Thank goodness we have no dog! Booking a room for six people
I am feeling annoyed and frustrated with making bookings on he Internet. I’m off on holiday and thought that rather than drive straight through to the southernmost tip of England in one day, we’d stop off to see some relatives on the way. There’s six of us, so staying with anyone is no small undertaking. This time we decided to look for a hotel or B&B.
We did the usual searches, frustrating at the best of times, but what soon emerged was a similar pattern. Booking sites are not very well geared up for taking bookings from large families, and actually calling up is the best and quickest option. I fully accept that every piece of functionality needs to have rules to work. But what this highlighted to me was that booking sites are geared up for either people booking one room, or a family paying for two rooms. More than this and ‘computer says no’.
Let me show you why. Here are the possible online booking combinations for two adults with four children that I have come across so far.
Option 1: 2 adults with 4 children in one room (hell on earth)
Option 2: 2 adults in one room + 4 children in another room (bliss for all)
Option 3: 1 adult with 2 children in one room + 1 adult with 2 children in another room (half way between heaven and hell)
Option 4: 1 adult with 1 child in one room + 1 adult with 1 child in another room + 2 children in another room (sleepless night thinking about the two children on their own in another room ; heaven for the two children on their own)
So I can either book one room, two rooms or three rooms depending on how a site is set up. The problem I have got is that I don’t know how a site is set up, so it becomes a frustrating guessing game. A game made even worse because on so many of these aggregated booking sites, there are no suggestions on what to do next. Telephone numbers aren’t displayed either.
What in theory should be a fairly straight forward experience, is in reality one that needs a lot more understanding of the online user experience by the booking companies which build these sites. An understanding that actually realised that sometimes a phone call might be the best option to offer.
What’s the cost these days of taking a phone call for a room booking for six people?