Sunday, April 27, 2008

People - update your travel sites!

I'm writing from Washington D.C., a few minutes before my flight back home. I had a great trip, the first I planned and conducted entirely by using e-tourism sites: no books, no brochures. It was a good experience overall, in spite of some annoying problems I found with the content. Judge for yourself:

1. When I landed in D.C. I was told that my luggage was "delayed" (in other words, it was lost and I'm stuck without clothes). The lady from the United Airlines booth asked me to check the status of my luggage on their website, which I did in the next five days. It was never updated, not even after I got my suitcase back. Is this a way to treat an online customer? why do you provide that tool if you're not going to update it?

2. I'm a roller-coaster frick so I wanted to visit the Six Flags America park, not far from D.C. I checked their website for public transportation options to the park, where it was said: "Take Metro's Blue Line towards Largo Town Center and exit at Addison Road. Transfer to the C21 Bus and exit in front of Six Flags America". They forgot to mention just one tiny detail: there is no C21 bus on Saturday's. Instead, there is another bus that runs once in every hour and travels around the entire area before finally getting to the park. Who wants to ride such a bus on his vacation?

Bottom line: if you have a travel website, update it on a daily basis. There are tourists out there who actually use it!! don't make them angry or they won't come back.

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