Blog homeTravelodge, a budget hotel chain, has launched a new website. Here are some quick facts:
- 87% of their bookings come directly via their website
- They have 330 hotels in the UK, Ireland and Spain
- The website attracts 500,000 visitors a week to the site
[Thanks Travolution!]
Apparently they have invested £1 million (2 million USD) into the website…… so lets take a look and see if they got good bang for their buck.
I am going to use a new style of website review…. because some have commented that I am always a bit negative! Well I would say that any company that wants to generate press coverage from a website relaunch and has spent a good amount of money should grin and bear it.
5 things I don’t like
Confused about the dash vs the colon
I would much prefer to see a colon : here rather than a dash…… The discount isn’t minus £4.05 but actually discounted to £4.05
They do use colons elsewhere in the booking engine - so not quite sure why they haven’t on the breakfast.
Do they really need to mention the word death in the first paragraph that everyone reads?
“Up to £500 cover for non-refundable room cancellation costs due to specified reasons, including: death, illness or injury, or if the vehicle you are travelling in breaks down or is directly involved in an accident.”
While it is great that they offer room cancellation insurance - I wonder whether these conditions could be hidden in a popup - or at least written less legally and in a more friendly way. Perhaps the copywriter who came up with “bag 10% off” could be used to improve the legal room cancellation cover text. Incidentally, on the “bag 10% off” - not sure this will be that well understood by people reading English as a non-native language.
Hidden help
They have a help “window”….. however I don’t like the way that some of the help is only visible when scrolled down.
I expect this looked great on a design mockup - when there were only 2 questions…. but when they came to build it they realised that actually there are more questions than space allowed for, and they didn’t want to break their voice bubble metaphor.
I would choose the top couple of questions - and then put a really big link to further questions. Certainly I wouldn’t leave it like this.
Checkout time
12 is a dangerous time to use on the web….. especially in 12 hour clock (rather than 24 hour clock) because it is easy to make a mistake.
I am fairly confident that Travelodge really mean checkout by 12 am (not 12 pm) but I am left wondering whether I am right or not!
Messy presentation
What is going on here?
[Firefox, PC]
5 things I do like
Mid way through booking - you can get back to it
If you are half way through a booking - you can get back to it from the homepage and some other non-transactional pages….. therefore if you leave your booking, perhaps to look up an answer to a question, you can come back to your current booking fairly conveniently.
However, this is broken (visually) in IE / PC
Almost full
I like the little gauge telling me that the hotel is almost full on the dates I have selected:
Mind you, I am wondering why the “night” has jumped a line. Looks like it needs a bit of a tidy up to make this more presentable.
Integrated Google maps
I like the way they have quite neatly integrated Google maps with their website. Its a pretty good job. However, it isn’t perfect…… if you follow the link from this promotional advert on the special offers page:
You find yourself here……. yeah - that map is helpful.
Nodcasts
Wow…… almost went to sleep listening to this one
http://www.travelodge.co.uk/whats_new/files/nodcasts/Stress.mp3
To quote “you are like a magician and your creative mind is all powerful…… on the right is the new you…. the dream you created earlier”…… Ummm…. .Thanks Travelodge - I needed that on a Monday morning.
Booking on behalf of another person
I like the way you can book on behalf of someone else. This situation has come up recently when booking on behalf of a colleague…. becomes very tricky on some websites.
However, on the “Add contact details” popup I don’t like the phrase “Enter any details you want for this contact”. What they really mean is complete any of the following fields……
Conclusion
On the plus side plenty of nice mapping and a fairly well considered booking process. However there is still a ton of sandpapering to do….. Looks to me that they have become too focussed on stuff that is sexy to talk about (mapping etc) - rather than the rather boring job of making sure all the tiny details are correct.
Worth 1 million GBP (2 million USD)? No. Not yet.
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Wow, thorough analysis! Great points all ’round.
Your point that using “12″ as the checkout time can be misunderstood is well taken…however, I think their 12pm time is correct. 12pm is the afternoon which makes sense…but the confusion simply reinforces your point.
Cheers,
Chris
Hi Chris,
Well spotted - I got that wrong didn’t I. And to think I used to work in hotel distribution!
Thanks. Alex
yes, 12pm is midday and 12am is midnight. Nevermind.
Also TL massively overbook. I was once turfed out after trying to check in at 2pm, telephoning 3 or 4 times to ensure they still had my room only to be told they were full when I eventually turned up at 6pm. I would never use them again. Premier Inn all the way
Has anyone come across any bugs in the new website? I’ve booked saver rooms that showed were available but when I clicked to book, the room in my basket is a higher priced one. Also trying to book two or more nights on a saver rate, only the first night goes in the basket at the saver rate, the remaining rooms are in the basket at the full flexible rate. If I want to book two or more consecutive saver nights I have to do them separately!
Also, when choosing a saver room if you don’t select the saver option it defaults to super saver and if your date is not 21 days or more it will silently ignore the date you entered. This caught me out and I ended up booking a room for a date when I’m out of the country instead of for the week before that I thought I was booking. TL are trying to charge me £5 to change this!!
And finally has the “processing…” screen hung when trying to mak a payment. This has happened to me on several occasions usually early in the morning (7-8a)