The Reality of Online Innovation

Sapient Travel Site Assessment 1

The Reality of Online
Innovation

Sapient´s travel experts tested leading
European travel websites

© 2007 sapient corporation


Table of Contents

Introduction 3

Matter of research and report highlights 4

Main deficiencies and best practices that 6
were found: Six key features of website
usability

Customer experience 7
Customer service: Supporting the customer in
completing the sales process
Search: Customers benefit from usability improvements for
data entry
Travel Planning: Consumers are shoppers

Internationalization: Multi-lingual destination names 13
are not fully implemented

User-generated travel content: Some players are 14
leading the way for making users heard

Mobile services: Most customers user their mobile 15
phones – most travel companies do not

Cross-selling: Hotel sites do not offer cross selling 16
products

Desktop tools: The forgotten heavy users 18

Conclusion 20



Introduction
The advent of the Internet and e-commerce has forced travel and
hospitality industry players to change their sales and distribution
game plans in recent years. Due to the nature of the travel
industry, the change has had more impact than in most of the
other industries. Some of the symptoms of this change include
heavy investments in online technology, the exponentially growing
number of direct connects, emergence of the zero-commission
model, meta-crawlers and alternative content aggregation
providers.

The underlying drivers of business change have also shifted.
Initially, technology was driving the business, but it is now the
change in consumer behaviour that drives online distribution of all
travel products to reach 50% by 2010. While some players in the
industry have adapted well to the changing environment, others
are falling behind.

Where the ultimate acceptance of the online channel by the
consumer is labelled with buzz-words such as Web 2.0, we have
asked ourselves how major European online players are keeping
up with hot trends, and whether there are new things to learn
across different sub-segments of the industry.



Matter of research and report highlights
The research study conducted by travel experts from Sapient´s
Interactive Service Group and Business Analysis and Research
Team examined twelve leading European travel websites at the
beginning of 2007. We found out that while most of the analyzed
websites have mastered the basic requirements of the online
booking process, only few have embraced the evolution in
consumer behaviour. These deficiencies can quickly drive
potential customers to other options – a shift that is difficult and
expensive to reverse.

Our research objectives were to understand how online travel
trends are evolving and what best practices and areas of
improvement could be identified by looking at how leading travel
websites are responding to these trends. Based on the results of
the research we identified six key opportunities that are critical for
best-in-class travel organizations.

• User experience: Websites can still improve the shopping
experience. This will increase the chance of a look that may
actually turn into a booking. Opportunities include the
deployment of modern functionality to support the basic
search of destinations and itineraries, as well as the
prominent placement of support options if and when a
customer struggles with the self-service process.

• Internationalization: Choosing the language according to
preference is a regular feature of travel websites today.
However, not every traveller is familiar with destination
names that are made available in foreign languages. Multi-
lingual city, region and country names help customers
avoiding incertitude with the spelling.



• User-generated travel content: Rating sites have become
a standard in e-retail, and are finding broad acceptance in
travel. While many companies tremble at the thought of a
negative review, some industry players have adopted Web
2.0 to drive their own business.

• Mobile services: Consumers love their mobiles. As a result,
this medium can be used to increase loyalty through new
services delivered at mobile touch points. Introducing mobile
services such as SMS based itinerary alerts or targeted
location-based offers to customers are examples of how this
can be done.

• Cross-selling: Once a customer has decided to book,
additional revenue streams can be generated with little effort.
Interestingly most players make use of this, except for the
hotel segment, where the cross-sell functionality is rare.

• Desktop Tools: A small but attractive segment of
consumers can be reached through this channel.

The escalating spend on online marketing is an indication of how
much companies continue to fight for consumer attention.
Exploring with the implementation of the opportunities mentioned
above will improve return on investment.

The scope of companies that were assessed in this study included
the sub-segments airlines, hotels, online travel agencies (OTA)
and tour operators. The following chart shows the companies
under assessment.



