I personally can’t stand sites that don’t have at least a pop-up calendar.

Aside from that, most sites are not taking advantage of technology to help users work around booking issues such as unavailable flights, delays, and layover options.

Did you email them your complaint? They may not even realize the problem. Or maybe it was tested for the year following the launch, but not for any year.

You’ll be surprised how many websites don’t save your search options. I choose a specific period, but there’s no availability, so when I go back to the search I have to choose everything again!! Quite annoying.

FoxNomad - you make an interesting point there about sites not taking advantage of availabile technology.

I think perhaps that the large “dot coms” were rather hoping that their (massive) investments in technology would give them a clear advantage over supliers (airlines, hotels, tour operators) - however recently customers have moved to booking with airlines and hotels etc direct

These systems do not have the same level of investment as the big dot coms - so won’t have such a well refined user experience (except in a few situations). However, booking direct tends to offer consumers the best products, the best information and also a single, clear, channel for post booking customer support - which is worth the extra hassle of a less well developed website.

Like Rohan I hate sites that don’t remember what you have searched when you go back to the search engine.

If this happens I just go elsewhere.

I spend loads of time looking at travel websites and really don’t like those forms which you spend hours filling in information and after a long wait they say they’ve got nothing on the day you want. Then when you hit back it’s cleared all the info you’ve put in. I know flights determine holiday start dates but sometimes you’re left wondering whether these companies want to sel you a holiday or not. I think some are still very geared up to phone enquiries. This will slowly change, but until companies are happy selling online the irritations will continue. Why don’t they offer close alternative dates that would be available?

I’m taking a lot of interest in this discussion, so keep the comments coming!

When I joined where I currently work, there were no clickable calendars on any of the sites - it was all dropdowns. One of the first things I implemented was the calendar as I couldn’t believe there wasn’t one already.

We also make sure we save all search criteria, and pre-populate the search panel wherever we possibly can.

We’ve just implemented “site search” functionlity to try and aid customers in getting to what they want as quickly as they can, and it’s also producing stats on what people are looking for so that we can further improve the way the site works for customers.

It’s true that the smaller companies, hotels etc. don’t have the same functionality, but it’s for various reasons, the main two being: money/cost and lack of understanding!

it’s not that easy. quite a number of travel agent sites get their feeds from third party suppliers, therefore their holiday / hotel / flight search engine is only as good, as the provider one.
as for a matter of smaller v bigger companies - again it all depends on the back office system they use. some systems are just nightmare to customize. and this is not solely travel industry problem, but hey… one day

I use one or two hotel booking sites, when looking for hotels in London and Edinburgh which is where our offices are based.

I’d like to save my search so I don’t have spend time searching for hotels in the same destinations, and simply click a button to find available hotels

I think the problem with the search is cookies isn’t it?

You can create cookies that store the data you last searched for, this saving the holidaymaker time in future.

The downside is that people nowadays feel the need to delete their cookies regularly.

You would think you could choose your flight seat with the technology thats available, why don’t airlines offer this?

I realise if you book way in advance that would be difficult.

The comments about calendars are interesting. You would assume that people would expect to think about dates in a calendar format.

In the past when user testing calendar interaction that people can find the mechanics of pop-up windows confusing. Users also take a while to orient themselves on the calendar because all they are thinking about is the one date they want to go on holiday, and yet the calendar opens on *a totally irrelevant date*.

Given this cognitive leap, sometimes just putting in the date & month/year you want is a simpler solution.
It’s also has some traction because this is exactly what all the other travel sites are using and therefore what people expect.

@Diane: “Why don’t they offer close alternative dates that would be available?”
Simple answer - because the data is hard to get out of their legacy reservation systems and onto the web, and the computing power to search the data is expensive, especially at peak times like January.

In addition, and what underlies many of the common usability problems with the web and particularly in travel, companies are not all that aware of what people actually want to do on their websites.