How ICT change hotel room reservation services
Introduction
In the past, in order for consumers to get room reservation at hotels either locally or abroad they have a few options. The consumer can call up the hotel personally to make a room reservation. However, this leads to the individual making many calls to each possible hotel in search of the right price for the consumer and this is not including the fact that if the hotel has the room availability. Furthermore, if the consumer is making a hotel reservation overseas the calls charges are also incurred by the consumer in search of the suitable hotel to stay in. The next alternative would be to go through a transaction broker namely a tourism agency where they offer a service to making the calls to the hotel and reserving a room for the consumer. This method would seem efficient as the tour agency is able to give the room charges beforehand as they have deal with several hotels before and eliminate the need to call them up again to inquire their room charges. However, there is still a problem of inflexibility where the tour agencies may only have a small selection of hotels to choose from which may not suit the consumer's preferences. In addition, the tour agency might require the consumer to purchase a tour package in order to have them provide the service of making a room reservation and this might not seem popular to consumers who prefer to tour the country on their own.
With advances of technology, with the focus of the world wide web. The role of the e-commerce transaction broker was created where a company uses Internet technology to provide a service between a consumer to one or more companies. It acts as a middle man between the consumer and the hotels in helping ease the process of making a hotel room reservation. These websites will provide a wider range of hotels ranging from every price range for the consumer to choose from in order to help the consumer to make a more informed choice. Furthermore, there are numerous different websites for the consumer to choose from and they offer different regions of hotels in the country thus having their own niche in the market. In this report we will be looking at only a few sites where we can see the similarities and differences of the features that they offer to their customers in order to entice them to make a reservation using their service. The sites that we would be looking into will be Agoda, Ctrip and Travelocity.
Advantages and Disadvantages
Not only do these websites sport a user friendly interface but also provide more than 1 language for the consumer to choose. In addition to that, these websites also provide a 24 hour customer service on different communication channels namely telephone, online chat, email and regular mail. This allows the customer to choose which mode they would like to communicate in with regard to their urgency on needing the query answered. By having these channels covered the sites are able to provide a better support to the customer which complements the already user friendly By doing so this would give the consumer a smooth hotel reservation process with minimal fuss and in the language they are comfortable in.
All three websites also provide a secure payment system where all personal information customer provide is transmitted using SSL (Secure Socket Layer) encryption. SSL is a proven coding system that lets Internet browsers automatically encrypt, or scramble, data before sending to the website for processing. This will put consumers' minds at ease by providing a safe and secure transaction between consumer and transaction broker. For example, Agoda Company Pte Ltd are also accredited members of both the International Air Transport Association (IATA) and the Pacific Asia Travel Association (PATA), lending them further credibility. It also has a tie up with VeriSign, further assurance to customers that their site, and any transactions that will take place are secure.
Although these websites provide almost similar process in making a hotel room reservation, they provide further features which help to attract customers to use their service instead of other competitors. One similar feature which is evident in the 3 sites is that they have a system which entices customers to come back to use their service again in the form of a points reward system. This can give discounts on their next reservation with the hotel of the customer's choice. For example, Travelocity provides a credit card which is tied to their service. Not only does the site already have points reward system but by applying or using the credit cards, the customer is able to obtain even more points which will result in even greater savings.
Another feature which these sites provide with the exception of Agoda is that the site provides an additional service of flight reservations. By doing so this gives the customer a one stop location to make their travel arrangements and accommodation through a single website which is easier to keep track by having to deal with only one transaction broker. Furthermore, Travelocity and Ctrip also act as a travel agency where they provide travel packages to customers which boosts the one stop location even more. This way the customer can plan their whole overseas vacation in a shorter amount of time by selecting the package they prefer. Travelocity diversifies into different modes of transport to attract even more customers , such transports ranges from flights, ship cruises to trains and cars.
However one can ask the question on why Agoda does not provide such services where competitors such as Ctrip and Travelocity provide. It can be said that each site is practicing their own core competency where they concentrate to improve the services which they excel in. This way they can carve a niche in the customer base and secure a portion of the Internet transaction broker market. For example, Ctrip's core competency is providing cheap hotel room rates in the country of China which they are very confident in. This can be seen in the fact that they have a lowest rates guarantee where if a customer were to find a rate which is cheaper than what they offer, the site will refund the customer triple the difference between the lower rate and the rate they provide. Another example of Travelocity would be that they have sister companies namely lastminute.com and zuji.com which serve the Europe and Asia Pacific regions predominantly. They even boast of choices from 63,000 hotels around the world, spanning low cost to luxury lodging.
Although there are many advantages to using such Internet transaction brokers to make hotel room reservations. There will bound to have some disadvantages in using such service. By using the site Complaints Board, we are able to search out specific problems which have been experienced by previous customers in accordance to the site in question. In the case of both Agoda and Travelocity, cases such as hidden fees are being complained, having a poor customer service even though the infrastructure has already been laid down and in the case of Travelocity there are cases of the site making a wrong flight booking which was not rectified. Unfortunately there are currently no complaints found for Ctrip on the site which also further makes us think of another problem. The problem would be that the complaints that are being put up by previous customers are those who bother to take the time and put up their terrible experience with the site. This does not account for those that had a bad experience but have no intention to share with others on the Internet. Furthermore, if the customer were to be a novice Internet user he might not even be aware of the site Complaints Board and would not be able to review the sites which they are going to deal for themselves or having an avenue to share their negative experience with the hotel reservations sites.
Conclusion
In conclusion, despite the obvious advantages that information communication technology brings, there are also certain problems and challenges. Some hotels may be ill-equipped in terms of their infrastructure to handle the strategic business changes that is demanded by the introduction of these information systems. An organization whose technological infrastructure is not in line with its organizations goals may end up compromising its efficiency. As such the hotels need to invest in information communication technology that align themselves with the organization’s goals in order to fully utilize and harness their potential.
