Dear fellow ISORGoers,
We have selected the website AGODA.COM to focus on for our mini-research project.
Please enjoy!
OUR RESEARCHConventional travel agencies and their problems:
In the past, if people wanted to reserve a hotel room they had to go through a "medium". This "medium" was the none other than the travel agency. Common examples that come to mind would be those of Chan Brothers, ASA Travel, CTC Holidays, etc.
Those days, when people booked a hotel room through a travel agency, there was limited choice of hotels available through the agency as different agencies tied up with different hotels, thus leaving the customer with only a small range of options to pick from. Due to the limited selectivity, these travel agencies tended to mark up their prices for the reservations in order to earn a decent profit from the customers. Clearly, this was not good for the customer. They even had to go down personally to the travel agency to make payment and to submit their particulars and travel documents, which was a hassle for them.
Also in recent years, there have been cases whereby travel agencies closed down overnight without any notice and therefore the customers' refunds were defaulted resulting in huge losses and dissatisfaction for the consumer. Furthermore, in the past, guided group tours were in demand but in recent years free-and-easy holiday packages are up and coming. Travellers today prefer to explore on their own and plan their own itinerary rather than join guided tours.
Therefore, there must be an alternative "medium" to cater to these free-and-easy travellers - one that is reliable, accessible, and more superior in terms of cost and efficiency as compared to the conventional travel agencies.
Info-communication technologies (ICT) have revolutionised the way we make hotel room reservations especially in the aspects of convenience and reliability. We shall use AGODA.COM as our reference.
A bit about AGODA:
- An Internet company which provides online hotel reservation services
- Focuses mainly in the Asia Pacific Region; with offices in Singapore, Bangkok, Hong Kong, Kuala Lumpur and Sydney, to name a few
- Awarded Best Accommodation website in Asia for 2008 at the inaugural TravelMole Web Awards for Asia
Firstly, Agoda have been widely used by many travellers, reason being they have a very organised platform in place; the website is user-friendly, they have a wide range of hotels in many regions, and the prices are very reasonable!
The booking process is simple and systematic: First, choose your destination, followed by the region or state. Then, numerous pages and lists of hotels would be made available for the consumer to choose from with just a click of the mouse.
He/she can even find out where the hotel is located using the Google linked interactive map and see if the hotel is most suitable or convenient for him/her!
Another plus point of AGODA.COM is that it is a very reliable and stable website for making hotel reservations. Reason being Agoda is actually a subsidiary of the company Priceline, and Priceline is listed on NASDAQ! The fact that Agoda is under a huge company helps to put consumer's mind at ease.
Apart from really good offers on hotel rooms, Agoda even has a member point system.
These Agoda Reward Points that you accumulate through each credit card booking can be used as real dollar subsidy for your next booking! In fact, as Agoda provides a single database platform for customers to link up with more than 130000 hotels in 100 countries, accumulating points is simple and almost effortless! Hence, on top of securing competitive prices as guaranteed by Agoda, customers can accumulate Reward Points for future usage, thus more savings!
Although payment-wise, some might argue that a customer has to pay in advance; and for
certain reservations, if he/she cancels without 3days prior notice, there would be no refunds.
This may come across as a rigid and inflexible system as customers have to be absolutely certain about his/her future plans because payment has to be made prior, and there are no room for last minute changes.
For travellers who do not like to be constrained by these terms and conditions, they would probably avoid using Agoda’s system.
But personally we feel that having to pay in advance is an advantage. This way, we do not
have to carry too much excess cash to pay for our reservations at the front desk and also avoid incurring extra administrative fees for using credit cards overseas.
In essence, we feel that the introduction of ICT has vastly improved the efficiency, accuracy and increased the choices provided for potential customers, due to the ease at which customers are able to access knowledge and information. There is, of course, still room for improvement. However we believe that at this time and age where the development of information technology is flourishing, we will be able to foresee an even better future for the services provided in this sector.
No comments:
Post a Comment