For years, I’ve looked at the online travel space and wondered why — Why does it have to be so hard? Why does it have to be so confusing? Why is no one making more of an effort to give customers a better experience? It seems that I’m not the only one who’s noticed and the online travel market is experiencing an overdue renaissance of innovation. In this article, I look at the principles that are driving this new wave of online travel start-ups.
Online travel is not user friendly.
On this point, it’s hard to decide where to begin. Should I talk first about the clunky, slow interfaces? Or should I discuss the undifferentiated data sets? How about the confusing information architecture and the disconnect between flights, hotels and destination information? Regardless of which of those issues you find to be the most compelling, the point remains: Booking travel online is, almost without exception, a chore. Even worse, online travel sites don’t make it easy to find the optimal choice for your needs. Many times, at the end of an online booking experience, the customer is left with the feeling “well, that’s OK, I guess…” That’s not a buying experience people treasure. People want to feel like they have found a great fit for their needs and that they got it at a fair price. Taking this further, a great travel site should help customers discover new things and find great deals – that’s one of the key ways that a traditional travel agent adds value. Customers should be able to get the same benefits from their online travel agent (OTA).
Online travel sites exhibit poor aesthetics.
Sorry to sound harsh, but let’s face it: There are some really ugly stumps in that particular woodpile. Though there are some notable exceptions (Wanderfly and Jetsetter come to mind), the general rule in online travel today is crowded interfaces with visual overload in full effect.
What happened to clean, simple design, with appropriate white space? It’s great that you have a lot of inventory, and some wonderful packages to share, but you don’t have to try to get it all on every page of your site! In the words of the late Braun design guru, Deiter Rams: “Good design is aesthetic. The aesthetic quality of a product is integral to its usefulness because products we use every day affect our person and our well-being.” Though you may not use an online travel site every day, the principle holds true. When people book a trip online, they have to juggle a fair amount of information and are subjected to a certain amount of stress — be it time stress, money stress, or simply the tyranny of too many choices. The aesthetic environment in which the search and booking process occurs should mitigate that stress, not increase it. Life’s too short for ugly, hard to use sites.
Online travel tech is stale.
http requests… call and response… open another window… wait… and wait some more… <yawn>
The tech we see on travel sites today has not changed significantly in a decade. Fill in a form, click a button, wait; see a page of results, click, and wait some more. God forbid you want to filter the search results or go back and change your search query! Top that off with the fact that the website behaves nothing like app they’ve built for your iPhone/iPad/Android device. Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate that these are complex systems crunching large amounts of data, and I am 100% confident that there are bright minds working on the dev teams at leading sites. Sadly though, corporate imperatives dictate that those same bright minds are burdened with legacy infrastructure which often represents a considerable investment.
The problem here is that the legacy architecture is married to old school interaction with browsers. The only genuine solution is a fresh approach that relies on more current technologies. Online technologies and client/server interact have changed radically in recent years. jQuery, long call architectures, responsive design, and cloud infrastructure support all mean that things can be done better today — if you have the luxury of taking a fresh run at the problem without having to drag along behind you the deadweight of your previous architecture.
(And don’t even get us start about the dead-end trap of building apps in addition to owning a website! Apps are great, but let’s face it: Booking travel online is about realtime transactions and you have to have a connection to the supplier to transact. If you have to be online with the supplier to do anything, an app adds very little value.)
Online travel sites are focused on the sellers, not the buyers.
All of the points made above are really symptomatic of a dynamic that has taken hold in the online travel industry, that is, the suppliers have too much power and are abusing the privilege of controlling the customer experience. The suppliers are feeding the customers exactly what they want them to see, in the format they want them to use. We’ve all been on sites that have ridiculous numbers of clicks to perform even basic tasks — these clicks are the suppliers building up page views or trying to get another bite at the apple to try to cross-sell or up-sell their customers. Part of the problem here is that many online travel agencies are heavily reliant on advertising revenue and, as a result, have a vested interest in feeding visitors page views. Some sites even accept incentives to feature certain inventory providers over others, thereby denying users the transparency they need to make informed buying decisions. The net result is that convenience for the user has taken a backseat to the hard sell.
These guys need to wake up: By definition, online travel sites are middlemen. Middlemen exist to provide access to hard-to-find items and to simplify complex tasks. In a world where motivated consumers can always go directly to the suppliers, middlemen exist only as long as the consumers tolerate them. The hard sell is out. Speed, simplicity, transparency and service are in.
The market is ready for better tools.
The rise of sites like Wanderfly and Hipmunk show clearly that people are welcoming innovation and disruption in the travel supply space. Yet, while both Wanderfly and Hipmunk are interesting, let’s face it, they have their share of flaws and do not address all the issues that plague online travel today. Despite their shortcomings, both companies have generated significant venture capital, public interest and media buzz.
Clearly, the market is open to the idea of doing online travel differently and welcomes the chance to do it better. Moreover, there is a budding generation of online travel consumers who expect something different. The Gen Ys and the Millenials out there have been weaned on mobile; they increasingly expect app-like experiences, even when browsing the web. Click and wait is out. Don’t load another page, dammit, show me what I want, right here, right now!
In sum…
We live in a world where online travel has been commoditized and the customer experience delivered by the major OTAs is largely undifferentiated. As a result, OTAs have largely been reduced to competing on price. Given that there’s little difference between OTA A and OTA B, it’s no wonder that consumers exhibit little brand loyalty and are willing to change suppliers for only a few dollars in price differential. When you attend travel industry trade shows, one of the laments you hear again and again is how consumers have no loyalty. Frankly, we’re not surprised. Most OTAs give consumers slim, if any, reason to prefer their brand over their competitors.
Of course, I recognize the role competitive pricing plays in this market, but to think that it is ONLY about price is just plain misguided. From my perspective, these price wars are nothing but a race to the bottom. I encourage suppliers to prefer the higher road. Better service, better tools, and providing customers with a pleasant place where they can do business with confidence are how you add value to the online travel space.
There are reasons why the online travel industry is where it is today. Part of it is reliance on old technologies. Part of it is simply sales-driven organizations dictating design. Part of it is fear of upsetting the apple cart. (Let’s face it — when all your competitors do things the same way you do, you tend to be reluctant to change out of fear that your users will seek the shelter of familiarity on your competitors’ website.) Those may be valid corporate reasons for not wanting to change your existing formula, but that failure to act leaves room in the market for upstarts who are not burdened by those same concerns; room for people who are willing to take a fresh approach to addressing the underlying problems.
It’s time to step back and look at this with fresh eyes – the elephant is right there in the room for everyone to see. The market is ripe for startups that can deliver to consumers a better way to discover and buy travel online.
About the author
Ric Shreves is the founder of GottaGetaway (http://gottagetaway.com), an online travel start-up based in Singapore. He’s also a long time travel-technophile and the author of a number of books on open source technology. He blogs at http://blog.gottagetaway.com, where he writes about travel, tech and the start-up experience. You can find his personal site at http://RicShreves.net and his Twitter account @ricoflan.
Link to full article
Inspired by the recent Mashable post on how cofounders met, we at e27 will be doing a weekly cofounder series for startups in Singapore. Too many times I’ve come across people who are constantly looking for cofounders. Through these series of “How do Cofounders Meet”, we hope that it would benefit the community and provide some insights as to how do successful cofounders in Singapore find each other. We will speak with startups to discover how they met, where their idea came from and why they decided to take the plunge together.
