Booking Travel Online May Be Less Convenient
June 23rd, 2009
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Author: The Internet may be struggling, but the $17 billion online travel business is still growing -- rising to 7% of the total travel market from 5% last year. But is it getting any easier to use? I tried something that even the most adventuresome Web surfers avoid: booking an entire vacation on the Web. And I mean everything, from theater tickets to hotel facials. My goal: Never to pick up the phone.
My result? I picked up the phone. A lot.
Don't get me wrong. In some ways, e-travel has advanced remarkably in the past year, offering everything from four-minute videos of hotel bathrooms to $25-a-day car rentals on the spur of the
And that dog park? I found that because it was on one Web site's "Top 20" list of things not to miss in Palm Springs -- along with an air-conditioned bus tour of celebrities' homes and a golf museum (featuring balls that date back to the 1800s).
Such problems may be one reason the online travel business, while growing, is nowhere near as big as the industry once hoped. Too many travelers have been frustrated by false promises of $199 suites overlooking Central Park, or are simply too afraid to make costly purchases that vacations often involve (how about that $99,000 space-travel package, billed as the "ultimate ride"?). According to Forrester Research Inc., of Cambridge, Mass., less than 30% of households online actually made any travel bookings this year. Travel Web sites "just aren't user-friendly," says Henry Harteveldt, an analyst there.
Even Terry Jones, the CEO of Travelocity.com (www.travelocity.com), one of the nation's biggest travel Web sites, says he called a travel agent before he went on a vacation to Morocco. And he'd do it again. "We can't sell you everything," he says. "The Internet isn't for exotic destinations and complex trips."
My trip wasn't exactly exotic. Nor was it very complex: With my husband and eight-month-old son, I planned to fly from Portland, Ore., to Los Angeles for a big-city weekend with my brother-in-law, then drive to Palm Springs for some rest and relaxation. Never did I dream that just booking my flight would take a week -- longer than my whole trip.
From the start, I discovered that Web sites that offer air fares seem to specialize in asking the same questions, over and over again: flight times, flight dates, departure cities, arrival cities. Three times I tried the well-known online bidding site, Priceline.com (Priceline.com), and three times it rejected me within three minutes, shooting back e-mails saying "sorry" to my progressively higher bids. ("Sorry, we couldn't get you a ticket," says a Priceline.com spokesman.) Combine that with the distractions so many of these new jazzy sites now have (click on a picture of Hawaii and you end up reading about the habits of manta rays), and four days later, you'll still be at the computer with no tickets.
Ultimately, I would try a handful of sites that specialize in last-minute "bargains" -- as well as those "e-saver" fares airlines release just before the travel dates. But I wasn't flexible enough on my departure times. Defeated, I logged onto the Alaska Airlines site and paid $475 each, not exactly the rock-bottom bargain of my dreams.
At least my flight existed. Chris and Whitney Chandor, of Pineville, Pa., weren't so lucky. They booked first-class tickets for $900 each for a long weekend in the Bahamas last March on Travelocity.com. When the Chandors arrived at the airport, they were told US Airways had canceled their flight a month earlier without bothering to tell them. "If they had called us, we would have been able to help," says a Travelocity.com spokesman. A US Airways spokesman wouldn't comment on an individual case, but says it is the airline's responsibility to notify travelers about changes. Instead of fishing in the Bahamas with friends, the Chandors spent hours arguing with desk agents and airline managers -- to say nothing about that cold weekend at a second-rate B&B in Maryland.
"My vacation was ruined," says Mr. Chandor, who vows never to book an electronic ticket again, though US Airways eventually did give the couple new, free tickets. He'll go with the "human element" next time, he says, via the old-fashioned telephone.
For my "phoneless" vacation, the surfing was surprisingly smoother on the hotel front. I had no problems, for example, arranging my appointment for a facial on one hotel Web site -- which I could do even before reserving a room there. It also took me just minutes to snare a room online at Los Angeles' swank Hotel Bel-Air. There, via e-mail, a friendly concierge found me a baby sitter and promised to have a crib waiting in our room. "We will take care of it," he wrote.
Promises, promises. When we arrived at the Bel-Air at 1 a.m. -- late flight, hour-long wait in the Avis line at LAX (making the idea of "virtual" travel more appealing) -- there was no crib in the room, so I had to call the front desk. (Because I came in so late, the hotel must have thought I was a no-show, a spokeswoman says.) Reservations for all kinds of travel arrangements made on the Web sometimes don't materialize, either because of simple human error -- or worse, says Phillip McKee, assistant director of Internet Fraud for the National Consumer's League. "Just because you make a reservation online doesn't mean you should rely on it being there," he says. "Calling to make sure will save a lot of heartache."
