attractive, but the homepage of hotels.com is very attractive with beautiful photos at the background of the pages. The background images are set with the locations searched by the users. The images are changes at the time of entering the location in which the users are trying to find the hotels. The option of selecting the desired country by the users is also very attractive in the hotels.com website.

Figure 1: country selection in hotels.com

While considering the navigation facilities of the three websites, the name of the hotels.com will be the first one. This is the only one website, which can tract the location of the users. The users can just click on the location sign at beside the search panel of the website for finding the hotels near the current location of the user.

Figure 2: Location tracing service in hotels.com

All the three websites had been using excellent multimedia images for making their website look good. The use of high quality of images had helped in making the appearance of these websites more attractive and usable. The websites are easy to be explored and there are various options that had made it accessible for the users to access them. The tabs had been used for making the accessing of various options of the websites comfortable for the users. The websites had been formed with simple and attractive appearances with highlighted sections for best offers and deals.

User empowerment

The accessing of information does not require payment of any amount of money in the websites. Only some information like date, destination, departing airport, number of passengers should have to be provided for faster searching of the required flights available from the location on the day. Similarly the location of the hotel, check in and checkout day and number of persons should be entered at the hotel websites. However for booking any hotel or flight tickets from hotels.com or Trivago and cheapoair, it is required for paying online using payment options like credit card or debit card. The websites have privacy policy that entrusts the customers and website users that their information and data provided would not be used for any illegal purpose and only for the mentioned booking purpose. The website had a disclaimer tick in option in which the user would declare that he/she had provided the information to the website and they had not forged information from anywhere.

Now let’s discuss about the main fact of the website. The business segment selected in this research project is the hotel booking through the online platform. The booking system of the three sites are good enough, but as per the user ratings and reviews, the hotels.com is the most popular one among the three. In the second position, there is trivago.com and cheapoair.com is in the third position in booking hotels across the whole world. The In this context, the efficiency of the booking portal of the websites is the most important factor of the sites. The designs of the booking systems of the three selected websites are given in the screenshots given in the section below.

Figure 3: Booking system in cheapoair.com

Figure 4: Booking system in hotels.com

Figure 5: Booking system in trivago.com

While discussing about the technical support, the first important point is the system log in response time. In this context, all the three websites are efficient enough. The response time for the system log in of the users can not be differentiated from each other of the three sites. All the sites are able to respond to the users very quickly.

Support in different types of web browsers is the second important fact regarding the technical support of the websites. The websites are efficiently performing in the web browsers Internet explorer, Google chrome, Mozila Firefox and Opera. The websites are responsive websites i.e., they are able to be handled efficiently through the use of mobile devices.

Visual Appearances

Another important aspect of the websites’ technical support is the availability of the websites with respect to the time and place. All the three websites are accessible from anywhere across the whole world at any time. The web servers are always available for the users.

Organization of the web content:

The organizations of the web content of the websites are good of the websites. The details about the background of the web site companies are available in the about us section of the websites. All the three websites have separate pages for separate sections.

After analysing the different factors of the three hotel booking websites, it has been found that the visual appearance and relevant information should be present in the website for engaging the target customers. The name of the website is also a big factor for the website for hotel booking. In this project, cheapoair.com is mainly a website for booking flights. However, the hotel booking is one of the main business lines of the website. It is recommended for the company to develop a separate website for hotel booking system.

Information updates in the websites is also very important for the hotel booking sites. The hotels are getting modified and the rates of the hotels also may different over the seasons or occasions. These updates should be always available in a hotel booking website.

Another major recommendation for the entire hotel booking site is the responsive design of the websites. At present maximum of the internet users use mobile devices for surfing the internet and visit the websites. Therefore, all the hotel booking websites should be supported by the mobile device web browsers.

An ideal hotel booking website has all the details about the background of the company, background details of the hotels, photos of the hotels, photos of the interior designs, photos of the exterior designs and the pricing details of the hotels. In case of different types of facilities available in a single hotel, the details regarding the breakups of different services should also be given in the website.

Conclusion:

As per the analysis of the project, it has been found that the most popular hotel booking website is the hotels.com. It has been found that availability of the relevant information, technical facilities, designs of the web pages, designs of the booking portal all are the important factors of a hotel booking website. All the important factors of the websites chosen for the project have been analyzed in this project report and some recommendations are given for the hotel booking sites. The recommendations have been given for attracting and engaging the customers to the services pf the websites with superior level of customer oriented services.

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