To answer the question in your post title Darren, the answer is: YES.

But don’t make the mistake of confusing accessibility and usability, they are 2 entirely different beasts.

I’ve been studying this field for over a year now and have been shocked by certain aspects ranging from boutique hotels’ obsession with designing their entire sites in Flash, to the lower end i.e. individual rental owners’ sites which are just plain baffling in their presentation and organisation.

With regard to the latter, there is a theory, though not one I hold, that the more amateurish your site looks the more effective it can be in persuading people to rent your holiday home. OK, fine, but do they really have to be that crap?

I’m still a fan of brochures, as I am of vinyl records, and just got my copy of Blakes Country Cottages for 2007. A far better experience leafing though that than clicking through their tedious website (sorry Blakes!)

Report this comment

mentioned on the original post, but here’s the results of a usability and accessbility test carried out for Travolution by the UK’s Royal National Institute for the Blind.

http://travolution.co.uk/Articles/2006/04/20/202/Travel+website+Roadtest+-+Accessibility.html

makes for interesting reading. and none of the eight sites tested came out covered in glory.

klm, ed, travo

Report this comment

Hi Darren

I published 3 papers on travel website usability “back in the days” – see http://www.tourcms.com/company/research/

They are free…. and used to crop up all over the place….

Pretty much defined best practice for hotel reservation websites (not resort hotels though, which are slightly different)

That was when Travel UCD was mainly an ecommerce consulting company focussed on usability and project management. Now we are a product company

Alex

Report this comment