And maybe it wasn't because I booked my room on the Internet, but I was given the smallest room in the whole hotel. (I know this for certain, because it just so happens I wrote a story last year about the smallest rooms in hotels, and the one I was assigned this time is the same one I measured for that story.) We complained, and got a bigger room -- at 3 a.m.
The next morning, while my husband was lounging by the pool, I was hooking up my laptop inside the hotel room, anxious to see if the request I made through the "Culture Finder Ticket Butler" on Digitalcity.com (Digitalcity.com) had been filled. Crisis: The show (a concert with Audra McDonald) was cancelled. I asked about alternatives, but my requests went unanswered. ("You should have gotten a response," says a spokesman for CultureFinder.com (CultureFinder.com), which is responsible for finding the tickets.) Growing slightly panicked, I sent a note to my new friend, the concierge, seeking suggestions. Other guests enjoyed a relaxing afternoon in the sun. I spent much of the day in the room, checking e-mail.
Finally, I booked a dinner reservation on a site called RestaurantRow.com (RestaurantRow.com) ("If you can't cook, click!") and then called my brother-in-law to see if he had heard of it. He hadn't. And what were we doing tonight, anyway, he wanted to know? In the end, none of my entertainment requests came through. (At the last minute, the concierge found us theater tickets for "The Vagina Monologues" -- at $175 each -- but for some reason, I couldn't sell the guys on it.) The baby sitter showed up, as promised, and we went to the restaurant I had booked online. While the food was delicious, it turned out to be in a fairly dicey neighborhood -- something the Internet never told me. OK, I decided, it might not be such a bad idea to reach for the phone once in a while.
Clearly, these are just a few of the bugs that e-travel needs to work out. Never mind the widespread fear of credit-card fraud all online users face, or the junk e-mails that always seem to bombard your inbox days after you visit a site. Some sites have hidden biases, allowing travel companies that advertise with them to dominate flight listings. (That might explain my trouble finding a cheap fare.) Another caution: Don't be too impatient and click on the purchase button more than once -- you could get charged several times. Then there was the time Robin Crook was elated at the great price she found for a hotel room in Vancouver, Wash. The problem? She really wanted to travel to Vancouver, British Columbia.
Because of various glitches, as many as 80% of the 1,000 or so existing travel-related Web sites may not be around in three years, according to a Bear, Stearns study. Robert A. LaFleur, co-author of the report, argues that Web travel is still in its infancy despite its rapid growth. For now, the report says, it's "all lookie, no bookie."
Still, the Internet can be a wonderful research tool for trips -- just be sure to bring a printer along, or you'll be copying out a lot of directions by hand. (And don't tell anyone what you're doing, or you'll end up becoming an online travel agent for all your friends and family.) During the trip, I also relied on a lot of virtual advice -- free guides, discussion groups and chat rooms, and hundreds of tour company brochures.
Rick Hyde, a sales engineer in Mountain View, Calif., had scheduled a diving trip to Fiji last June, but was worried about a U.S. State Department warning about civil unrest on the Pacific island. So he signed on to a "coup discussion group" where he was able to monitor an in-depth debate on Fijian politics, and what he read convinced him he'd be safe. When his concerns shifted to dive conditions, water temperature and coral sites, there were discussion groups for those, too.
But in Palm Springs, I found that glowing reviews on many tourism sites may well be the biggest virtual trap out there. Aside from independent Internet discussion groups, I came across only one negative comment on a travel Web site (it warned that the "Palm Springs Follies," a musical by local senior citizens, was "recommended for viewers over 65"). All it took was one visit to the hotel's concierge to deter me from several spots I'd read about online: Desert Hot Springs, a town described by one site as a "Mecca for vacationers," was locally referred to as "Desperate Hot Springs," she told me. ("That's an old joke," says Jo Lynn Slaughter, executive director of the Desert Hot Springs Chamber of Commerce. "It's not true. Those people just need to be educated.")
Another town, about two hours away, sounded charming on a Web site, but in the concierge's opinion was a "total waste of time." In about five minutes, she gave me a map, pointed out some local attractions, and sent me on my way, making a mockery out of the hours of computer research I'd done that morning. Of course, trusting a concierge is relinquishing control of your destiny, which matters more to members of the digital generation, who have grown up with the Internet, says Clare Lagiewski, who directs the travel and tourism program at Champlain College in Burlington, Vt. "They don't believe a travel agent or tourism official will try as hard to find what's right for them as they would themselves," she says.
And maybe she's right. As I drove back to LAX in the car I rented over the Internet, to take the flight home that I booked over the Internet, I did feel slightly empowered. But for some things, it still helps to get advice from a real human being. For instance, I was glad I brought along a coat, because the nights in Palm Springs were pretty cold. No Internet site mentioned that. My dad told me.
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