Confusing Online Travel Booking Experience
By Darren Cronian on Thursday, March 29th, 2007

In 2004, I booked my trip around Australia with Travelbag, and was impressed with the knowledgeable travel agent that was assigned to my trip. Despite visiting six destinations in four weeks, the holiday went without any hiccups, and the hotels, flight times were just perfect.

Confusing Online Travel Booking Experience

Today, I was disappointed to find out that the high street shop where I had booked my trip has closed, and when visiting the website I became frustrated by the slow page loading speeds, and blank screens.

Then there’s the confusion of jumping from one travel brand to another. I choose hotels and was sent to Octopustravel, I chose travel insurance and was sent to insurebookers, thank god I don’t want to hire a car because I would of been sent to carbookers

Isn’t booking online in the comfort of your home supposed to be easy and enjoyable?


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12 responses to “Confusing Online Travel Booking Experience”

Kevin May | 29 March, 2007 at 8:12 pm

TravelBag, the subject from your screen shot, seems to be working fine now, Darren.

FYI: You may know that the reason you have been sent to those particular travel brands is that they are all owned by TravelPort. The US-based company also owns Orbitz and Ebookers.

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Darren Cronian | 29 March, 2007 at 8:47 pm

Kev, it seems they have too many travel brands, which can only cause confusion amongst consumers.

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Charles | 30 March, 2007 at 12:08 am

Did I read correctly that ebookers received a Google ban for linking brands last year?

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Darren Cronian | 30 March, 2007 at 12:19 am

Charles, do you mean this blog post?

I don’t think it was a problem with linking brands, it was linking international versions of the same ebookers site on the same IP range [sorry for the nerdyness] and when they linked the sites together this meant that Google knocked out alot of pages from it’s search engine because it thought they were trying to cheat the system.

But getting back on topic ;) Do you think this will cause confusion amongst consumers Charles? Booking a holiday online is supposed to be uncomplicated.

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Lost Traveler | 30 March, 2007 at 2:39 am

Looks like it’s time to go back to some of those great web sites you’ve suggested in the past like SideStep. The small travel agencies are slowly becoming obsolete with the amount of online choices consumers have (Or so it seems). At least you got the car hire you were looking for.

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Kevin May | 30 March, 2007 at 6:59 am

Ebookers has since sorted out its SEO – confirmed in November 2006.

i’m not sure if having lots of brands causes confusion. The reason why hotels and flights are seperate, for example, for some brands, is to avoid the messy issue of bonding.

why is it complcated to book a holiday with one site, and then buy insurance with another? do you buy all your groceries from one supermarket, and never sneak down the newsagent for a pint of milk?

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Guillaume | 30 March, 2007 at 7:26 am

Consolidation will prevent this confusion Darren! You have to be patient a bit.

But what exactly do you want? Being able to book everything through one player only or book car+hotel+flight witth 3 different providers/suppliers (and play the cautious rule of not putting your eggs in the same basket).

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Darren Cronian | 30 March, 2007 at 9:41 am

Forget your own knowledge of the internet and travel nd imagine a consumer visiting a site. I’m not sure what patience has anything to with it, but if I was a consumer I’d be baffled why I am taken to three different sites when I want to book the holiday and services with the same company.

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Darren Cronian | 30 March, 2007 at 10:01 am

and to add, if I was a consumer looking to book my hotel, flight and insurance separately that’s fine, but I’m a consumer trying to book my entire holiday with travel bag, which is obviously not possible.

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Lee Harrison (owner Select World Travel) | 30 March, 2007 at 10:28 am

You could always try our On-line form, Darren, Leave your details in less than 5 Minutes, Let us do all of the searching and come up with a Spectacular Tailor made option, whilst you sip a Cup of Great Yorkshire Tea whilst dreaming of What life is going to be like watching Leeds Utd in Div 2.

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Darren Cronian | 30 March, 2007 at 12:31 pm

Lee, I liked that idea until you mentioned Leeds Utd in division 2 [it'll actually be division 1!] :P

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Annie | 1 April, 2007 at 1:59 pm

Hi Darren, funny you should mention travelbag, we asked for a quote online and its 10 days and we’ve yet to receive a response from them. I’ll go to the travel agent in the high street and get the quote personally.

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