Darren,

I’d be interested in participating in a forum to exchange ideas, etc.

Mark

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Hi Darren – I’d love to participate in a forum. At Smith we are about to undertake a new project in redesigning our search functionality – creating a place where people can search for inspiration and plan their trip. We have a clean sheet from which to work so a forum like this is exactly what I need right now!

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Darren,

Great idea. I’m up for it mate.

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Hi Darren
One problem is that if this was *easy* it wouldn’t be difficult (!)
I am not sure I have time to be involved in a “total” discussion – but happy to spend time thinking about individual elements over time.
Cheers. Alex

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The idea is great, but… don’t we all have this sad experience that pretty sites convert worse than ugly and straightforward ones?

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Hi Darren
You could always start a discussion on SFBO – http://www.smallfishbigocean.com
If you didn’t want to go to the full extent of starting a discussion area on this blog
Cheers. Alex

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I would participate also. We’re in the process of working on a new booking path for our sites, which in a private scenario I would be prepared to talk about and would be very interested in receiving feedback on.

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@ Darren
The word you are looking for is “clear” not “simple”. Booking travel is complex – therefore companies strive for clarity…. not simplicity.
Only a thought
Alex

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Hey Darren -

I’d be up for participating as well, particularly regarding search and comparison. I think the “clear” versus “ugly” versus “simple” mini-debate already shows there’s plenty to discuss!

Pete

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hey Darren, I work for a fairly major online company and I would love to be involved. Let me know when and where, I’d love to pass on great ideas.

Graham

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Hi Darren, I coordinate a European Commission funded project called i-Travel (www.i-travelproject.com) which is looking at developing a context aware travel assistant which would merge all stages of the planning, searching for deals, booking, rebooking if delayed or flights cancelled, finding the best travel mode into a single software package that sits on your mobile phone. We would love to hear the needs and requests of users in developing easier travel.

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Hi Darren,

As a relatively frequent single traveller, I’ve enjoyed your site for a long time now and would be happy to participate as a consumer if you think I could be helpful. I use the Internet to book all components of my trips.

Ann

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Darren we had a fantastic time in Sri Lanka I am going to upload my photos to your Flickr photograph group at the weekend. As you know I have been a long time reader of your site and would love to participate as a consumer who uses the internet to book holidays.

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Yup, sorry about this folks. There is already an excellent place you can go. Never crashes, you can interact with it at will, has no technology start up costs, it comes with the latest “eye contact reality visualisation effect”, realtime communication functionality and er….., it’s free….It’s called a Travel Agency. They have been doing it ever since Mr Thomas Cook said, “Do you think I could sell any of these coach tickets?”

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Yep I think that a forum would be a great idea. As an online holiday retailer we would love to hear what conusmers want from their online travel companies. I know that as an industry we have let consumers down for some time now. Too many of us just stick a flight or hotel search engine on our site and think we cater for the customer.

Flight and holiday engines only cater for the consumer who knows exactly where and when they want to go. What about the 8 hours of research that often preceeds that? How can we help make that as painless as possible? Booking a holiday should be an enjoyable experience. The first 30 minutes is, then it turns into a chore as you get bogged down in researching rainfall, sunshine, hotel facilities, transfer times, flight times, prices etc… As I have said on another post we are developing a holidayfinder tool which hopefully cuts out a lot of the pain but I am sure views from a forum could really help us to improve the tool no end.

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Hi Darren,
LOL@your comment to Murray. Can’t agree more. I worked in a retail travel agency in AUS for 4 years, managing a branch for 2, and saw the trends at the front line of Australia’s largest travel company. Any ‘easy’ bookings, point to point fares, domestic packages etc and ‘easy’ clients, the ones you enjoyed booking and were friendly and laid back, all went to the web. This left only those people are make you want to poke yourself in the eye with a pen everytime someone mentions their name or those that, even worse, would book everything online but come to you to fix their mistakes or to issue something they couldn’t work out on the web. These people didn’t even realize how insulting that was. So, I decided to do something about it and carve into the niche of around the world airfares and are soon to launch our own Aussie site dedicated to planning around the world trips. I’m keen to thrash out any ideas on a forum and will hopefully comment on a post soon so we could get some feedback on the site.

Regards
Mark Trim
Director, RoundAbout Travel

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