The Pros and Cons of Booking Travel Online
Source: ?o??ƒx™ at flickr
Online travel really exploded in the past 10 years. Whereas it used to be quite common to use a travel agent to book vacations and trips, nowadays most people manage their own travel plans to the point where the travel agency business is feeling the financial strain. The Internet has changed up many a business model, and travel has certainly been affected in a big way.
But perhaps the pendulum has swung too far? Is it possible there will soon be demand for someone who is an expert at managing complex travel arrangements again, and people would be willing to pay a small premium for that? It’s certainly an interesting thought.
Let’s look at the pros and cons of online travel as it exists today.
Pros #1: Cheaper
It’s certainly easier than ever to get the best price. There are online travel sites that monitor a particular route and email you when the price drops (Bing Travel). There are online travel sites that compare all the major airlines to find the best price (Expedia). There are last minute sites (Travelocity Last Minute Deals). Sites that specialize in packaged vacations (TripCentral). Sites that allow airlines and others to underbid each other for your business (PriceLine). There are a lot of options for the traveller trying to save money, and they get better every year.
It’s fair to say the single largest benefit to online travel booking has been how much easier it is to get a good price. Consumers have never before had so many options when it comes to getting the best price on travel.
Cons #1: Lack of Service
So you finally find the deal you want. The price is right, the time of the flight, the length of connections in between. You’re very happy and you are ready to buy. So you click buy. “We’re sorry. The flight you selected is no longer available.” Huh? The search page says one thing, and the purchase page says something else. Time to keep looking.
Or do you sometimes feel overwhelmed with the choices? Too many flights, none of them perfect. One leaves way too early in the morning. The other has a long layover at a distant connection point. Another costs 3 times as much as the other two. There are times when you need an expert to sort through the 20 different options and pick the best one, perhaps one you hadn’t even thought of.
The reason the prices are better online is because there are no humans (other than you) involved in booking the trip. They don’t want you calling to speak to an agent if you can get the information yourself. For 95% of the time, this is fine because you don’t need to talk to a human to get what you need. But what about the 5% of the time?
Pros #2: Organizing Your Itinerary
If you book all your travel – flights, hotels, rental cars, and attraction tickets – in one place, then sites such as Expedia have tools to help you organize and view your itinerary. These make it quite convenient to print out confirmation numbers, addresses, phone numbers, and everything you need before flying out on your trip. You can even log into the web site mid-trip to check on the rest of your trip.
Recently, sites such as TripIt have been created that allow you to organize all your itineraries across multiple sites and services. TripIt is an innovative new service that even allows you to add events to your trip itinerary that were not booked online for a truly consoldated trip plan. So you can organize your whole entire trip in one place. Some of these places have iPhone and Blackberry applications so that you can take your itinerary with you when you travel, which is extremely convenient.
Cons #2: Too Many Moving Parts
I recently went on a trip that had 2 round-trip flights on two different airlines, 10 hotel bookings, a train ride, and a 5-week car rental. Now we had tried to print off all the various confirmation numbers, maps, and contact information in advance. But it took a LOT of work to book all that. And I was absolutely paranoid that I must have forgotten something. Even with TripIt, the actual bookings were on 5 different web sites. And TripIt, as cool as it was, didn’t handle some of the smaller confirmation emails.
In the end, I booked an absolutely horrible hotel in Madrid and had to change hotels without a refund. Would a Madrid expert have been able to warn me to stay away from that area? I also accidentally booked a hotel in Barcelona for the night when I wasn’t in that city yet – again no refunds. A costly mistake.
I think it gets easy for a trip to have too many moving parts. And it would be nice to have an expert who can make sure all the i’s are dotted for you.
Are there any other pros and cons to online travel? Leave a comment.
LikeRelated posts: