I’m interested to know what website/s you like the best for booking and paying for accommodation in New Zealand and why.

I regularly advise accommodation operators about what websites to list on and what booking systems to use so I am aware of the most popular websites in terms of rankings and website traffic, which I think would correlate with booking popularity too, right?

Well, maybe not – so I’d like to hear about what people think rather than statistics, some things I’m keen to know:

• Do you always use the same tourism or accommodation website to book?
• Or do you tend to book direct with the accommodation property?
• Maybe you don’t book online at all and use email or the phone or even a travel agent?
• Do you use a different website for business versus holiday?

Tell me – I want to know what and why.

I will kick it off, I always book on Travelbug* or Wotif. I like Travelbug because it’s easy to use, good pricing, comprehensive and has an easy booking process, but sometimes I’ll also use Wotif for similar reasons but mainly because it may sometimes offer a better deal.

* Probably best to disclose that I was part of the development and launch of Travelbug when I was Marketing Manager at Vianet, but I stand behind my reasons for liking it and am no longer with Vianet or involved in promoting Travelbug.

Now – let’s hear yours! Add a comment.

When researching online for travel destinations, transport, accommodation and tourism activities travellers have to sift through a huge amount of information. Chances are before they book with you they have looked at several other competitor websites in your area plus many more in other destinations.

Making your website stand out and avoid a negative first impression therefore comes down to some key areas:

• Ensure it is an easy website to use. Clear easy to use and consistent navigation is vital with easy to read, brief content for each page and subsection. Solid professional website design will go a long way to achieve this.

• Provide comprehensive but succinct information about what you offer AND your destination without making your site cluttered. Include transport options and maps. Long-winded flowery marketing content doesn’t work so well online.

• For travel, quality photos and a good selection are vital – make them easy to view using slideshows and options to view enlarged versions.

• Offer online bookings – preferably with the ability to check real-time availability, secure payment and instant confirmation. See Online Booking Strategy for Tourism.

• If using email booking enquiries then make sure you respond quickly.

• Promote previous customer endorsements of your business, see how to Make Traveller Reviews part of your Marketing Strategy.

• Keep your website updated with fresh content – there’s nothing worse than out of date information. Having your own content management system will go a long way to do this. Also having a blog page can give you a quick and easy way to adding new information and news.

Checkout this summary of Content and User Experience in Online Travel 2009 – a global online traveller research study conducted by Frommers Unlimited which gives a lot of detail about the process travellers go through with online research, what they are looking for and what annoys them – very information reading.

Check out this presentation I did about the Online Travel Market in New Zealand and Australia at the 2008 Northland Tourism Conference.

[business:Adept Marketing]