QHotels Launches Real-time Online Hotel Booking System
Tuesday 1st January 2008
QHotels, the group of 21 four-star hotels located across the UK, has launched a new real-time online hotel booking system.
The system was designed by David Taylor, Sales Director at QHotels in association with Eliot Warrington at Refresh Marketing and built by a US based software specialist.
The objective for creating the system was to produce an easy to use, fast online booking system, which is as trustworthy as making a booking in person at the hotel reception or over the telephone.
Here’s how it works: The customer selects the style of room they want from a drop down list, select a date for their stay and the search begins. If they have a special requirement or promotional code, they can enter this before they search to ensure the results displayed account for it.
Results are displayed in list form, with detailed information about the room available and an image of the room, which displays when the user rolls their cursor over the room description. When ready to book, they select the reservation they wish to make and pay using their debit or credit card.
The hotel claims the system benefits the user because it is easy to use and can significantly increase the speed of booking process. However, an experimental hotel booking by the author found that the choice of rooms available was extensive, so it took time to work through them to find my choice. The hotel also claims the online booking system is amongst the first of its kind in the UK to run in real-time and connect directly to the hotel group’s own central reservation system. While it is amongst the first there are others available, so it is not a unique system.
Real-time availability means that all room availability is up-to-the-minute correct, exactly the same as it would be at the hotel’s own reception. In theory, when you book a room online, it should be the same as booking over the phone or in person at the reception.
However, the hotel reception would allow you to book many rooms at a time, currently the QHotels system limits you to three, which means you still need to call the hotel if you would like to book more.
It is true that many hotel web sites don’t have live availability. Guests are led to believe they are making a booking via the hotel’s site and that their room is guaranteed; but what these sites actually do is generate an email to the hotel. Staff at the hotel then manually input the booking into their front office system; just so long as the rooms are still available. Alternatively a call to the hotel is also fast and at least you have the reassurance that you made your reservation with a living breathing human being.
But back to this QHotels online booking system, it does display all information from the start of the booking to the finish on one page; the first page you see. And all reservations information is visible at all times throughout the online booking process. To test the system I completed my booking, and then a few days later rang the hotel to a) Check it had been received, b) Cancel, as it was just a test. In the system’s favour, my booking had been correctly received by the property.
The new online hotel booking system is currently being installed across all QHotels; most have already adopted the system. The test now is to see how many people use it without making a call just to check their reservation is safe, which ultimately could eliminate the purpose of the system.
To try QHotels new online hotel booking system for yourself visit
www.QHotels.co.uk/book-now/
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