Archives for "On-line Travel"
3 questions for Heathrow’s website. Any answers?
How does website design reflect customer priorities?
On Saturday I drove from Zürich to a small village in the Swiss countryside, about 50 minutes away. The temperature was about –10 degrees, and it was snowing steadily with a thin covering of white stuff on the motorway. After a pleasant dinner I dusted about 2cm of snow off the car and drove home again, with many other motorists and without drama or incident.The next morning the temperature was –15 degrees and I drove the same car (not a 4×4) up and down a mountain. Apart from the view there was little to write home about.At the same time the trains have been punctual and planes have been taking off as normal.
Tomorrow I will fly to London Heathrow and, it seems, that despite slightly milder weather the planes, trains and automobiles are having difficulty in keeping things together. This is an oft commented phenomena, but it leads my to an example of web design that hints at a common corporate problem which does no favours to companies, or their consumers, and particularly to travellers in this case.
Three questions for consideration
Have a look at the this screenshot from Heathrow Airport’s website this morning
1. Does the website answer the exam question “Can I get home or away?” What does “some disruption” mean? Delays, cancelations, inconvenience? What exactly?
2. What is the communication priority of this website considering the placement and design of the different messages? Shopping, or information for customers?
3. Does this website reflect a company that is focused on getting people from A to B as effectively as possible, or a company that wants to screw as many £ as possible out of a captive audience?
Am I being too harsh and reading too much in to things? Or is this a fair reflection of that fact that many corporations focus on priorities that suit them instead of the customer, don’t understand customer service, and don’t understand how to deliver it via the web?
Update
Following my journey, here is my latest Twitter post:
Time required to fly from Zürich to UK: 1hr10min. Time for luggage to be delivered to baggage hall: 1hr45mins. Heathrow is a national disgrace.
Seriously. And excuses about Christmas peaks and weather don’t wash since they have shown so many times previously that they can also screw it up on a good day..
Why is the on-line booking experience so poor, so often?
the familiar topic of Online Travel Booking Frustration is discussed in a post on Travel Rants Today
This topic always makes our ears prick up since it is one of the main drivers for Offer Me aTrip’s formation.
Companies make enormous investments in marketing, PR and brand building. They do this because they want us to like them, they want us to buy their product, and after that they want us to come back and buy again.
Sadly, and all too often, this investment rapidly comes to naught as customers hit a brick wall half way through an on-line purchase, or as they struggle with impenetrable functionality, or grapple with some other confounding corporate behaviour. We’ve all scratched our heads far too frequently as we try to decipher an error message, wonder why a drop-down box is blank, end up in the same place that we started, or try to comprehend some strange on-line corporate policy.
It must be run by morons
Apart from physically inhibiting sales and negating all that expensive marketing, poor on-line design can leave customer with the impression that the company doesn’t care and lead them to the conclusion that it must be run by morons. Which says nothing for the product.
Having frequently been frustrated by poor on-line experiences, ensuring that Offer Me aTrip provides a simple, effective, enjoyable and hassle free user experiences has been our core aim since starting the project. In truth we’ve spent rather too much time so far in obsessing over this – but we think it is time well spent. We also think it is time we will continue to spend and a goal we will continue to chase.
With that in mind, we much enjoyed a blog post by Dustin Curtis, calling out American Airlines in an open letter for their “horrific” on-line experience.
I’m a user interface designer. I travel sometimes. Recently, I had the horrific displeasure of booking a flight on your website, aa.com. The experience was so bad that I vowed never to fly your airline again. But before we part ways, I have some questions and two suggestions for you.
Dustin’s post is a great read – highly recommended. But it gets better. A ‘user experience’ architect from American wrote a fascinatingly candid email under the pseudonym of Mr X, providing an all too familiar insight into the organisational and managerial issues which lead to such experiences (I say familiar, because anybody who has worked in a large organisation will have some similar experience).
So obviously the story ends happily with American Airlines using the experience to learn and improve, making huge amounts of profit in the process.
Um, no. Mr X was promptly fired.
Never mind
In a new post, Mr X talks of an example where a firm deliberately tries to obfuscate the customer for financial gain, undermining an expensive branding effort. I recall a similar experience with a telecoms firm whilst discussing implementation of a contract cancellation policy. It started well enough: we should let customers cancel contracts early in certain circumstances where it would have been unreasonable for us to insist on completing the duration. But it ended badly: we should not make this process easy or obvious.
