Journal: TWUK Section:

Did you know?Internet facts and figures

n A computer virus is a programme that invades your computer system, replicates itself and has the potential to cause serious damage such as deleting all your files or corrupting them so that they become useless. A virus may be contracted from floppy disks with infected system files, from e-mail attachments or while installing infected files downloaded from the Internet. Earlier this year, a virus called the Love Bug created a huge global repair bill. Around 10% of businesses were affected by the worm that arrived as an e-mail called ILOVEYOU and an attachment named Love-Letter-For-You. Opening this infected the computers by scanning it’s memory and then replicating itself to every contact in the Outlook address book. There are a few precautions that you can take to minimise the risk of a virus infection. These include scanning disks with a virus scanner before use, not opening suspicious e-mail attachments, only downloading files from reputable sources and installing and regularly using an anti-virus package.

This week: www.uk.placestostay.com

Description

UK.PlacesToStay.com is one of a ‘stable’ of hotel reservation Web sites owned and backed by WorldRes.com. The company has over 12,000 properties – a number which is set to expand after the June announcement of the company’s £15.2 million strategic partnership with Accor. The WorldRes.com system is GDS-independent and has Web-based reservations for hotels, bed and breakfast and resort properties in 142 countries worldwide.

Home page

The home page has the look and feel of a hotel directory cover. A clickable world map takes up the centre of the page and there is a set of navigation buttons. Three paragraphs of text explain how to ‘Find it’, ‘See it’ and ‘Book it’, and to the left a list of ‘Hot Spots’ has links to hotels in key European or US cities. A set of country flags offers links to PlacesToStay sites in various European languages. The page has a link to the PlacesToStay affiliates programme, links for site membership and personal profile and links for hotel owners and companies to apply for WorldRes enrolment.

Ease of navigation

Product on the site includes packages and ‘Hot Deals’ as well as room reservations and these are all accessible from the home page. The message ‘click on the map to find a place’ gives access to regional maps and country links. The drop-down menu of world regions achieves the same thing and a navigation bar item accesses another version.

Throughout the session there was always a set of navigation buttons to return to the home page or select other function and so it was impossible to get lost. But a weakness in the ‘About us’ section allowed us to click on links that took us unwittingly to the US version, with differing navigation bars and offers for US users.

Booking facility

Locating a hotel on the site requires a three-click process from ‘world region’, then ‘country’ and then ‘city’. The site comes into its own once a city is located. Each one has the full list of PlacesToStay hotels for the chosen city, with price range, description and link to more details. Clicking on the link for details yields a property summary, a photo gallery and a reservations link.

But more than this, the site gives the option to do a simultaneous availability check on the listed hotels. You can also check special offers. If dates were not available, we were prompted to enter alternative dates. Superb, fast and comprehensive.

Ease of booking

Each hotel description has a standard clickable booking icon that starts a four-step process towards a confirmed reservation.

Step one is to enter the number of rooms needed. This confirms a price along with details of address, contacts and cancellation policy. Step two is (optionally) to enter a membership number or to proceed to name and address forms. Once completed step three displays the credit-card entry details and step four yields an on-screen confirmation with all hotel details and directions. In each of the reservations made, we received e-mail confirmations within 90 seconds.

Ease of amendment and cancellation

The site’s capability for on-line amendments and cancellation of bookings was impressive. These are initiated from a navigation menu button and the system lists all reservations held under a given membership number. Selecting the individual booking yields on- screen booking details and the availability search mechanism.

Site security

At step three of the process, the browser advises that the transaction is switching to secure mode. No on-screen prompts are given to suggest alternatives if you’re unwilling to pay by credit card but, of course, full e-mail, fax and phone details are on screen for those who prefer to book off-line.

Nice touches

The membership registration is not compulsory but is useful for regular bookers. It also enables users to list preferred holiday location to enable receipt of special offers.

We also liked the in-context ‘Places to Golf’ and ‘Places to Ski’ links, which introduced holiday themes and packages. We especially liked the large number of special offers and packages.

Value of information

The on-line help is excellent and comprehensive and we were impressed by the photo gallery for each property. One area that is ripe for improvement is the currency converter. This is available throughout every session but it is from a third party and is often slow to load.

Would we return to the site?

Yes, the site has a wide range of interesting, and occasionally exclusive, properties. Although this is a consumer-oriented site with no agent section, the site runs an affiliate programme for Web site owners and so there is scope for commission via this route.