ORLANDO, Fla. -- The primary drawbacks to using an on-line
travel service are lack of usability, reliability, privacy -- and
speed, speed, speed. Other than that, they're great.
"Waiting for the pictures, you could die," said a member of a
focus group of 10 frequent travelers from New York, who were
videotaped for a presentation during PhoCusWright Live 97 here.
The travelers shared their opinions about the services they
reviewed: Biztravel.com, Expedia, Internet Travel Network, Preview
Travel and Travelocity. "I think it's at 65 now on a scale of one
to 100," said one participant, echoing the sentiments of the
others.
Here's a few of the observations the participants shared, some
of them sure to warm the hearts of travel agents:
* On confidence: "I want to know whom I'm dealing with ... I
want to call the travel agent and let her [take care of it]. I need
a live person who can go back into it, check something I did,
change it for me and be a backup."
* On the requirement to register before using the service: "Even
before you got started they wanted to know everything about you to
get in."
* On-line booking as work: "You're going to have to give me an
incentive to do this. They [the carriers] are benefiting because
they're not paying people . they're saving a lot of money this way.
So what do I get out of it?"
* On content: "They [on-line services] seem to have deals with
certain airlines . They always seem to prefer certain airlines, and
I have a feeling they're not really dealing a fair deck all the
time."
* On usability: "I was clicking, clicking, clicking, but it
wouldn't go anywhere."
* On speed: "Terrible." "So slow." "You just say, 'Forget it.'
"
Interestingly, the focus group did not reject the notion of
booking on line, despite members' criticisms. But they will wait
until they can participate in on-line commerce on their terms. So
now all the services have to do is make their products easy, cheap,
fast, familiar and reliable.