Flightster
The Top 5 Things that Suck about Travel Sites
- by Jeff
- on December 7th, 2010
- 9 Comments
Why does buying an airline ticket on-line have to be such a mission?
Yea, it’s true that if I know exactly which airline I want to fly or exactly which flights I want to take, most of the sites out there can help me pretty easily. But what if I don’t know which airline? What if I want to rely on a booking site to actually point out for me the airline and flights that are the best combination of cheap and convenient? Then, it becomes a wrenching experience. So please indulge me for a second and allow me to vent. Here is my list of the Top 5 things that suck about on-line travel sites:
1. Hiding the Real Price
It would be nice if sites could just tell us what we need to pay, on the first page, in a clear font, without trying to disguise the true total. Why have a display that screams $198 when the actual fare is $219. Do they really think we’re not going to notice the total at some point before we click “Purchase”?
2. Options Overkill
Having choices is great, and that’s what makes booking our own flights so appealing. But we also have lives, and don’t want to spend too much of them navigating through insufferable booking sites.
On a recent search on a major travel site, this is what I got back:
146 pages of options. Seriously?
And no wonder it’s 146 pages. The first entire page is just a bunch of different outbound flights combined with an awful 5am return flight.
3. Out of Control Upsells
Just because I’m buying an airline ticket, doesn’t mean I also want to spend all afternoon planning (and pre-paying for) every second of my trip. On Orbitz, in order to purchase a ticket to Chicago, I have to first read through and decline to add all of the following: a hotel, a car, parking at the airport, transportation from the airport, a dinner cruise in Chicago, Blue Man Group tickets, a Chicago “City Pass”, a Chicago “Party Pass”, Field Museum tickets, Chicago Grand Tour tickets, another dinner cruise, a lunch cruise, another lunch cruise, a scenic tour, a tour of Historic Chicago, a shopping tour, a Chicago Insider Guide, a carbon offset for my flight, and, no joke, even a subscription to Maxim or Popular Science, ostensibly so I’ll have something to read during the down time!
4. Elusive Itineraries
One predicament that drives me crazy is when a site shows something like this: two itinerary options on the same airline, at the same price.
What if I like the 7:04am flight from the second itinerary, buy want to come home on the later 3:20pm flight from the first? Despite 8 pages worth of options, that combination doesn’t seem to exist? Why not? Is it unreasonable to expect to get the flight I want in both directions?
5. Baiting and Switching
Travel web sites are notorious bait and switchers. If you see a discount or fare advertised by a travel site, it’s virtually guaranteed to not exist. While sometimes the issue is simply that the offer excludes taxes or fees, in the travel space usually the offense is much more egregious. Like completely making up fares or discounts that have no basis in reality.
When I followed this particular Google search with a click to both of these sites, I found that FareSpotter.net led me to prices of $221 or more (as opposed to $49), and CheapOAir was exactly $25 more than every other site I checked (the 65% “discount” plus $15 “bonus” notwithstanding).
Note the asterisk on the $49 rate in FareSpotter ad, with no actual footnote. I guess they forgot the:
* This fare is complete B.S. We pulled it out of our ass to maximize click through rates.
Have some of your own pet peeves about travel sites? If so, we’d love to hear them!
Yes! Exactly! So true on all counts!
I’ve been dealing with some particularly crummy upsells here in Asia…they’re all about charging you for choosing your seat, carrying any bags at all, paying for ‘insurance’ (which is opt-out, so most people won’t even realize they’re paying for it, or that NOT paying for it is an option) and just about anything else they can think of to tack on a few (or few dozen) extra dollars to your bill.
The limitations you face when looking for something broad is frustrating as well. Only a few sites will let you type in something like ‘Bangkok to anywhere, under $500 in November’ without shouting computer profanity back at you. What if I just want to go SOMEWHERE? And on some random date in November (whichever is the cheapest to fly on)?
I think that would be awesome, to be able to search for a flight to anywhere in a certain price range.
Check out Kayak’s new “Explore” feature. It seems to be similar to what you are looking for…
http://www.kayak.com/explore/
Can someone explain to me why it’s cheaper to fly RT from Nashville to Boston to Dublin than to try to book the Boston to DUB and the BNA to Boston separately? What if I want to fly Southwest to Boston because I KNOW it will be on time. I can’t get the Boston to Dublin rate in the first option independently of the Nashville flight. Even though it’s the EXACT SAME flight. Highly irritating since I love Southwest.
It’s amazing how little airfares have to do with the actual flight segments that are part of your journey, or even the distance you are flying. The airlines independently set fares for each route based on nothing more than supply or demand. The price from Nashville to Dublin could be considerably more or less than the sum of the prices from Nashville to Boston and Boston to Dublin, even if you are connecting through Boston. It is all just based on how many people in Boston want to go to Dublin, and what they are willing to pay, and what the same numbers are for Nashville. (Keep in mind, an airline that routes Nashville to Dublin passengers via Boston is competing with other airlines who route those passengers through different cities; so airlines will generally set prices without any regard to where they have to connect you through.)
This used to leave the door open for a lot of cool tricks where, for instance, if you were going to New York City but the fares to Buffalo were cheaper, you could buy a ticket to Buffalo with a stop in New York and just get off the plane at the stop. Nowadays, though, the airlines are too smart for this. If you skip any portion of your itinerary, they’ll detect it and cancel the rest of your ticket.
Sorry for the long-winded answer, but I hope it makes sense.
The sites send you to other sites than what you typed in?????????????
@Nick,I love that suggestion for a feature. If I saw that I might be inclined to start purchasing quite a few tickets.
@Jeff: What really blew me away was the upsell options. Magazine subscriptions?I wonder how what the conversion rates are like on something like that and more importantly is the extra revenue worth it to to tarnish the user experience?
I prefer using an agent or booking my own travel through a GDS system. I’m happy to pay a small fee to an agent who can get the best rate and see all the schedules and airlines without having to navigate sites like Kayak or CheapOAir. I book air so often with my travel agent that the fee is generally waived anyway, and then I’m paying the absolute basement price and skipping the headache. And besides, doesn’t booking with a site called CheapOAir fill you with doubt and thoughts of some awful, run-down airlines?
I loved this article! Trying to book flights is always a hassle (especially with hidden fees + taxes) .. Researched travel deals at my last job and it took so much time to compare prices!