Airlines Hotels (rather language than
British Airways country specific)
www.britishairways.com Accor
(Language - English, Country - UK) www.accorhotels.com
(Language – English)
Lufthansa
www.lufthansa.com Intercontinental
(Language - English, Country – DE) www.icgrouphotels.com
EasyJet
www.easyJet.com hotel.de
(Language – English, Country - UK) www.hotel.de

Online Travel Agencies Tour Operators
Expedia TUI
www.expedia.co.uk www.tui.de
(Language - English, Country - UK) (Language - German, Country – DE)

Last minute Kuoni
www.fr.lastminute.com www.kuoni.co.uk
(Language - French, Country - FR) (Language - English, Country - UK)

Travelocity Thomas Cook
www.travelocity.co.uk www.thomascook.com
(Language - English, Country - UK) (Language - English, Country - UK)

Main deficiencies and best practices that were
found
Six key features of website usability
Sapient´s travel experts developed a catalogue of six features that
were regarded as essential contributions to website usability.
These features include: customer experience, internationalization,
user-generated travel content, mobile services, cross-selling and
desktop tools. The results of the research study demonstrate
profitable opportunities to implement and best practices for each
feature in the catalogue.



Customer experience

Customer service: Supporting the customer in completing the
sales process

Ultimately, the service that a customer experiences will determine
whether they complete the purchase, and whether they will come
back the next time. While consumers are increasingly Internet-
savvy, new users sometimes struggle with the self-service
process. Also, there are times when the system may not provide
the expected or desired outcome. While improvements to site
usability are a key driver to increase the number of self-service
transactions, there will always be times when the customer needs
help and support with the online process. At such times the
availability, convenience and effectiveness of other support
channels can make the difference between a loyal customer and
one that would switch to a different site.

All surveyed sites offer email support and provide a call centre
number for queries during the business hours. However, the ease
of locating this number varies on the different sites. Expedia,
Lastminute and Travelocity make the numbers easily accessible
during the booking process, whereas Lufthansa keeps the number
under the Help/Contact section.

It is evident from the findings of this survey, that EasyJet has
carefully weighed the cost of providing offline support against the
cost of customer acquisition. The company’s web support call
center charges £1 per minute, and their published email response
time of up to 20 working days (see the following chart) is a clear
indication that EasyJet prefers a shopper to discontinue the
booking process over the cost of providing support.



Call center number
needs to be found
by going to the Help
section

Customers are
urged to resolve
queries via online
help as web support
calls are charged
and email queries
have a standard
response time of 20
working days

None of the sites surveyed made use of the technical
improvements in IP-based voice communication by offering an
option to chat with an agent online, a call-back service or more
advanced tools where call center agents can remotely control the
user interface.

Search: Customers benefit from usability improvements for
data entry

Most shopping and booking processes start with the search for a
destination, then follows the itinerary, package or offer and the
selection of travel dates. Deploying technology in these areas
improves site usability, helps users avoid errors and enhances site
interaction from the beginning.

It is a well-balanced combination of usability tools that will cater to
consumer needs. For destination entry, a mix of drop-down lists
(dynamically generated) or the use of an interactive Ajax wizard
which prompts useful options after the first few letters improve the



user experience. In addition, the use of maps for visualization of
the selected entry, or as a means of selecting the destination is
convenient for the visual-minded.

Date entry is a basic function that all sites should have mastered
by now. Best practice elements include the option of typing a date
or the use of clicking an interactive calendar, prevention of invalid
date inputs, and meaningful default values.

All surveyed sites support calendar entry for dates and blank out
past dates. Only Accor, Lufthansa, EasyJet and Lastminute
provide default dates. Lufthansa sets both outbound and inbound,
and automatically corrects the return date on changing the
outbound date. Apart from Lastminute and Accor, all other sites
allow incorrect date entry by either typing or choosing invalid
options from the dropdown. The error is flagged after submitting.

The finding of the research study show that interactive support
across all the sites can be improved. Only the best-in-class British
Airways and Kuoni have Ajax wizards to prompt destination names
after the first three letters (see the following chart).

