This week: www.marriott.com
Description
Marriott International took more than $50m worth of bookings via the Internet in 1998 with nearly 10m people visiting its Web site during the year.
The Internet site now features 1,700 hotels across 10 brands, along with maps, directions, destination information and a travel agent services section.
Home page
The home page is cluttered with topics and graphics. The most visible headings are Express Reservations, Find A Hotel and Marriott Rewards.
However, it is easy to see that the site contains a wealth of other information from Planning an Event through to Route Planners. The Travel Agent Services link is found in the bottom left of the screen in a small, plain font.
Ease of booking
If you know the hotel you want to book, Express Reservations is the fastest link on the site for rates and availability.
Select the country (or US state) and an alphabetical list of Marriott hotels quickly appears.
Other hotel brands under the Marriott umbrella, such as Courtyard and Renaissance, can be selected by linking to the brand’s Internet site.
However, if you need to search for a hotel, try the Hotel Directory, Find A Hotel, or Search links or enter the Travel Agent section to use the quick search facility.
For the hotel location enter the town, city or state and the country, or you may select the airport you are flying into from the list.
But you cannot search for a hotel in a region. If you’re looking for a hotel in Bracknell the results would not say that a nearby Marriott hotel is in Reading or Slough.
Availability and rates can be checked for your hotel from the list – powered by Pegasus.
Identification numbers and International Air Transport Association numbers should then be entered here.
If there is no availability a message tells you to change your dates and/or hotel.
If the hotel is available a list of rates in the local currency appears from which you may then select your rate type; for example corporate, government, or regular rate.
You then progress on to a very painless and secure booking form.
Ease of use
The design is busy, making it difficult to navigate at times and sometimes slow. Menus appear at the top and sometimes at the side with many links that may take you to the same location.
We also encountered several searching and booking problems.
A few times no countries were available to search on making finding a hotel impossible and at another time we hit a couple of “internal errors” when trying to book.
Value of information
The information provided on each hotel is superb and includes a small picture of the hotel, directions, leisure facilities, restaurants, meeting facilities and attractions.
The Travel Agent Services section provides details on programmes and services, including the Hotel Excellence educational programme.
‘Fam-Tastic’ rates are available exclusively to agents who have passed the training programme and become designated as Hotel Sales Specialists.
The section provides a concise description of each hotel brand, although it would be a good idea to state country/ continent locations as some chains are only in the US.
Information on Marriott global distribution system codes, commissions and the support offered is also useful. Answers to frequently asked questions provide helpful explanations on making on-line bookings and the limitations.
Special features
The Route Planner for the US is excellent – enter start and finish points and not only can you get a map highlighted with your route together with directions but you can also see the hotels en route. The meeting planner, which lets you search for hotels that meet your criteria, would be better if you could search by a region.
Would we return to the site?
Yes – if you need to book a hotel the process is fairly straightforward. Guests can be provided with good, accurate information on the hotel together with a picture, local information, maps and directions.
Maybe the site could be good for UK leisure travel agents if an ABTA number could be used rather than just IATA numbers.
Did you know? Internet facts and figures
Internet on-line travel is set to continue. The trouble is the forecasts vary widely! Two leading research companies very focused on e-travel are Forrester Research in the US and Datamonitor in the UK. Their forecasts are as follows:
According to Forrester, the on-line travel industry is set to increase from $3.1bn in leisure travel bookings in 1998 to more than $29bn in 2003. Forrester also considers that these bookings will go to the existing travel sites, which 24m households are already using to research and book their on-line travel.
Forrester has measured the reach, bookings and revenue of 34 travel related sites. You can check out how Forrester rates these sites by visiting www.forrester.com
Closer to home, Datamonitor reconfirm that the travel industry is one of the fastest-growing sectors for on-line sales in Europe and its research indicates on-line sales of travel products in Europe in 1997 generated $7.7m and by 2002 they will be worth $1.7bn. This enormous growth will be accelerated by on-line flight reservations for business people who travel regularly and at short notice.