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Hotel Deals on the Web? Not Exactly . . .
By ARTA President John Hawks
May 6th, 2003 - Ever had a client call up to brag about the fabulous
deal he just got at Hotels.com or another travel Web
site for his hotel room?
It turns out that's the exception, not the rule!
In April 2003, ConsumerWebWatch.org -- the Consumers
Union affiliate that works to investigate and improve the
quality of information on the Internet -- conducted a special
blind test of the major online hotel booking sites. Check
out these results:
1. In 130 different "queries" (booking requests), travel
agent systems and other online sites beat Hotels.com
99 times!
2. These sites "are quite intolerant when the user incorrectly
inputs information" (for example, "Four Points by Sheraton
St. Louis Downtown" versus "Four Points by Sheraton
Downtown St. Louis).
3. None of the online sites offered easy ways to obtain
the lowest rates during the very first search. In all cases,
users have to conduct more advanced searches to see
hotel rates listed lowest to highest.
4. Even the best site in the study (Travelocity) returned
the lowest rate only three times out of 10!
Here's the advice you should give your clients about
Hotels.com and other online travel sites:
They're great for "dreaming" and researching options
for your trip, but it's "buyer beware" when clients rely on
them for reservations. After they've had fun surfing the
Web for hotel ideas, you can take those ideas and
run them through your proprietary computer systems
(including special hotel rate programs like ABC Corporate
that are built on the collective buying
volume of agencies around the USA) to find the very
best deals.
And, now, it's not just your word against Hotels.com --
check out the complete study at this site:
www.consumerwebwatch.org
One interesting note: The study used Sabre as the
"benchmark" against which these hotel rates were
compared. Sabre didn't do so well this time out --
returning the lowest rate only 15 percent of the time!
However, the study correctly points out that this
poor showing "does not mean that travel agencies
have lost a competitive edge. Some travel agents
employ a variety of tools to find the best fares
and rates, both online and offline."
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