Is your Web presence a site for sore eyes?

Most people agree on the potential for electronic commerce and, despite being behind customers in the USA, European consumers will still spend more than a3,000mon-line during 2000. Tourism accounts for a high proportion of these transactions.

Yet most hoteliers say they are lucky to be generating 2% or 3% of their reservations on-line.

Excuses such as "customers are not ready to reserve hotels on-line just yet" are common, but could it be that we, as an industry, haven't figured out how to use the Internet as an effective sales tool?

There are several standard reasons given for why consumers shop on the Internet, and even a cursory look at these is enlightening when pondering the problem posed above.

"Better product information" is one reason. This is certainly relevant to travel products, with more and more consumers doing comparison shopping on-line prior to booking their trip.

Electronic versions

But many hotels persist in creating electronic versions of their paper-based brochures when designing their Web sites. While these look pretty and provide a basic on-line presence, they fail to capitalise on the power of the Web medium.

Despite this potential, most hotel sites continue to repeat the same tired old formula of photos and descriptions of the restaurant and bedrooms, without ever stopping to think what the customer really wants.

Another common reason for on-line shopping is "better prices". Like it or not, the Web is perceived by consumers to be a place where they can find a bargain. In the tourism sector, there are a variety of Web sites (such as Lastminute.com) where discounted hotel products can be found. But on hotel Web sites themselves, the opposite is true.

As an experiment, I attempted to make bookings on the Web sites of the major hotel companies worldwide. I immediately followed up my Web booking with a telephone call to the toll-free reservations number, requesting the same room in the same hotel for the same dates.

And guess what! Despite the vast difference in distribution costs for the hotel, in the majority of cases the rate available over the Web was more expensive than the call centre's opening offer.

Cost saving

Only in three cases was any element of the cost saving that was generated by processing the booking over the Web explicitly passed on to the customer. For the hotel product at least, it seems that we are going against e-commerce trends and actually charging the customer more when they purchase over the Web.

Another reason for using the Internet is "the ability to return merchandise easily", which in hotel terms I would equate with cancelling a reservation.

Now this is where I got myself into trouble with my little experiment and the countless bookings all guaranteed with my credit card. I had presumed that I could just go into each company's site and cancel each booking with the same ease with which I had made the reservation in the first place.

Wrong! Only in a very small percentage of cases was I able to cancel the room on-line, resulting in a series of phone calls to reservation centres and sometimes even to individual properties in a frantic effort to undo my little experiment.

So, next time you bemoan the fact that your Web site isn't generating enough business for you, ask yourself some questions.

Does your site provide your customers with comprehensive, accurate and targeted information to inform them about your product?

Are you making it easy for them to book - and cancel if they need to - on-line?

Are you giving them an incentive to make that booking on your site rather through any other channel?

In short, are you giving customers what they want?

Peter O'Connor is an assistant professor in hospitality IT at the Institut de Management Hotelier International, Paris