I definitely agree with your 3rd point, Darren. Some airline websites are good in this regard but some are absolutely hopeless and just tell you there’s no flight available when you want it, so you go searching for another date, get the same result, only to discover elsewhere that the flights are seasonal, or being cancelled, or whatever – I hate that =) I also despise the sneaky insurance checkboxes and the heavy advertising for hotels and cars when all I want is a flight, agreed there too.

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• Brain washing me into booking a hotel or car hire when I just want a flight ticket

Basically it’s “up-selling”. It’s much easier for the call centres to offer something on the phone without being intrusive, whereas on the web it’s difficult to get the balance right. I’m not against it so long as it’s not using popups or really in your face, as it’s offering a choice to the customer.

• Default ticked boxes for travel insurance

Again up-selling, trying to get consumers to take the travel company’s own insurance. So long as it’s clear and the customer is told it’s been enabled by default then it’s down to them to remove it. Personally I don’t like having these enabled by default!

• Letting me search for a period when the airline doesn’t bloody fly there

Not entirely sure on this one, but it’s likely to be a limitation of the website or reservation system. We implemented some changes to help with this last year, but haven’t carried them on to the search panel as yet!

• Entering a search criteria to go back and find it’s disappeared

No excuse for this. Every website (not just Travel) should remember a users search criteria. They’re missing a trick if they don’t! The developers need to sort that out!

• Having to search ABTA, ATOL etc rather than the logo clicking through to the members page

I’m sure it’s a requirement to have the various logos displayed on each page of the website (usually in the page footer). Might be worth talking to the various accreditation companies to see what each of their stands on it is!

• Links through to late deals from £100 which really cost £300

That’s naughty! Depends on the individual websites. It could be the cheapest deals have booked and nobody has changed the initial price, or it could be they’re doing it to pull you into that page deliberately (which you’re not allowed to do!)

• Not being able to search for a holiday for one person

Most places do allow this, it could be down to the contracts held with hotels as they may not allow single occupancy in their rooms (although most do for a couple of extra hundred pounds!).

• Not asking if any of the party are disabled

This is understandably an important subject, and the main restriction on this will be passing this information into the reservation system, and then subsequently on to the various suppliers of hotels, flights, transfers etc.

• Slow websites, flashing banners, and no help or support pages
• Holiday search switched off after midnight

I could write a seperate article these subjects alone!

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I agree Darren, all very annoying. I’m sick fed up of misleading price adverts, where the headline price bears no relation to the price you will actually have to pay. I wrote about this yesterday:
http://www.wandalust.com/50226711/sick_of_headline_cheap_fares.php

Also as you go through booking process and see the actual price zooming up you have to de-select all these option e.g. car hire, seat booking, fast boarding, that you don’t want.

By the final page you are totally scunnered (Scottish word for cheesed off) that you’ll pay 4 times the advertised price and you’ve had to spend time working out how to de-select all the options

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I think Darren has covered most of my annoyances. I think the worst design travel sites are airlines.

I hate scrolling through all of the crap.

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I won’t get too technical – but cookies are really the old way of doing it, there are a few other ways also. As I said, there’s no reason why they shouldn’t do it. It’s simple to do and makes a difference to customers!

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Great list, thank you for sharing.

I did a follow up to this conversation on my blog, submitting my own list of things that annoy me as well.

As I cannot find your trackback url, I will post the url here:

http://www.blogontravel.com/10-things-that-annoy-me-when-booking-holidays-online/

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Did you see that Opodo won a recent web usability test ?
http://jetvine.blogspot.com/2008/03/opodo-wins-usability-test.html

Most annoying for me is the one where you fill in the form, get one thing wrong or missing but you have to fill in the whole form again.

Most worrying for me is its the biggest and most profitable companies with the worst websites. How did they get there?!

I think airlines especially are overdoing the “upselling” by the time you have been forced to buy baggage and paid an extortionate credit card charge you will be much less likely to buy a hotel. Or ?

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Hi Darren,

Another great idea.

Have linked to this with a post on Jetvine here:
http://jetvine.blogspot.com/2008/04/annoying-airline-websites.html

& hotel jungle here :
http://hotel-review-guide.blogspot.com/2008/04/what-annoys-you-most-about-hotel.html

Will be interesting to collate the responses and see if there will be some comment from some of the travel companies

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-Slow websites, flashing banners, and no help or support pages

This is getting irritating for me, especially for my eyes! It hurts like hell and I would get headaches, they flood their page with flashing ads and pop ups. When you need help with something, a customer service link or email doesn’t even respond even after a week

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I booked on the EasyJet site a couple of months ago – I couldn’t believe how much rubbish they put into the booking pages trying to get you to book everything else. Made the pages really cluttered!!

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I agree with you about Easyjet; be careful though as Easyjet hides a whole load of crap in the middle of the page. You have to deselect the baggage charges and the travel insurance.

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I was just browsing through this and couldn’t help commenting here as I have been a victim of points 1,3 and 4 and believe me when I say they really make you angry to no extent. experienced the other few as well but didnt quite annoy me as much but oh well!

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Darren, could you elaborate on #1: “Brain washing me into booking a hotel or car hire when I just want a flight ticket” Do you mean the advetising that states something like, “you’ll save so much percent if you book services together?”

Also, while most of your gripes are self-explanatory, I’m curious as to what this means: “Not asking if any of the party are disabled” ??? Do you mean you want the option of automatically booking a hotel that is for handicapped?

While I admit I am develping a travel website, I feel posts like these really get to the issues. This will help me form a “fix” list. What we are trying to accomplish is offering enough options without it cluttering the site or it looking convoluted. There is a thin line between being a full service travel provider and having a cluttered site with all the flaws you mentioned. I will follow your post closely as it seems a good road-map for making a better site.

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