Ajax wizard for destination
name prompt appears after
typing three letters

Date input via calendar or text
box. Past dates are blocked
out on the calendar.

Incorrect dates can be entered
manually, and result in an
error being displayed on
submit



Accor, Intercontinental, Kuoni and Expedia provide interactive
maps to choose destinations and to visualize search results.
However, good search technology is not only a matter of useful
features but also of content quality. Searching “Bretagne” on the
Intercontinental website does not show hotels in the region but
rather lists hotels which have the term in their name - sometimes
located in an entirely different area. It would be interesting to
observe an international customer’s expressions upon arrival.

Even with the availability of data entry tools, errors do happen
when the user entry does not correspond with system
expectations. It is therefore imperative to have clear and
understandable error messages. The same applies to the
provision of assistance, user guidance and meaningful correction
for typing errors. Most sites provide helpful error messages and
meaningful correction of typing errors. Expedia displays the error
messages on a new page, showing only fields with input errors,
and offering corrections where feasible. This puts Expedia in the
best-in-class category (see the following chart).

Error messages are
displayed prominently
and along with the
error fields

Typing error
assistance – possible
location options are
provided for incorrect
location entered



Travel Planning: Consumers are Shoppers

Consumers use the web for shopping – a process which is often
not streamlined, but rather sees users compare different options
on the site, follow different click paths and doubling back. That is
why iterative navigation in a session is very useful. Iterative
navigation means that forward and backward navigation should be
allowed, without losing data already entered.

Online Shoppers get frustrated when they have to enter data
multiple times. Customers prefer to be able to personalize their
personal profile, resulting in pre-population of forms with the
settings according to the profile. More features that would make
the shopping experience better include: adding a selection to a
“shopping cart”, the possibility to email the itinerary or the search
results to someone else, and the basic feature of being able to
bookmark a specific selection (see the following chart).

Users can personalize the profile and
searches are prepopulated based on the
settings.

Web check-in and online seat selection
are available – seat selection is allowed
only for certain passenger categories.

Iterative navigation using the “Back”
button is only possible until the price page.

It is not possible to email the itinerary or
search results to friends, prior to booking.



Except for Kuoni, Travelocity, Hotel.de and Thomas Cook, all
other sites allow some level of personalization of the website
profile. Typically, name and address details can be stored and pre-
populated during the booking process. There is therefore no need
to insert them more than once.

However, none of the surveyed sites pre-populate a preferred
departure airport for flight search. Lastminute (France) only allows
the storage of payment details tied to an email address to enable
rapid booking and does not have registration or account
functionality. Travelocity creates an account based on the email
address supplied during booking.

As evident from our research study, most sites support some
iterative navigation until the itinerary or passenger details stage.
After this stage this functionality becomes unavailable. In most
cases, when the customer tries to go back after this stage, all
previously entered data is lost, the page expires and details need
to be resubmitted. Intercontinental is an exception as it allows the
user to go back from the payments page and does not require a
page refresh. Lastminute allows the user to press the back button
during booking, only needing a refreshing of the page after the
passenger details have been entered. Users of Travelocity benefit
from iterative navigation without having to refresh the page, but
there is data loss in some cases.

The book-marking feature is offered only by very few sites. The
same also applies to the feature that allows the customer to email
their itinerary to someone. Expedia and Lastminute offer both of
these features.



Internationalization: Multi-lingual destination names
are not fully implemented

In a global business, major international travel websites should
ideally allow users to choose the language of the site according to
their preference and independently of country location. In most
cases the assessed websites offer several languages to their
customers and fulfil this demand to a certain extent.

However, a big challenge though is the support for multi-lingual
processing of destination names. Almost all websites offer this
feature at some level. Flight searches, for example, support multi-
lingual city names and sometimes country names and most hotel
searches support multi-lingual city, region and country names.
Available dropdown lists help international customers to choose a
country while avoiding uncertainty of foreign spellings.

