How familiar are you with hotel booking websites? This post will gather information about 4 commonly used hotel/travel booking websites, show you the similarities and differences of the services they provide, as well as identifying the traces of how customer choose their hotel in the e-market era.
Being the world’s largest online travel company at the moment, TripAdvisor is created with the aim of assisting people around the world to design their trip via the reviews and feedbacks of previous travellers from difference places. Not only that, TripAdvisor also delivers customers the ability to book airline tickets, compare hotel offers from different travel agents, vacation rentals, destination services to differentiate their business… The main company’s website alone is currently ranked #199 in the world and #73 in the US (Alexa.com), which shows their current status in the online travel industry. TripAdvisor also has branches websites in different countries that are specified to meet preferences of customers globally, which has made it stand out compare to other competitors.
Different from TripAdvisor, Booking.com does not offer extra services besides booking hotel room and watch reviews from the website. However, Booking.com is ranked #96 globally, which is much higher than TripAdvisor (Alexa.com, 2014). The reason is probably because it only has one main website, rather than having many branches compare to TripAdvisor. Furthermore, the website allows free cancellation on most rooms’ customers’ booked, and instant confirmation when they serve which makes it likely to be attractive to the market. The site also divides hotels into different categories for people to identify and choose easier base on their needs. which is another strength that this site has.
Similar basic function to TripAdvisor, Trivago identify ideal hotels to the customer’s needs, letting people compare the hotel rates globally from 209 booking sites at one time. From the website, Trivago only provides comparison system; no differentiate services as Booking.com and TripAdvisor. For review option, the site only let people rate through their semantic differential scaling method; comments are not applicable through the site. This is probably why the site is only ranked #5200 in the world. The reason is because maybe they only focus on customers who want to access hotel booking only, resulted in narrowing the range and types of customer visiting their website.
Unlike other 3 mentioned sites, Wotif.com mainly focus on Australia hotel travel booking rather than focusing on the global scale, although it still provides information about the hotel booking information of many places around the world. I would say that because according to Alexa.com (2014), Wotif.com traffic rank is at #10,340 in global scale, but ranked #171 in Australia. The site will provide richer information about hotels and sites that are rarely or non-listed by other international booking website such as TripAdvisor or Booking.com. By doing this, Wotif.com will focus on domestic destination and the customer in the country, rather than expanding its focus internationally.
What can we learn from this?
From the 4 examples, it can be seen that customer choose to trust online review, online rating system and the reputation from the site and the hotel that are recommended. Saberwal (2014) shows that 46% of the customers watch reviews on the internet before making the hotel reservation. This explained why TripAdvisor and Booking.com stay on top of other hotel booking sites. Moreover, having the ability to compare prices between popular booking website is widely adopted and implemented by most of the booking sites at the moment. Bakar & Hashim (2008) research also reveals that price is the main motivation factor for customer.
References
Alexa.com (2014), tripadvisor.com, Site Overview, available at: http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/tripadvisor.com.au
Alexa.com (2014), booking.com, Site Overview, available at: http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/booking.com
Alexa.com (2014), trivago.com, Site Overview, available at: http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/trivago.com
Alexa.com (2014), wotif.com, Site Overview, available at: http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/wotif.com
Bakar, AR, Hashim, F (2008), “The Determinants of Online Hotel Reservation among University Staffs”, Ibimapublising, Vol.4, viewed 7 September 2014, http://www.ibimapublishing.com/journals/CIBIMA/volume4/v4n3.pdf
Saberwal, A (2014), “How are travellers currently using online hotel reviews?”, Commeasure, viewed 7 September 2014, http://www.commeasure.com/blog/how-are-travelers-currently-using-online-hotel-reviews#.VAw7HfmSxmw
Ngo Duy 