OT - Internet and on-line booking questions for the group

3. I have pared our opening page back to practically nothing, yet it STILL
seems to be taking too long to open. I added a new "hit" counter
yesterday -- could that be slowing it down so much? (It's
www.AlexisParkInn.com if you want to take a gander at it.) How long is
it
taking to open on your computer?

Do you really need a gigantic graphic splash screen? What does it gain
you?

??? I've pared the opening page down to being just a collage picture, and
not much else.

What is "gigantic" about it?
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

"Jay Honeck" wrote in message
news:KCMtd.225691$R05.149415@attbi_s53...
That said, I'm not convinced using the phone is any more reliable; we've
had plenty of hotel screw-ups, from losing our reservation altogether to
minor snafus related to type and location of the room, even booking by
phone.

This is my main fear with setting up real-time on-line booking. I have
this horrible fear that we're going to end up double-booking suites
(someone booking it on-line at the same moment that we are booking it on
the phone) -- and what will we do then?

Is there any way to use the same routine(software) at the
registration point(telephone in) in the hotel as the internet connection is
using? What I'm thinking is whichever finishes first gets the room. I'll bet
you won't come down to a photo finish.

Jay Honeck wrote:

I turn once again to you, the great internet gurus of aviation, for answers
to the mysteries of the web...

Yesterday NPR announced that only a third of internet users are connected at
high speed, using either DSL or cable. This truly surprised me, and I'm
absolutely amazed that so few people have made the jump to high-speed
internet -- I could never, ever go back to dial-up, and have been on cable
modem for years.

Because of this rather shocking statistic I instantly redesigned our webpage
so that the home page is smaller and opens more quickly. (According to what
Frontpage was telling me, it would have taken several minutes to open over a
28.8 modem!) It never dawned on me to design the page for dial-up, because
I thought slow connections were on there way out!

I would suggest keeping the site simple enough that it doesn't require huge
amounts of bandwidth to display this week, even if huge amounts of bandwidth are
actually available. That is the art of web design, keeping the site useful and
attractive while keeping bandwidth and processsing requirements down. Even in
the age of faster computers and networks, efficiency is still king.

If you want to employ special features (including extensive Flash) that require
more bandwidth , do so by all means, but they can be an optional part of the
webpage that is somehow marked as requiring more bandwidth.

Be careful not to confuse Java (a compiled language which requires a virtual
machine [translation: more computer resources]) and Javascript. For example, I
tend to keep Java disabled since it slows me down when I don't expect it, but
almost always keep Javascript enabled. I turn on Java if/when there is a good
reason to.

Double-booking sounds like it can happen cuz you're now keeping two sets of
registration books. The key is to keep only one, so option a is any phone
registrations would be done thru your on-line system (employee typing it in)
and option b is your on-line registrations get posted quickly/immediately to
your in-house registration system.


Bob Clough


"Jay Honeck" wrote in message
news:KCMtd.225691$R05.149415@attbi_s53...
That said, I'm not convinced using the phone is any more reliable; we've
had plenty of hotel screw-ups, from losing our reservation altogether to
minor snafus related to type and location of the room, even booking by
phone.

This is my main fear with setting up real-time on-line booking. I have
this horrible fear that we're going to end up double-booking suites
(someone
booking it on-line at the same moment that we are booking it on the
phone) -- and what will we do then?

For most hotels this wouldn't matter -- one room is as good as the next.
But we have people SPECIFICALLY booking the Blackbird Suite (for
example) --
and they are NOT going to be satisfied with the Red Baron Suite -- even
though they are comparable suites from an amenities standpoint.

*sigh* I'm taking a huge risk with this on-line booking contract, but I
think it's necessary in order to take us to the next level. Hope we
don't
end up screwed (up)...
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

"Jay Honeck" wrote in message 1. Does anyone know what the average speed
modem is being used by the 70% of people still using dial-up?

I use dial-up because I can access the internet everywhere I travel. Speeds
run the spectrum from 24k to 48k. Some hotels have free high-speed which I
take advantage of. Some hotels charge for high-speed access which I thumb my
nose at with dial-up.

How many of you guys actually make real-time, on-line hotel reservations?

Don't know about hotels, but the airline I work for averages about 60% of
reservations by internet.

D.

