Leading travel sites “not as good as Amazon five years ago”

Travel websites – particularly those in the UK – receive a hammering in a new study by management consulting firm Shelley Taylor & Associates. The report called Click-Here Commerce: Online Travel looked at a total 46 online travel sites including 17 from the UK along with 22 from North America, six from Europe and one other. The worst five sites were all found to be British. From worst they were Flybe, Ryanair, Bridge the World, Holiday Autos and Travel Bag. Meanwhile the top five sites were all American. Top of the list was Expedia followed by Travelocity, Hilton, Orbitz and Continental Airlines. Ms Taylor told TravelMole that even the top five sites were not as good as they should and could be. She said: “The travel sites we looked at were not even near where Amazon was five years ago. It’s like they [travel websites] are living in their own bubble and do not want to grow up.” When asked what Amazon was doing that travel websites are not, Ms Taylor pointed to factors such as personalisation – welcoming users back to the site; keeping records of customers’ previous purchases and making recommendations; having a number of paths to the same information; and making things very easy to find despite the fact they have a vast array of products and services. She said that one problem could be that travel companies were “incestuous” and were recruiting from within the industry, rather than looking outside to get a “fresh perspective”. And she added that there was too much focus on price, when this was not the only factor that customers were interested in. In the travel agency category Expedia topped the list while bottom was Travelbag. For hotels Hilton (US) came out first while Italian site Venere.com was bottom. Continental and Flybe were best and worst respectively in the airline section, while in the car rental category Hertz (UK) came out top, with Holiday Autos bottom of the category. Interestingly the no frills carriers occupied most of the bottom rungs in the airline category despite the fact that the internet accounts for the vast majority of their bookings. EasyJet was positioned 9th out of a total 13, Southwest came out in 11th place followed by Ryanair and Flybe. According to the study they “risk losing customers as other airlines compete on price and already have much richer content and better sites.” Also in the airline category, British Airways came in for criticism for requiring that travellers have billing addresses that match the country of departure. The study pointed out that, for example, this made it “virtually impossible” for a traveller from the UK or America who wishes to start their travel in France to use the BA website. Other criticisms included the fact that many sites featured no specific paths for business travellers and only 13 of the 46 sites featured language choices on the home page. Ms Taylor pointed out that the research had focused on what were seen to be the leading internet sites, commenting that “these are not the worst, some of them are so bad.” The sites were studied between October and December using over 800 criteria including site navigation, the home page, pre-sale assistance, travel resources, utilities, the booking engine, product path, checkout, post-transaction communication and account management. For more information see www.infofarm.com