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

I still run dial up at home, at work we have a T1 line (I belive).
At work page loaded fast but counter did not work. At home took about
10 sec beacuse of picture and web counter.
I agree with most everyone lose the counter.
Personal I do not understand the reason for a "spash" screen. Why do I
want to load a page that does nothing but say click here?
Java,Javascript, Flash have there uses. Make it optional - warning
Java,flash required.
As for online reservations.
It depends on who is doing it. I will do it online my wife calls every
were.
Most of the time I use Orbitz, travelosity to find the best rate. Then
I go direct to the hotel or airline to book if posible.

Jay Honeck wrote:

snip

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!


Over the past 12 hours, the advice that keeps coming up is "make the opening
page simple and clear." That's been the rule for web page design since the
beginning (unfortunately, often ignored). Put you fancy stuff on other pages
and warn them the link contains graphics or large download or uses Flash or
whatever.

Think of it like someone calling the hotel. How long a message should you have
with how much information before you tell them how to push a number and go into
voice message maze? You don't, right.

I have a 28.8 modem and a 486 PC with a 1MB video card. Anything that doesn't
load in about 30 seconds, I move on unless I'm really interested. Then I stop a
about 90 seconds. Your home page took 35 seconds to complete but the text was
on and the graphic was painting before that.


snip

An ON-LINE BOOKING question for the group, if you please:
**************************************************
I am about to sign a contract with a company that will provide us with
real-time, on-line reservation and GDS support for hotels.

What you are saying (and in some of your responses to comments) is that you are
buying advertising and marketing to publicize the hotel and, hopefully, get more
bookings. You are not buying just online reservation. You need to price what
it would take to just use a reservation package on your own site and subtract
that from your "contract" price. Then you can determine if the advertising you
are putting out (the amount left after subtracting) is what you want to spend
and will it get you the return you want (amount of additional bookings you want
to have).

BTW, I see you are a member of IOWA B&B Guild. If you just want online booking,
pool your resources with other members and setup a link through them. There's
many a B&B that does that. And yes, you must establish a process of making sure
you check that online booking is sent to you in a specific time, guaranteed, so
you don't end up with double booking. Either that or have a disclaimer with the
online booking that it is subject to availability and will be confirmed with a
return e-mail from the hotel. These are little gotchas that I've seen drive
guests and keepers mad.

Online booking is not used as much as online searching. So it's important to be
able to find the hotel first and know basics even if not from the hotel's web
site. Your return guests, or any past guests, would be the source of most of
your online bookings because they know you and want to come back. Check with
them if they gave you an e-mail. Their advice may be even better that those
just flying around :-)

snip

Thanks for your help! (Your reward for helping me is getting to view this
goofy new video, forwarded to me by a British pilot. It's yet another in a
series of bizarre ads for Ford automobiles that apparently works to sell
cars in Britain. See it at:
http://alexisparkinn.com/photogaller...rd_sportka.wmv Here's
another one from the series, almost aviation related:
http://alexisparkinn.com/photogaller...s/BirdGone.mpg )
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

Thanks, Dan

In article ,
Martin Hotze wrote:

I like Java, it doesn't matter what platform you are using.

nice theory. :-)

write once. debug everywhere. what could be more fun?

--
Bob Noel

In article QiFtd.157408$V41.134990@attbi_s52,
"Jay Honeck" wrote:


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

I don't. I like dealing with people. I always use the phone to
make hotel reservations,

--
Bob Noel

One question that you may ask yourself, is "How will people know that they
can book online?" I assume that you will be announceing the new
capability
via your current advertiseing methods, but will you be listed with typical
hotel search and booking services?

Yes, going with real-time on-line booking with any of the big players
automatically gets you into the Expedias and Travelocity's.
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

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.

Yes, that's what we will have to do -- but the reservations will still have
to be entered into our in-house booking system, too -- since it's the
financial system. (The on-line system only takes and tracks reservations
and availability -- it has nothing to do with billing, etc.)

And since this will have to be done for each and every reservation (or
walk-in guest), there is a HUGE opportunity for desk staff to make mistakes.
It's just another step in an already complex system, and I can see it
getting easily screwed up. And, since there is time involved, the
possibility of double-booking a particular suite is a real one.

I just won't know how likely it is to happen until we go "live" with it.
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

What is "gigantic" about it?
--

The amount of screen real estate it takes up.

Really? I've got the tables set to 80%, which *should* keep the page from
being larger than the screen size.

What screen resolution are you running? On my monitor (set to 1200 x 1600)
my opening page only takes up about 3/4 of the screen.
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

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.

We were the first in our market to offer high speed wireless internet access
throughout the hotel (thanks to the folks on this very newsgroup!) -- and we
NEVER charge for it.
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

Personal I do not understand the reason for a "spash" screen. Why do I
want to load a page that does nothing but say click here?

I inserted the "flash screen" ahead of the REAL start-up page, precisely
because 70% of users are still using dial-up connections.

My old homepage took (according to Frontpage's estimate) over two MINUTES to
load on a 28.8 modem! The new "flash screen" gets people into the site
almost instantly, so at least they know it's not a broken link. Hopefully
they will then stick around while the more graphic-intensive pages load.
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

"Jay Honeck" wrote

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?


--
Jay Honeck

Set up the online "Specific Suite Booking", so that the confirmation is not
guaranteed until an e-mail is sent back, say, 15 minutes later. That will
give you time to check with the phone booking, and send back to the online
guy saying, "yep you have it for sure". Be sure to put a privacy clause
saying that no unsolicited e-mails will be sent, and that no one else will
have access to their e-mail address.
--
Jim in NC