[LINK] Online hotel booking? Forget it!

[Howard Lowndes]

Try booking a flight with Qantas.

When I went to the "Flight Booking" label having found the flight I
wanted, I was sent to try and find www-systest.qantas.com.au, which
needless to say wasn't online.

No Qantas booking for me.

-- 
Howard.
______________________________________________________
LANNet Computing Associates <http://www.lannet.com.au>

On Thu, 30 Nov 2000, Rik Harris wrote:

> On Thu, Nov 30, 2000 at 03:23:07PM +1100, Rick Welykochy wrote:
> > Hi Linkers,
> >
> > A little anecdotal evidence of further web degradation in this
> > supposed age of e-commerce, e-tailing, e-booking and e-verything
> > e-lse.
>
> > In the end I managed to obtain a couple of phone numbers from the
> > web pages for hotels in the USA and Canada and simply called the
> > hotel's front desk, gave my C/Card details and had a room within 30
> > seconds.
>
> I did the same in Germany and the UK last year.  Lots of pretty
> pictures, rates, etc.  The only time I got one to do something
> remotely like booking me a room, it simply sent an email somewhere.  I
> waited for a few days with no response and ended up doing exactly what
> you did (except I asked my German-speaking sister-in-law to book the
> ones in Germany :-).  The Web was really useful for the research
> though.
>
> I've also tried booking concert tickets without a lot of success - the
> site was too slow (or dead).
>
> It takes a lot of ONGOING time and money to make these sorts of sites
> work well.  I have used the Web for some things that work extremely
> well - bill paying, broking, airline tickets, etc, all by companies
> that live by their reputation, on- or off-Net, so they put the
> resources into making sure it keeps working.