Hi there VFF,
A question for your IBE folk (but asking here as it also affects redemption bookings) - when does the company plan on having a functional website for booking flights? There have been a few threads in the main VA forum complaining about it, but let me give you a(nother) scenario..:
I'm looking for flights from Melbourne to Hong Kong in W class. Using your website, it shows me a bunch of options on SQ (who don't have W) and then shows me the VS codeshares. Shouldn't your system be smart enough to work out that what I want isn't on offer via SQ and either show it to me second (or not at all?)
After working out which flights I want (made longer by the fact that you have to click to see (some) details and then manually work out how long the layover in Sydney will be), selecting the outbound journey freezes the screen for 10-15 seconds. I'm not on the world's fastest Internet connection, but this is painful. After the screen un-freezes, I have to scroll a long way down to find the return flights and then go through the same process .. plus even more scrolling to find how to continue to the next step.
I can't stress enough how incredibly slow and non-intuitive the whole booking process is, even before I go on to complete the booking. Have you guys looked at using a system like Tealeaf to work out where people are dropping out of the booking process? I'm willing to bet you're losing a heap of people right on the flight selection screen.
What makes this more interesting is that I just attempted the same booking on Expedia Australia; I searched for the same origin, destination and same dates, but the difference is dramatic: the options I get shown are actually what I searched for, I don't have to scroll forever to find the option to proceed, I get warned that it is a mixed class fare (something that your website *really* needs to do) and when I click on flight details I can see the duration of the layover. Oh, and it's a good 4-5 times faster.
Even better for me as the customer, it's also the same price as your site ... but when I use Expedia, VA gets to pay GDS fees and misses out on all sorts of upsell opportunities (though you're clearly not worried about that, given you don't show all booking classes when searching for flights on your website anyway :!: )
So, back to my question about functional booking engines - it's not one I really expect an answer to, but perhaps you could ask internally: when does the team responsible for the IBE realise that it's an ugly mess that just doesn't work - and that continually patching the production system (during business hours, no less!) is committing more engineering time and money to a system that doesn't seem to be much better than it was when Sabre was initially implemented?
Food for thought: have VA considered using an alternate front end (vs. Sabre Web) - I understand ITA Software make a rather nice IBE that could plug in to your Sabre rez system..?
(I should make it clear that I don't work for the companies I've linked to - I'm just someone who's immensely frustrated by your website!)
A question for your IBE folk (but asking here as it also affects redemption bookings) - when does the company plan on having a functional website for booking flights? There have been a few threads in the main VA forum complaining about it, but let me give you a(nother) scenario..:
I'm looking for flights from Melbourne to Hong Kong in W class. Using your website, it shows me a bunch of options on SQ (who don't have W) and then shows me the VS codeshares. Shouldn't your system be smart enough to work out that what I want isn't on offer via SQ and either show it to me second (or not at all?)
After working out which flights I want (made longer by the fact that you have to click to see (some) details and then manually work out how long the layover in Sydney will be), selecting the outbound journey freezes the screen for 10-15 seconds. I'm not on the world's fastest Internet connection, but this is painful. After the screen un-freezes, I have to scroll a long way down to find the return flights and then go through the same process .. plus even more scrolling to find how to continue to the next step.
I can't stress enough how incredibly slow and non-intuitive the whole booking process is, even before I go on to complete the booking. Have you guys looked at using a system like Tealeaf to work out where people are dropping out of the booking process? I'm willing to bet you're losing a heap of people right on the flight selection screen.
What makes this more interesting is that I just attempted the same booking on Expedia Australia; I searched for the same origin, destination and same dates, but the difference is dramatic: the options I get shown are actually what I searched for, I don't have to scroll forever to find the option to proceed, I get warned that it is a mixed class fare (something that your website *really* needs to do) and when I click on flight details I can see the duration of the layover. Oh, and it's a good 4-5 times faster.
Even better for me as the customer, it's also the same price as your site ... but when I use Expedia, VA gets to pay GDS fees and misses out on all sorts of upsell opportunities (though you're clearly not worried about that, given you don't show all booking classes when searching for flights on your website anyway :!: )
So, back to my question about functional booking engines - it's not one I really expect an answer to, but perhaps you could ask internally: when does the team responsible for the IBE realise that it's an ugly mess that just doesn't work - and that continually patching the production system (during business hours, no less!) is committing more engineering time and money to a system that doesn't seem to be much better than it was when Sabre was initially implemented?
Food for thought: have VA considered using an alternate front end (vs. Sabre Web) - I understand ITA Software make a rather nice IBE that could plug in to your Sabre rez system..?
(I should make it clear that I don't work for the companies I've linked to - I'm just someone who's immensely frustrated by your website!)
