Gomez Performance Index For Hotels: August 15 - September 15, 2005
The prevailing goal for hoteliers in the Performance Index is overall consistency. With a few notable exceptions, the benchmarked sites on our index demonstrate very predictable average application speeds and success rates.
The prevailing goal for hoteliers in the Performance Index is overall consistency. With a few notable exceptions, the benchmarked sites on our index demonstrate very predictable average application speeds and success rates.
Since January 2005, the Hotel portals (Expedia, Hotels.com, Orbitz, and Travelocity) have shown a slight increase in overall average response time, averaging one second slower. This may be due to the sheer volume and variety of hotel choices that users are presented with at large travel portal sites, as opposed to at individual hotel chain sites. In the same period, the main brands (Choice Hotels, Hilton, Marriott, Ramada, and Starwood) have trended towards faster response times, improving on average by one second.
Success Rate
Even when success rates dipped among benchmarked hoteliers, the decreases were isolated to limited, discrete (but extremely noticeable), speed and/or availability events. These were usually resolved within the span of two hours. Success rate performance was relatively good with the top 5 hoteliers (Marriott, Hotels.com, Best Western, Travelocity, and Choice Hotels) having success rates showing that they almost always complete a customer transaction.
Response Time
The top five ranked hoteliers for response time (Motel 6, Red Roof Inn, Expedia, Choice Hotels, and Starwood) showed the fastest and most consistent performance, indicating that consumers can always expect a quick response from these hoteliers. Hoteliers in the middle of the pack are more transparent, exposing slow performance to their customers during work-week traffic surges that are less prevalent on the weekend. It seems that Hoteliers with the slowest response times exhibited more variation in their results, indicating that their infrastructure requirements may need boosting in order to achieve "response time nirvana": the flat trend line.
Hotels GPI Benchmark
August 15, 2005 - September 15, 2005