Lunnpoly.com

Review by Adrian Mann, owner of Adrian Mann Design, providing independent reviews and analysis of travel web sites in the UK.

One of the UK’s best-known travel brands. It’s a bold, simple design style, and superficially looks better in this incarnation than it has before.

Overall
The homepage is relatively simple, with the latest holiday deals prominently featured. The prioritisation of information works well – its Late Deals, Sun Holidays and flights that Lunn Poly are about. There are also links to the other areas of the site, such as villas, ski, cruises, city breaks, but these are tucked away on the left. The site is built using frames – the top holds the branding, phone number and ABTA/ATOL numbers, the bottom has the contact, registration, terms and conditions and so on, while the middle frame provides the content. There’s an empty white area at the bottom of this frame, which causes a scroll bar to appear, but there’s nothing to scroll down to – curious.

Content
If you go to Lunn Poly, it’s to book a holiday. The ‘Late Deals’ link takes you to a page of links to various deals, such as deals for this month and next month, ski and flight deals, and a Late Deals search, which requires the absolute minimum of input from the user – you can just click on the Search button and see what comes up, or you can enter date, destination, budget, party size if you wish. The results are returned quite quickly, and show a good selection of holidays from a wide range of operators – not just Thomson.

Results are shown 20 to a page, and if you see something you like, click on the price for more details. These are a bit basic, and the holiday can’t be booked on line, so there’s a phone number, and a shop finder where you can search the 800-plus Lunn Poly shops to find the closest one. Well, you could if it worked, but instead there’s an error message – “Could not open grid reference data” doesn’t help much.

For holidays other than Lates, there’s a more comprehensive search and booking process. ‘Agent Lisa’ is there to help with advice and comments, such as explaining that the items marked with a * are “the bits we really need”. Results come through quickly, and each has a ‘More Details’ button, which gives information on the resort and hotel such as flight details, facilities, room, board arrangements and special offers. There’s usually a selection of photos, and some have iPix 360-degree images.

The booking process consists of 8 steps, and Agent Lisa is there to help with simple descriptions and explanations of what’s needed. The price is calculated as you proceed through the process, which can be quite detailed and lengthy, as it includes options such as insurance, wine in the rooms, safety deposit box, fridge, low floor room etc. Make a mistake and Agent Lisa responds with a pithy comment such as “Sorry! 300: This person has already been allocated a room”. She also waits until you get to Step 5 before she checks whether you’ve registered and checked in with the site. If you haven’t, a pop-up window appears, and you have to enter your details before you can continue.

Resort and country information is displayed in uninspiring blocks of text, with maps and weather information for obscure destinations such as the Canary Islands being unavailable, and where there is a map, the text is sometimes so small it’s almost illegible.

Summary
It’s a nice looking site on the whole, and most of the bits work reasonably well, but if you want to book a holiday, make sure you’re not in a hurry. It has the feel of a site that’s been ‘got at’ by a committee who wanted to make sure absolutely everyone got their way, with the legal department having the final say. There are lots of petty annoyances – links to text which is important, such as ‘Terms and Conditions’, the privacy policy and security, appears in tiny white text on a pale blue background. Pop-ups and new windows appear for passport information, foreign exchange, detailed maps and registration, there’s a pop-up on the home page, and it’s easy to invoke the wrath of Agent Lisa. Logos are sprinkled about the site, there are acres of empty space where there’s no need.

It’s not all bad – the Agent Lisa idea is a good one, the overall build quality s good, and it has all the facilities and functions we’ve come to expect. But after using it for some time, the minor annoyances and quirks add up.