web site focus

web site focus

Every fortnight FSS marketing director Ian Champness picks an Internet site and looks at how useful it is for travel agents

This week: www.crystalski.co.uk

Description

The site is targeted at both consumers and travel agents and is bookable by both. It has an on-line brochure detailing resorts and accommodation and an on-line version of the Crystal Ski Bible, with skiing advice and tips designed to help with all aspects of selling a ski holiday. The site is one of a stable of Crystal Holidays Web sites accessible from the company’s main Web address www.crystalholidays.co.uk. The long-term aim is to achieve 15% of total bookings via the Internet by 2005.

Home page

The Home Page is brilliantly designed with ‘Ski2000’ written large and with a action picture of a skier. These images are complemented by half-a-dozen links in large italic script which made us want to get stuck into the site immediately. Chief among these was an ‘All you need to know’ section with a pop-up menu highlighting a range of topics including ‘Why Crystal’ through to ‘One Parent Savers’ – 25 subjects in all which demonstrate the site’s huge range without cluttered detail.

Using the agents section

Agents’ existing viewdata passwords are also valid for this system and must be used to access the on-line booking area. The rest of the agents’ area is on open access and comprises an enquiry form to ask for assistance and information, contact details and a link to the on-line version of Crystal’s Ski Bible.

Ease of navigation

Finding each site section through the Home Page topics menu is simple. Each topic is framed under the top line navigation bar with its ever-present Home or On-line booking or Travel Agent Log-in links. Thus it is always easy to start over again, or move from ‘looking’ to ‘booking’ in one click. We chose to explore the resort finder, which catalogues 122 resorts in 11 countries and describes a wide range of accommodation. Resorts are listed in pop-up menus in a list of countries. Selecting a resort yields comprehensive information in the style of the Crystal brochure. Accommodation for the selected resort is then found in a pop-up menu within the page in a simple, logical sequence.

Ease of searching

We found the site excellent for information research. In addition to the country-by-country resort search facility, the site also allows a search by topics from the Home Page menu Examples are searches by Chalet, by Hotel, or by Family Holiday. These yield well presented pages of information in the style of a brochure with hyperlinks to individual resort descriptions or list of resorts relevant to the topic. Thus it is simple to target, for example, the best snowboarding resorts, or resorts where ‘One-Parent Savers’ are applicable. The standard of interactivity is high and we enjoyed the feeling of being directed to key selling points in the programme. We also felt confident in finding everything easily.

Ease of booking

The booking is handled in nine simple steps, with on-screen instructions and with context-sensitive help buttons. During the process, each resort listed and each accommodation offered has a link to the full descriptions – excellent. We were surprised to find that the starting screen only allows the choice of a country – not resort or accommodation. Those choices come later in sequence – the booking is built (based on availability) first by selecting country and travel date, then a flight from a list of relevant flights for the date selected, then a resort and then accommodation. This system means that the user has to know (or find out by clicking a help link) which airport serves the resort required. After six steps an on-screen quotation is given with journey details and price breakdown.

On the next screen, client details can be entered, before the next screen gives a list of optional extras. A last step gives the final quote with flight details and includes these extras. A print button enables a hard-copy record to be produced.

Site security

All agent-controlled functions are password protected and on-line bookings use a secure server. The site could do more to promote the security of its arrangements.

Nice touches

We really liked the Crystal Suggests link, which included ideas for cross-country skiing and ‘awayday’ resort hopping.

Value of information

The site replicates the depth of information available in the Crystal Ski brochure and its Ski Bible – plus beautifully presented in-context piste maps. The way this is structured makes the site an invaluable selling tool and an excellent training facility.

Would we return to the site?

Yes- the site is very user friendly and is a great confidence-builder for agents at all levels of skiing product knowledge. Although an upgrade could offer a more seamless transition from information search to the actual holiday booking, we found that, with experience, the ease of navigating backwards and forwards through the booking steps makes the system quick and powerful in producing alternative quotations in quick time.

Did you know?ADSL

&#42 Bandwidth is the term used to describe Internet connection capacity. It is usually measured in bits-per-second (bps) and affects the speed at which you can download material from the Internet. A high bandwidth connection can carry more data than a low bandwidth connection. Changes in Internet access technologies such as Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line (ADSL) allow digital information to be transmitted at high bandwidths down an existing standard phone line. This can offer improved Internet access speeds of up to two megabits per second (around 40 times the speed of a conventional modem) and eventually 10 megabits may be offered. ADSL will enhance applications that require fast download times and is ideally suited to on-line games, full screen video and CD quality audio. It will increase Internet access speeds allowing Web sites with rich multi-media content such as video/audio clips to be downloaded in a split second while allowing customers to make and receive telephone calls and faxes while they are on-line.