From experience I know that searching for and booking a flight is quite straight forward compared to searching for and booking a hotel. Obviously if you want to spend a couple of days in Berlin or New York, the choice of airline is limited but the choice of hospitality is endless.

Surprisingly, web sites have invested in sophisticated flight search systems, while still offering limited hotel search mechanisms.

I see two main reasons for this:

  • First, there are many reasons to book hotels, each of them triggering totally different needs and requests. When I travel for business, I choose hotels located close to my meeting locations and offering a business center. The lowest price is not my first criteria.When travelling for leisure, there are a number of different circumstances possible. For instance, from a short weekend break with friends – where a basic hotel with just the basic necessities is required – to a few days vacation with my wife to celebrate our wedding anniversary – where a nice place is necessary since the hotel experience is crucial.
  • Secondly, the hotel business has not gone through the airline pricing transformation seen in the last 5 to 10 years. Following pressure from low cost airlines, traditional airlines have invented the concept of fare family, a sort of flight package allowing the traveler to get the most appropriate price and service according to his or her travel needs, while enabling the airline to up-sell through online merchandising.

So what characteristics would the ultimate search experience encompass when booking a hotel? I would say simply: intuition and trustworthiness.

Most of my trips can definitely be categorized within three to five groups, ranging from business to leisure as mentioned previously. Therefore, in 90% of cases I don’t need to bother entering a sophisticated list of amenities, the system should determine them based on my travel aspirations.

I would expect the system to automatically match my service expectations with the property profile. This property profile would most likely be deduced by the system from the hotel characteristics and traveler reviews which are collected after each stay.

It seems that an obvious approach would be a plain text expression for the request. That’s basically the way I search on Google, why wouldn’t I be able to do the same on Expedia or Hyatt.com? Of course I’ll make typos, but does that matter? The system will adapt just like Google does today. For example:

“Business trip to New York to visit IBM, 5th street, for 2 days from Nov 28” or “Looking for a room Saturday 24 Dec 10mn from Cuneo, Italy” or “one week of nice sea and sun vacations with my wife mid May 2011”.

Geography is complex and radius search is often much more efficient than city search. If a hotel is five blocks from your meeting but it’s located in a suburb of the city your flight arrived in, then you may not have been proposed by the system, which usually searches “by city”.

Also when price is a priority, I want the system to estimate a total trip cost. What’s the point in looking for a cheap hotel for a transit night at Orly airport if the only way to get there is a return taxi, doubling the total cost? The Hilton airport would have been cheaper!

I often hesitate between three or four hotels suggested by the system. To compare, I usually have to navigate within the web site back and forth from one hotel description page to another. What about having a single comparison page where the four hotel descriptions and pictures are displayed next to each other, and where I can immediately spot which one has the features I’m looking for ?

To facilitate the hotel reservation experience, hoteliers should certainly evolve their offer strategy to adapt it to the strong need of a personalized service.

Indeed, a room can be offered with just a basic bed and shower, or going as far as a sophisticated TV set, gaming system, office desk, telephone, wifi, paintings, printer - you name it! By creating such a modularized offering, hoteliers can easily respond to new consumer demands. They will also be able to package services and adapt their pricing policy to their costs. Why would a hotel invest in desks or telephones for all rooms if, by experience, only 50% of the occupants need one?

Personalization, if anticipated, is a huge opportunity for hoteliers to adapt their costs to their revenues and thus to optimize their margins.

Amadeus

Amadeus is a leading provider of advanced technology solutions for the global travel industry. Customer groups include travel providers (e.g. airlines, hotels, rail and ferry operators, etc.), travel sellers (travel agencies and websites), and travel buyers (corporations and travel management companies). The Amadeus group employs around 15,000 people worldwide, across central sites in Madrid (corporate headquarters), Nice (development) and Erding (operations), as well as over 70 local Amadeus Commercial Organizations globally and has a presence in more than 190 countries. The group operates a transaction-based business model. Amadeus is listed on the Spanish Stock Exchange under the symbol "AMS.MC" and is a component of the IBEX 35 index. To find out more about Amadeus please visit www.amadeus.com, and www.amadeus.com/blog for more on the travel industry.