Lost bookings through usability issues - assorted rants!

I read with interest the news, via Travolution, that Thomson Holidays have “fixed” £1.5 million (3 million USD) worth of “lost bookings” after having identified issues with their website. It makes a good headline - but I am not convinced that this is a real number.

• This number is probably generated, internally, from a ROI metric rather than actual bookings. From my experience at working with large travel companies every development has to have an ROI calculation - and when you can’t think of one (as it is a minor usability tweak) you devise an ROI return value that would at least cover the development cost of making the change. Although ideally the ROI metric should match actual expectation…. often it doesn’t…..  
• Can they be sure that an abandoned transaction wasn’t just a “channel” abandonment - as with these large, multi-channel, companies - it could just be that the customer has booked over the phone in the end (rather than not booking at all with their company)

Anyway, the principle is sound - evaluating abandonment (and tweaking design to address these issues) can have a positive benefit to transaction volume (and reduce strain on call centres). I am not arguing with the principle - just how the headline number is calculated before being published as “fact”.

Which brings me to another area…… here is an email I received today from a senior industry insider….

Blimey, booking a hotel on line is very difficult. I say this tongue in cheek to some extent, because I have some years experience in hotel technology and web distribution.

So with some disappointment I find The Lygon Arms website has no availability. Knowing a little about contracting/yielding etc, I check an aggregator. Superbreak are top in Google. They have availability but at something approaching Rack.

So i call the chain central res office. They say on the phone they DO have availability and some good rates. Why after a decade of web distribution is the hotel industry such a shambles!?!?!?!?

I tried another well known country house hotel last night. The web booking engine crashed, so I couldn’t get rates. Its supplied by a mainstream PMS supplier.  Yet the hotel owner… and they must be turning over say £15-20m… think so little of their customer facing property (web) that they serve up the drivel I saw last night. I am sure this property invest hugely in their property (physical) and yet they don’t appreciate that before a customer can get to be physical… they are increasingly virtual and need to be wowed by their online service

Would they have a really amazing bar, and restaurant, and rooms, but leave the front office with no plaster on the walls, a bare screed floor and cement mixer standing  in the corner? i don’t think so.

Web front ends should be checked, polished, and attended to as diligently as front offices

This week we have had rants, reviews and a bit of strategy. What do you want me to write about?

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