From an agent’s perspective, we have definitely seen an increase in the need for flexibility. So many of our bookings change at the last minute – that’s the world we live in today. I think when booking online, people expect the functionality to be there to allow you to amend a booking last minute but travel agent systems are only just catching up – the GDS themselves are legacy systems that are difficult to manage and complex changes to a booking can create havoc! A one on one relationship with a travel agent who has both online and offline functionality is the best way because then you can always speak to a human being to sort out changes.

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Tamara is spot on. Holidays are very complex in comparison to other industries in terms of completing a transaction online. There are often many different systems involved at varying levels of technology, and to create a website or system which can handle the many rules which are required to successfully book a holiday is difficult.

A relatively simple but effective example of how it can be difficult could be the Maldives. You want to provide a transfer option for the customer but it will need to be linked to their flight time as some transfer types don’t operate at certain times. You need to allow for people to retrieve baggage and get to their transfer – a human can look at the variables and say “ok, there would be 15 minutes to make the transfer” but a website can’t unless you tell it to. Similarly it might be 14 minutes to make the transfer, and a human can decide how critcal 1 minute is, based on experience, whereas the website can’t.

Believe me, we are trying to address these issues, but with every solution you think you have, more issues arise and it’s difficult trying to find a point to stop and implement something as you’re not giving the whole solution and it may frustrate people even more!

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Tamara your right, we noticed it to. Also your right about the systems now coming up on 40 years old. These systems came from BM times (before Microsoft) now in the modern everything talks to everything WA (windows age) they can not just cope…. with talking to a Microsoft program.

However Darren you made an interesting point, travel agents can do it so why can’t you do it online? Basically at the moment it just to impossible to program we hear shouted….. Not true after all the 4th largest ATOL holder in the UK does it, I know we use there system all the time as a appointed expedia agent, we also work with other major ABTA/ATOL companies that do nothing but this… where the problem comes is how the travel industry grew… we use to have a weeks or fortnight holiday so travel company’s sent a flight to XYZ on a Sunday so people could do this. Now people want 10 days but the only flight is a Sunday..so can not be done, there just is not enough people wanting to go to XYZ for more flights.

Ahhh but you shout but to ABC I can go what ever the day of the week I want, that shows if you put on the flights people will go… well no…. XYZ has 300 passenger weekly arrivals… ABC has 3000 and that was before daily flights came in, all it shows is more people want to go to ABC.

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@Nick – you are looking at it from an Agent point of view though. A direct customer needs as simple a process as is possible when booking. You use a system over and over again, then you come to know how it works and the limitations, whereas a direct customer hitting a website will leave if they become frustrated or find that there are barriers to the actions they want to take. We tend to approach our Agent websites differently to direct clients for the reason that Agents use them over and over again, and have knowledge to go alongside what they are seeing (eg. I know there is another flight available this day which is cheaper, why isn’t it showing? If I search just indirect flights maybe it will come back).

It depends on the holiday type also – multicentre flights would be far easier to present to a customer in a friendly manner than a multicentre holiday which includes transfers, flights, accommodation and excursions.

Impossible is not a word that is in my vocabulary It’s always possible, but it’s whether you do it for the sake of doing it or do it as close to properly as you can, to give the maximum benefits to the users.

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Hi Darren,

You asked what frustrates me when booking online ? Actually it can be when websites try to be too clever. I was on a Tenerife website recently trying to look at a holiday to Los Gigantes. The search form had been set up to automatically look for flights to Tenerife North for that resort, the thing is there are no longer any flights to TFN so they weren’t able to offer me anything unless I booked the hotel only and flights seperately. As you say, ATOL protection is important so I went elsewhere. This is just a small example of one of the 2 problems – 1 is that Travel is very intricate, lots of different suppliers, different systems, various third parties. 2 is that Travel is very dynamic, everything changes.

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@ Simon, I agree I do look at as an agent..However I am also a customer to most of the suppliers! At the end of the day it now been proved that the cost factor of selling via the web is a lot higher than first thought and close to other methods.

@ Darren, a tip for you or anyone else, ring an agent give them the details of what you want before you go and visit. Your experience goes to show what agents do, I taken 6 hours to put one quote together … this is where our experience comes in. The best computer is still the human brain.

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