Online Holiday Booking Closed After Midnight
By Darren Cronian on Thursday, September 6th, 2007

It’s just gone 1am, and most normal people are in bed fast asleep, but I can’t sleep because I need to organise my holiday for October. Time is running out, the travel agencies are shut, but thankfully, I have the wonderful internet to search for holidays.


Click to view full screenshot.

If it was only that easy.

My first port of call is Thomson because they have been advertising a lot of TV, and I love the fact I can watch videos of the resorts, which inspires me. So, I do a very basic search for the 16 October, for 7 nights, and I am flexible, 7 days either side of the departure date.

I then select 1 room, and 1 adult, from Manchester to anywhere in Spain. I get a message saying, sorry, we couldn’t find any holidays matching your requirements, so I try 2 adults, and get the same message –so according to Thomson they don’t have any holidays in Spain around the 16 October.


Click to view full screenshot.

I then take a visit to LateDeals.co.uk

It’s a nice looking website, I put in my search criteria, and then to my amazement I receive a message saying they only take online bookings between 8am and 12am. What happened to 24-hour internet, did I miss something?


Click to view full screenshot.

Amazed I toddle off to Thomas Cook

It appears that the Thomas Cook website has had makeover, and looks good, so I complete another basic holiday search, flying from Manchester, to the Balearic Islands, for 7 nights, and I am flexible to 2 days either side of the departure date.

Click search and ….

Sorry, we are unable to complete your search. So I try Costa Blanca, same message, any Greek Island, same result. Argh. I just want to book a holiday. Am I expecting too much? Am I searching incorrectly - what a pain in the arse the internet can be sometimes.


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10 responses to “Online Holiday Booking Closed After Midnight”

Alex | 6 September, 2007 at 8:53 am

Hi,

I explained this problem a couple of months back on a post I published on my blog.

Travel systems can be too big

In summary, the travel companies are recalculating their sale prices for the next day’s trading…… using the same computers as those that run their websites and booking systems during the day

Alex

Darren Cronian | 6 September, 2007 at 9:21 am

Imagine, if Google stopped providing results because they were refreshing their data servers!

I’m not a techie, and I understand that travel companies have to update their websites, but maybe a nicer message to inform you that this is the reason why you cannot find a holiday would be mmuch more user friendly.

Lee Harrison (owner Select World Travel) | 6 September, 2007 at 12:58 pm

There’s always us Darren !!!!

Nathan | 6 September, 2007 at 2:24 pm

If Google had the same level of computing power as most travel companies that’s most likely what *would* happen!

I don’t know much about this stuff, so Alex’s post made very interesting reading - if the service outage is unavoidable then it’s really a question of managing expectations, as you say Darren (’maybe a nicer message to inform you that this is the reason you cannot find a holiday…’).

Bob | 6 September, 2007 at 2:35 pm

You should have used Cheapholidays.com, they never close for online bookings and their offices are open from 8am to 10pm..

Darren Cronian | 6 September, 2007 at 6:44 pm

Lee, I filled in your form, oh at the beginning of July sometime, but never heard anything back! :)

Nathan, my comment on Google was tongue in cheek, but it could be much more user friendly. Okay, not everyone is mad about booking holidays in the early hours, but that’s one of the main advantage of booking online!

Bob, I would hope that a travel company wouldn’t be unprofessional and spam a blog ;)

Darren Cronian | 6 September, 2007 at 6:47 pm

Update:

I ran a quick search on all three sites and the search results were just about instant, which is good, but no good when I want to search for holidays at all different hours of the day.

I wonder how much these companies loose through not allowing holidays to be booked online 24 hours a day?

Alex | 6 September, 2007 at 7:38 pm

Darren,
Websites lose very little direct “actual” bookings by not being open at 2 am or whatever…..(unless the website targets international customers)….. The companies you have mentioned are selling 99.9% to UK. (I think)

However, if the website doesn’t show availability or can’t be searched - then they can lose a great deal of future bookings - because search engine spiders will often miss many pages or products…. and spiders can come at any time day or night. (and then their search engine rankings are impacted)

Therefore sites that close at night really need the “closed” sign to be at the beginning of the booking process (not when the user first hits the site)…. which then upsets users - because users say “but you let us browse but not buy”…..

Also, as these systems are only recalculating prices on available holidays…. at different times of the year that are different levels of availability in their systems (because new future seasons won’t have been loaded)…. so the “closed” time will be different over the course of the year…..

Alex

Rich | 7 September, 2007 at 3:56 am

I work in Oman, but have family back home in England.

Funnilly enough I had the same problem last month whilst searching for a family holiday and put it down to the fact that I hadn’t searched properly, so I asked the wife to search for me instead - which she did successfully.

Darren Cronian | 7 September, 2007 at 6:07 pm

Alex, I take your points and I agree, but think as a consumer. I go on to abc travel website and try and make a search which would possibly lead to a booking. I have problems with the website concerned and head off frustrated.

Do you think I am going to use that website every again?

Do you think I am going to refer my friends to that website again?

In the case of these sites, I’ll visit them again because of the brand, but if it was a smaller agency or company, I’d probably never visit the site again.

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