My view was, and still is, that alienating a customer for the sake of a hundred pounds makes poor business sense looking at how much is spent on acquiring customers in the first place (usually much much more).
It is amazing how many companies just can’t get past the simple equation: good will spend – bad will stupidity = profit. In the meantime, this is a great opportunity for us and we look forwards to watching our customers judge us on it.
The Human Element in On-Line Travel
And why we think it’s important
In a world where the Internet is constantly innovating in order to automate the transfer and availability of knowledge, why are we investing in developing a web-site which requires human beings to deliver travel offers to customers? Isn’t the idea of Offer Me a Trip which relies on traditional Travel Agents somewhat incompatible with the Facebook age?
We don’t think so. Simply because, for the time being at leas,t human results will always be better.
Amazing as the web has become – possibilities such as scanning dozens of flight offers, reading the views of other travellers, getting direct recommendations on activities, meeting travellers with similar interests and many others were previously unimaginable – all this information in all its richness still needs triangulation and processing to place it into a useful context for each individual traveller.
Until either artificial intelligence takes a significant leap forwards, or individuals become willing to spend vast and increasing amounts of their time on travel research (although we recognise that many are and that Offer Me aTrip won’t be for them) then the human element in the form of a Travel Agent’s expertise will remain the fastest and most accurate way to determine the best way to make one of the biggest financial and time investments of a typical consumer’s year.
Web 1.0 was all about connecting information. Web 2.0 is about connecting people. Offer Me aTrip is about connecting consumers with human experts who provide value – a value in the form of Travel Agent expertise which has been somewhat overlooked in the rush to put travel online. That’s why we think the human element is important, and we can’t wait to put it back!
Image courtesy of victoriapeckham via flickr under a creative commons licence.
UPDATE: Social Media in Travel is a Waste Of Time
But not a complete waste of time
In my last post I suggested that social media might be a complete waste of time in the travel industry. However, reading the post again this morning I realise that I’ve failed to make a very important distinction: that between sales and branding.
I maintain my contention that social media is a poor travel sales medium, although what I didn’t talk about was its power as a banding tool: As the world becomes increasingly tried of faceless corporations, the ability to join the customer conversation is crucial – although enough has been written of that elsewhere.
Nonetheless, the point remains that most ‘social media managers’ fail to understand this difference.
I was re-awakened to this fact this morning whilst reading a blog post by Dennis Schaal lamenting Continental Airlines’ “old school” approach to public relations. Dennis writes:
What does this impersonal, legalistic tweet, brimming with marketing-speak, actually tell Continental customers about the airline’s approach to customer service and passenger rights?
With that I’ll revise the closing sentence of my last post: Social media is a great way to help manage your brand and your relationships with customers, but too often it is instead used as a poor sales method.
Is Social Media In The Travel Business A Complete Waste of Time?
The future of travel sales, or the latest bandwagon?
There is a huge amount of talk about the importance of social media in travel, just as there is about the importance of social media in pretty much everything. But is social media really something that can work in travel, or is it just the latest bandwagon?
My scepticism stems from the fact that travel selection is based on a set of very personal preferences rather than single products with wide appeal. I’m pretty sure that my idea of a holiday is different to that of the majority of my social contacts in some way or another. Frankly I don’t care if John enjoyed his trip to Egypt, or if somebody on Trip Advisor didn’t like the hotel I’m looking at. Travel preferences are based on such a wide variety of reference points that personal recommendations carry very little currency.
The second problem is the social media works best where there is a unique and valuable message to be carried and shared. Unfortunately for the average travel provider these messages are either very rare, or clichéd and spammy.
I’d be genuinely surprised if anybody has ever seen something on a social network that lead them to actually make a significant travel purchase?
This may change as marketers begin to properly understand how social media actually works, and as many so-called social media consultants and managers begin to understand what social media actually is. At the same time, there are some great social travel ideas out there which may mature prove me completely wrong.
Meanwhile the majority of social media travel campaigns appear to be futile at best and spam at worst. Social media is a great way to brand and sell many many products, but not travel.
What do you think?
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