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

"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

Morgans wrote:

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.

And if they enter an incorrect email, or some other problem prevents this
email from succeeding?

At a minimum, you'll need a "check back with us" URL. And this still leaves
you exposed if someone changes their mind and then says "oh, I didn't
receive your email".

It's a classic: http://www.nist.gov/dads/HTML/byzantine.html

- Andrew

"Andrew Gideon" wrote

And if they enter an incorrect email, or some other problem prevents this
email from succeeding?


Read again what I wrote. It said

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.

*Concentrate* on the part that says that confirmation is not guaranteed
until the e-mail is received. That means if they do not get an e-mail, they
don't have anywhere to stay yet, and had better follow up to see what the
problem is.

If no contact is made because they can not enter their own e-mail address
correctly, they don't need to be booking online.

I guess if the online booking is through expedia, or whatever, Jay may not
have the option of adding little things like what I suggested, anyway.
--
Jim in NC

"Jay Honeck" wrote in message
news:QiFtd.157408$V41.134990@attbi_s52...
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!


Was that for the US or for the internet as a whole?

Mike
MU-2

On Wed, 08 Dec 2004 17:43:27 GMT, Mike Rapoport wrote:

Was that for the US or for the internet as a whole?

this might be a good starting point:
http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm
http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=26876

Mike
MU-2

#m
--
The policy of the American government is to leave its citizens free,
neither restraining them nor aiding them in their pursuits.
Thomas Jefferson

Was that for the US or for the internet as a whole?

Just the US.
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

Jay,
Without going into the other issues, one thing about searching for a hotel
on line that bugs the living s**t out of me is getting these "broker" sites
that don't allow you to contact the hotel direct, and I never seem able to
find the hotel's own webpage. And when I do, there's never a friggin' phone
number on it! I hate going through middlemen when it comes to the internet,
so if there's anything you can do to make yourself directly contactable, and
make it easy for someone to phone you directly, that would make a difference
to whether I booked with you or not.

Just my .02 worth.

Shawn
"Jay Honeck" wrote in message
news:QiFtd.157408$V41.134990@attbi_s52...
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!

WEBSITE QUESTIONS for the group, if you please:
**************************************************
1. Does anyone know what the average speed modem is being used by the 70%
of people still using dial-up?

2. I hear people say that Java is "evil" all the time -- yet it seems that
every cool effect on a webpage requires Java. What is bad about Java
scripting? How about "Flashmedia"?

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?

4. I tried to look at the page from Mary's computer (which has the screen
resolution set to "Mr. Magoo" settings) -- and it locked up her computer.
I re-booted and checked on the Microsoft website, which showed that she
had, like, ten "critical updates" to Win XP that she had not installed --
so I installed them for her.

Now the page runs normally, but I'm worried about having a website that
might actually freeze someone's computer. Can anyone see anything on the
page that could have caused that? Or was it just a glitch in Mary's PC?

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. This will
completely change the way we do business, and will add a significant cost
to our operation.

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.

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"

Without going into the other issues, one thing about searching for a hotel
on line that bugs the living s**t out of me is getting these "broker"
sites that don't allow you to contact the hotel direct, and I never seem
able to find the hotel's own webpage. And when I do, there's never a
friggin' phone number on it! I hate going through middlemen when it comes
to the internet, so if there's anything you can do to make yourself
directly contactable, and make it easy for someone to phone you directly,
that would make a difference to whether I booked with you or not.

You and me both, Shawn. I have tried EVERYTHING to avoid using those
God-da*ned middle-men, but they have literally taken over the on-line hotel
market.

My one success? If you go to Yahoo and type in "Iowa City Hotel" we will
pop up at the top of the list.

But is it my website that pops up? Hell, no! It's some sort of Yahoo hotel
site. And do they link to my website? Hell, no!

You'll have to scroll down a couple of pages to get to my webpage, simply
because the Hotels.com-types have flooded the market with bogus "Iowa City
Hotels" webpages. And they've done this in every, single market.

I've spent the last two years raging against the machine, but now I'm about
to give in and sell my soul to the devil. (I'm about to sign a contract
with an on-line booking company that will get us listed -- as a
side-effect -- on Expedia and all the other crappy hotel websites...)
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"

In a previous article, "Jay Honeck" said:
2. I hear people say that Java is "evil" all the time -- yet it seems that
every cool effect on a webpage requires Java. What is bad about Java
scripting? How about "Flashmedia"?

Java is only "evil" because Microsoft so ****ed up their version of it
(intentionally, I might add) so that it's damn hard to write Java that
works right on more than one version of IE and also works with browsers
that weren't written by complete morons. Plus Sun shouldn't have released
it until they had the Just In Time compiler - it was too slow at first.

Javascript is "evil" because the people who designed it gave no thought to
security. It's also evil because they used the word "Java" in spite of it
have absolutely no relationship to Java.

Flash is "evil" because most people who use it overuse the hell out of it.
Unless the service you are selling is your graphic design skills or your
"coolness", you do not need a fancy graphic splash screen, especially not
one with sound. Plus, if you use Flash or Java (or even Javascript to a
lesser extent) to navigate, you will exclude search engines from properly
indexing your site, exclude the disabled whose screen readers won't be
able to handle it, and exclude a lot of people who don't use the latest
flashiest web browsers because they have this quaint old notion that the
web is about information, not flashiness.

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?

4. I tried to look at the page from Mary's computer (which has the screen
resolution set to "Mr. Magoo" settings) -- and it locked up her computer. I
re-booted and checked on the Microsoft website, which showed that she had,
like, ten "critical updates" to Win XP that she had not installed -- so I
installed them for her.

It just pegged the CPU on my Linux box and I had to kill my browser to get
back control of my box. What the hell are you doing on that first page?

I'm guessing it's the traffic counter applet. What do you need that for?
Can't you just get the web site logs from your hosting company?


--
Paul Tomblin http://xcski.com/blogs/pt/
If God meant man to fly, He'd have given him more money.

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"