TravelPony.com: Let’s ride!

TravelPony.com is a brand new hotel booking website created in 2013. The concept is simple: Register with your Facebook ID and get the best rates available: between 10 and 70% below the big travel sites! 

The question is: How is it possible? 

TravelPony relies on their customer to advertise the website through word of mouth. Indeed, when you book your hotel you just have to click a button and your deals appears on your Facebook page. TravelPony is riding on the social media wave to get free marketing and international recognition. How many friends will see your post and say “It’s the best price I’ve never seen!”? 

The site is creating a real relation of trust with the customers. Indeed, if you find a deal, they ask if you’d like to tell your friends via Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn. If you don’t want to share, they allow you to check a box reading “I promise to tell my friends about this amazing deal.” Indeed, it’s in your interest: more your share, more you’ll get low prices. 

For the moment hotels available on the website are from 24 cities: 22 US cities, London, and Paris. They are from mid-range to luxury hotels, and the customer can book 6 months in advance at a maximum. However it is not only allowing last minut reservations and the client will get the best rates every day. 

Conclusion

This social way of booking reaches already 20 markets with over 2,000 top hotel partners, making it one of the best sites to get a deal and book a hotel room… And it’s a beginning. 

 

We choose to talk about this website because it is an innovative way to find deals on the internet, which will compete with kayak.com, booking.com and others online booking portals. This engine has been tested by other travel-bloggers and they all agree to say that it a quick, easy to use website, based on a fair relationship between the actors. 

Sources: 

http://www.travelpony.com/pages/about

http://www.adventurouskate.com/travelpony-review-i-cant-believe-how-cheap-these-hotels-are/

http://www.so-many-places.com/2013/12/book-hotels-travelpony/

Hotel meta-search is the future for bookings

Tourists are becoming more and more demanding regarding their travel bookings. Indeed, they need to easily have access to a sufficient database and they need to compare prices. However, the only way for internet users to do it was to find themselves their own resources through the search engine they used.

Recently a “new” tool has been used to make easier the booking process for tourists. This tool is known as meta-search engine.

What is a meta-search engine?

A meta-search engine is a tool that enables the Internet users to ask for one criteria and access several search engines’ databases simultaneously.   

Is it a new tool?

Absolutely not. Mamma.com was the first meta-search engine created by Herman Tumurcuoglu in Quebec and was commercialized in 1996.

But as many tools for tourism it took time for marketers and companies to understand the potential benefits. As a result, it is only since a few years that meta-search engines are used for tourism destinations.

What are the benefits?

This engine enables consumers to access a more accurate database for their research. They do not have to look for different websites in order to find the best price. The meta-search engine will have already gather the prices for different booking websites.

For hotel companies the meta-search engines can be considered as a new distribution partner. Indeed, once the customer is given the best possible information, the decision making process is fasten. The next step for the customer is the payment, which means the monetization of the booking process.

What are the trends and well-known actors?

Google launched in the end 2013 a new meta-search capability within Google Maps that enables consumers to get flight prices while looking for different routes. This is only the first step of a broader meta-search process. They will try to gather hotel information for the next step.

TripAdvisor gave its business an edge in hotel meta-search. While looking for a hotel on TripAdvisor, the customer is now given a price comparison sometimes between more than 10 booking websites! What does it mean? As we have said previously, it means that the customer does not have to lose time looking through 10 different websites – 5 of which he or she has never heard about – and feels like he or she has the most accurate information. Thus all the distribution channel is simplified and the monetization is accelerated. 

Sources: 

http://skift.com/2013/02/13/tripadvisor-shakes-up-business-with-aggressive-hotel-metasearch-integration/

http://www.tourism-review.com/hotel-marketers-top-three-metasearch-trends--news3758

http://www.eyefortravel.com/distribution-strategies/new-frontiers-how-meta-search-upping-its-game

http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?rep=rep1&type=pdf&doi=10.1.1.205.17

Online booking system of China railways

Spring Festival holiday began on January 22nd, 2012 in China. This 7-day period for employees is the longest holiday of a year. During the holiday, people usually go back their hometown for a sweet gather of family or go to travel for a good relax. Apparently, large amount of travelling people resulted in travel rush, which is also known as the largest global “short-term migration”. Spring Festival travel rush usually starts from 15 days before till 25 days after the first day of Spring Festival. Great transportation problems were raised every year such as train delay, travellers stranded and difficulty in buying train ticket.

Today, our focus is ticket reservation system, as it is relevant to online booking system in tourism. Apart from railway station, designated ticket office and travel agency, and after the telephone booking available for High Speed Trains, people now can also buy all train tickets online and by telephone this year. Passengers can buy ticket online with China Railway Customer Service Center (CRCSC) (www.12306.cn) since Jun.1st 2011. Employment of IT in booking and selling tickets largely relieve the load of bricks-and-mortar.

From the year 2012, real-name policy is implemented both in buying train tickets and checking-in.

With valid ID, people can book tickets for 1-10 days advance (1-12 days in advance for 2012 Spring Festival Rush). An e-currency payment service (like PayPal) is a must for purchasing online. Main bank cards stipulated by China UnionPay support the online secure payment.

The pilot project is now practicing in 50 stations includes Beijing, Shanghai, Wuhan, Guangzhou, Chengdu and their subordinates. The passenger's identity information is printed on the ticket. Passengers need to take their valid travel documents with the train tickets and check-in in those stations.

The online reservation service is quite necessary nowadays. It is a trend of the world. This new online real-name booking system will relieve the long queues in front of ticket offices and will better the situation of scalpers. However, the majority of the passengers during the Spring Festival Rush are migrant rural workers. They work hard for days and nights all the year round. Few of them ever get good education. The online reservation may not be very practical for them. And the booking system didn’t work very well. It showed up paralysis from time to time. According to staff in network department of CRCSC, there are 100 thousand people booking online per second and the peak second is 5 million people.

Source:

http://www.travelchinaguide.com/china-trains/spring-festival-rush.htm