
Years ago someone had the great idea to let people pick they’re destination, price and dates on their own. Remeber how it used to be? You had to go to a travel agent and spend some time making decisions on best price and dates for your trip. And the price advertise wasn’t necessarily available. And maybe there were no tickets for those dates.
It was faster, though. You took less time to decide unless you went price shopping, in which case it would have been extremely time consuming.
Now you can check prices online, pick your airline, hotel, date, room, you name it. You can even tell this sites that you’re flexible on dates and they will offer your alternative pricing. Plus you can track certain packages and be notified when the price drops.
Super crazy competition. The consumer (or user) has the power… kind of.
So it was a big boom back then, but now not much has changed. While a lot of other online services keep getting better (interfaces, new social features, richer content) the travel booking sites got stuck.
The Travel industry is not the most forward thinking. This boom they had in the early 2000 (or late 90’s) was because of Expedia and all those crazy big guys who made the push. But it didn’t came from the travel industry, it came from the technology industry which found a hole there. The travel industry had to catch up.
Now no one seems to be interested in it anymore. It seems.
Forms are lengthy and annoying. Difficult to fill, no Ajax, no helpful hints or things to make your life easier. Forms are long and the process is tedious. Most of them have redundant fields (you get asked the same thing more than once). The search results themselves are nothing to call home about.
All this takes me to the most important stuff which is where this industry fails: customer service.
They are horrible! They can disguise their sites with bells and whistles, but that will never change. The whole travel industry is, and has always been, a mess. They have fees for every single extra feature you would like, and they will charge you for every single change you ask for after you booked something. They will never ever waive anything, and they lay the law as if they were God.
On top of that, travelling is uncomfortable, most flight attendants now a days are rude and airplane food (if you get any) sucks. So until you get to where you have to go, you won’t enjoy yourself. And sometimes, even when you get there, the reservation was wrong or you never got there in the first place because the flight was cancelled.
When any of these set-backs occur, the travel industry does the least possible, or worse, they get defensive.
How can you run a business treating people like that?
Well, you can’t. That’s why most Airlines and Carriers are almost broke and this industry is so fragile. They blame it on the economy, rising gas prices, etc… But the fact of the matter is that people only travel when they really need it because the “travel” process is not exactly a great experience.