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.

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Diane, slightly offtopic but I’m a little worried about your site, selling holidays under £100 yet you have links to 4 and 5 star hotels?

Simon, good to see some companies are listening to consumers.

Jodie, I think your right, that you can store a cookie with the last searched data, and the cookie can be automatically deleted in say 48 hours.

Rohan, can you not book your seat on most airlines online prior to your departure? You can with BMI anyway, because I did it recently.

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

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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.

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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

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