In the worst case scenario, travellers will experience processing
problems if they are not familiar with the English name of their
destination, if strictly required by the web interface. When it comes
to multi-lingual destination names the website of Accor is in the
best-in-class category. It allows the identification of cities, regions
and countries in different languages and also offers a list of
sample translations (see the following chart for an example).



Site language
depends on
country, Offers
change
depending on
the country,
Prices always in
Euros

There is multi-
lingual support
for destination
names.
Searching for
Deutschland, on
the English site,
gives multiple
destination
options in
Germany

User-generated travel content: Some players are
leading the way for making users heard
With the advent and consumer acceptance of experience sharing
communities - also referred to as social computing - travel
companies need to decide whether to ignore these rapidly growing
forums, whether to integrate external offerings or to build their own
offerings with the chance of controlling content and increasing
loyalty. User-generated content like reviews, communities or blogs
serve as reference and allow customers to talk about their
experience with a company. Customers can post travel reviews
and view reviews posted by others and by that contribute to the
content of a website.

At this time only Expedia, TUI and Lastminute offer user-
generated travel content on their website. Expedia offers hotel
reviews and ratings. They have partnered with Tripadvisor.com
which offers reviews and opinions. TUI has recently launched a
section on its site, which allows users to enter reviews and browse
reviews entered by others. TUI UK, also known as Thomson
Holidays, has a travel blog on its website.



Lastminute is best-in-class and uses Web 2.0 technologies most
comprehensively. The website includes features which allow users
to rate and enter comments about any site product. The French
site has a section called “Meetic” which serves as a starting point
for people looking to meet others. Users can enter profile
information for themselves and also the kind of people they are
looking to meet and look at profiles of members. There are events,
where Meetic members can participate and meet face to face. An
example of this is MeeticLive (see the following chart).

Throughout the site there is a link to entering
reviews saying “Votre avis nos interesse”

On clicking this link users can enter ratings
and corresponding reviews or notes for each
product in a popup window

Mobile services: Most customers use their mobile
phones – most travel companies do not

The vast majority of customers use mobile phones for their daily
communication. Sending SMS alerts when changes occur is one
way to increase customer interaction and reduce operational cost.
Providing SMS based value-add services, such as itinerary alerts
or targeted location-based offers to customers is a good way to
build customer loyalty.



However, very few sites provide SMS alerts. It is primarily the
airlines that have this functionality. The best-in-class example,
Lufthansa, uses SMS to provide auto alerts, and many other
functions like account balance, flight information and so on, for its
loyalty program (Miles & More) members (see the following chart).
Lufthansa also allows its senior Miles & More members to check-in
using SMS. British Airways has teamed up with Vodafone to
provide text alerts on rates and offers. Accor Hotels also provide
reservation confirmation by SMS.

Cross-selling: Hotel sites do not offer cross-selling
products

Cross-selling is an easy way to generate additional revenue, as a
result of the existing relationship with a customer. Dynamic
packaging functions (for example, hotel + flight, flight + car rental,
etc.) and order integrated cross-selling (for example, links to offers
or other products, after selecting one product) simplify the buying
process for customers.



This is because easily-accessible complementary products and
services save time and sometimes also save money, especially
when there are special package rates.

Although cross-selling has been widely adopted across the
industry, interestingly none of the hotel sites assessed provides
this feature. Expedia, TUI, Travelocity, Thomas Cook and
Lastminute offer integrated dynamic packaging on their sites. They
provide flexible combinations of flight, hotel, car and insurance.
British Airways is in the best-in-class category when it comes to
this, as it offers dynamic packaging of flight and non-flight items on
its site and only non-flight items via baholidays.com. The company
also allow the user to add other products to the itinerary once one
product (British Airways-flight only) has been chosen (see the
following chart). This feature also applies to Expedia, Travelocity,
Thomas Cook and Kuoni.