On Wed, 08 Dec 2004 15:43:44 GMT, Jay Honeck wrote:

Hey Jay,

1. Does anyone know what the average speed modem is being used by the 70% of
people still using dial-up?

56K would be the best speed one can get on dialup, but in reality, 44K to
52K is what I get on my laptop.

3. I have pared our opening page back to practically nothing, yet it STILL
seems to be taking too long to open. I added a new "hit" counter
yesterday -- could that be slowing it down so much? (It's
www.AlexisParkInn.com if you want to take a gander at it.) How long is it
taking to open on your computer?

Took less then three seconds on my DSL hookup. I get 300K per second
download.

How many of you guys actually make real-time, on-line hotel reservations?
My gut feel has always been that we would eventually have to jump on this
band-wagon, because more and more people are booking on-line. However, this
newly released figure, showing such low high-speed internet usage, really
makes me wonder if people are actually using on-line bookings much, or if
this is a tiny minority using it only occasionally.

I would never book a hotel online AGAIN. I did this once, printed out the
confirmation number, and showed up at 1:00 p.m. and hotel was booked solid.

I would have understood had I been real late arriving, but I did confirm
with my credit card to allow for a late arrival. Because it was a small
town in Mississippi, I ended up going 15 miles to another town to get
overnight accomodations.

I also found out, the "Central" reservation computer of this hotel does not
always interface timely with the local hotel computers, that causes
overbookings as well.

Allen

Jay,


Jay Honeck wrote:
That said, I'm not convinced using the phone is any more reliable; we've
had plenty of hotel screw-ups, from losing our reservation altogether to
minor snafus related to type and location of the room, even booking by
phone.


This is my main fear with setting up real-time on-line booking. I have
this horrible fear that we're going to end up double-booking suites (someone
booking it on-line at the same moment that we are booking it on the
phone) -- and what will we do then?

For most hotels this wouldn't matter -- one room is as good as the next.
But we have people SPECIFICALLY booking the Blackbird Suite (for example) --
and they are NOT going to be satisfied with the Red Baron Suite -- even
though they are comparable suites from an amenities standpoint.

*sigh* I'm taking a huge risk with this on-line booking contract, but I
think it's necessary in order to take us to the next level. Hope we don't
end up screwed (up)...

Will this be real-time? Have you considered using the app yourself to
do the bookings? That way you won't double book, as you will have the
same interface as the customers.




--
Remove "2PLANES" to reply.

Yes, availability is a significant obstacle. I live 1/2 mile from city
water and sewer and 15 miles from Research Triangle Park NC (15,000+ high
tech workers) all for the priviledge of living on an airport. No DSL
service. TimeW Cable arrived 2.5 years ago but they placed their box too
far from my house. So when I wanted high speed cable, I had to pay $700 to
get a drop off their drop. A significant obstacle. (BTW, TWC gave me data
service without TV service). Others nearby are in same boat and don't have
high speed access.

We use the internet to find hotels but rarely to book. We are usually
looking for location (airport) and services level. Price we rely on phone
negotiations. If we don't get what we want, we wait several hours and call
again.

Speed and browsers. I just had to reload a system after 8 months of use due
to spyware. They took over despite attempts to remove with various tools.
Made IE run like mud. We now use Mozilla and run a variety of anti-virus
and anti-spyware programs. Clean so far.

Do you really need a gigantic graphic splash screen? What does it gain
you?

What is "gigantic" about it?
--

The amount of screen real estate it takes up.

Jose
--
Freedom. It seemed like a good idea at the time.
for Email, make the obvious change in the address.

Hamish Reid wrote:

Javascript -- which actually isn't much related to Java -- is very
useful, almost universally available and used, and quite lightweight,
and is used mostly for smallish effects (field format checking,
rollovers, etc.).

We always recommend to our clients that JS is useful for certain effects,
but it should not be something on which a site is dependant.

One particular client took our advice, and used JS for a little timer on a
training system. It's cute, and even useful. And it is the single largest
source of support calls. Problems with JS are just that frequent (and
annoying).

[...]
It loaded instantly ... except for that damn counter, which took many
seconds.

These are silly, true, but the delay is indicative of some problem.

BTW, some have recommended staying aware from tools like Flash or Java. But
a hotel site - esp. one with distinct rooms - is an ideal use of one of the
"view the space" tools. It could be as simple as a video of a
walk-through, but I like the tools which permit one to navigate one's self.
They'll be useless to anyone on a slow connection, but they could be a real
sales aid for the bandwidth wealthy.

- Andrew