Overall there is a disappointing level of DP flexibility online in the top websites. Saying that the main three websites that stood out were WebJet, Expedia and Qantas, which all offered DP flexibility. WebJet and Expedia are slightly ahead of Qantas as they also offer a good range of Extras in the booking path.
The other interesting website was STA Travel which was the only one (as far as I could see) operating a shopping basket system, where a customer could search for a flight then add to the basket, then search for a hotel and again add to the basket. The basket could then be checked out and booked as one single booking. Despite the problems of the shopping basket system not being clear to the user it is a good system.
The rest of the websites in the list were pretty much all the same, had flights, hotels and offered fixed packages.
The only two negatives that I would highlight are Lastminute.com.au which at the time of doing this exercise its website wasn’t working properly and I couldn’t get any flight results and the other was Escape Travel which doesn’t seem to offer real time booking of flights.
Qantas v Air New Zealand – I though that I would give this a mention, when comparing the functionality between these two national carriers the main difference between the two is Air New Zealand offers Extras in the booking path which makes it a better experience (and probably more profitable).
The results are below of the top ten Australian travel websites covered.
If you can't see this table you can link to it at http://www.edwhiting.com/auswebsites.jpg
List of Links:
http://www.webjet.com.au/
http://www.flightcentre.com.au/
http://www.lastminute.com.au/
http://www.expedia.com.au/
http://www.bestflights.com.au/
http://www.travel.com.au/
http://www.escapetravel.com.au/
http://www.zuji.com.au/
http://www.qantas.com.au/
http://www.statravel.com.au/
1 comments:
Thanks Ed, great post.
We are looking to cater for people who are flexible with dates and destination (in other words, want bargain, will travel). Our site is called Impulsifly,
it's still early days but I think we are on the right track in addressing a functionality gap, in particular with uni students and young professionals.
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