After selecting a
flight it is possible to
add multiple hotels/
cars/ sightseeing/
transfers

Cross-sell of non-
flight products is
integrated into the
flight booking
process



Lastminute offers trip financing with the booking, but requires the
user to choose the type of trip (flight, flight + hotel, etc.) before the
search and does not cross-sell other products during the booking
process. EasyJet allows the user to purchase multiple flights and
insurance within one booking process. It has links to partner sites
to cross-sell other products, but these are not integrated with the
flight booking itself.

Desktop tools: The forgotten heavy users

Initially pioneered by US-based low-cost carriers, normally desktop
tools are usually used by customers who travel frequently and do
a large number of their travels with the same company, such that it
is worth installing the tool. This action requires a certain amount of
trust by a customer, and also confirms a certain level of interest.
However, among the European travel sites assessed, airlines
were found to be the only category of travel suppliers which offer
such downloadable tools to strengthen the relationship.

British Airways offers a downloadable timetable tool where users
can build offline itineraries. Unfortunately it is not integrated with
the user profile.

EasyJet is in the best-in-class category with its alert desktop tool
called “AirMail”. This tool is located in the system tray, and based
on profile information, it provides customers with alerts about
offers. Users can set up preferences for home airports and specify
the kind of holidays they are interested in. Customers who
download the tool also receive targeted alerts for EasyJet offers,
and can recommend these offers to friends via Email. Furthermore
they can use direct links to get to the EasyJet website to book their
travel (see the following chart).



EasyJet AirMail desktop tool
Users can
• Install tool and set up preferences for
home airports and kind of holidays in
which they are interested
• Receive targeted alerts of EasyJet
offers
• Send Email offers of interest to a friend
• Use links to get to EasyJet website to
book

Travelocity offers a desktop FareWatcher tool on its US site which
is compatible for the Windows Vista platform only. Users can
install the tool and set up preferences for home airports and three
travel destinations to track. There are alerts when fares involving a
greater than 20% saving become available. Customers can also
use the tool to search for flights, hotels, holidays, car hire etc.

The usability of such desktop tools can be greatly enhanced by
integrating them with the customer profile on the website and
storing search preferences, trips and so on. Enabling the customer
to go from “looking” to “booking” more easily, without needing to
login/enter data multiple times will also encourage the use of
desktop tools.



Conclusion
The Internet is continuing on its path of revolutionizing travel
product sales and distribution. Consumers are accepting the
Internet as a way of life, and with that acceptance, are becoming
more sophisticated users. To be relevant players in this market
companies must provide a highly-usable shopping platform which
gets all the basics right, and then invest wisely into newer trends
to maintain their positioning in an evolving market.

The twelve sites assessed in this study get mixed ratings against
the criteria. None of the sites clearly excels in all categories, but
for each category there are individual highlights and best
practices, including the adoption of recent trends. Opportunities for
improvement exist in particular:

• For Airlines: By continuing to improve the usability of the
booking process, through internationalization and tools such
as Ajax or map visualizations. Airlines also have yet to adopt
user content and social computing elements.

• For Hotels: By introducing cross-selling to drive additional
revenue, and deploying mobile services for value-add
features such as booking confirmations or driving directions.

• For Online Travel Agencies and Tour Operators:
opportunities exist to increase customer loyalty through
desktop tools, such as agents that support the search for a
particular trip. For Tour Operators in particular, the adoption
of mobile services could also increase customer loyalty.



About Sapient

Sapient helps clients innovate their businesses in the areas of
marketing, business operations, and technology. Leveraging a
unique approach, breakthrough thinking, and disciplined
execution, Sapient leads its industry in delivering the right
business results on time and on budget. Sapient works with clients
that are driven to make a difference, including BP, Essent Energie,
Harrah’s Entertainment, Hilton International, Janus, National
Institutes of Health (NIH), Sony Electronics, the U.S. Marine
Corps, and Verizon.

Founded in 1990, Sapient is headquartered in Cambridge,
Massachusetts, and operates across North America, Europe, and
India. More information about Sapient can be found at
www.sapient.com.

Sapient is a registered service mark of Sapient Corporation.



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