BOOKATICKET is an online ticket booking engine where customers can benefit with a range of services including air tickets, car rentals, hotels and even cruise line bookings online anytime globally. It helps their customers to plan their business and personal trips and book their tickets online without any hesitation, offering quick, cheap and discounted tickets for their destinations. The website also has a special section on Last minute bookings- offering excellent value for money deals for immediate business or holiday needs.
bookaticket.com is a key brand of the tq6 group which had all the ingredients that would appeal to customers with detailed city information related to their travel plan and will ensure customers receive the best quality at discounted rates. tq6 ensured that the site was visually appealing, elegant, secure, informative and user friendly.
Business Model
What is B2C e-commerce?
-B2C stands for "business to consumer". It applies to any business or organization that sells its products or services to the consumers directly over the internet. BOOKATICKET provides a B2C e-commerce online holiday booking services for airline tickets and hotel rooms. As BOOKATICKET does not own any of the (airlines, hotels and cars etc) seen on its website and thus they acts only as an intermediary.
Mode of Payment
The website only accept credit card (i.e. American Express, Visa, MasterCard Etc) as their only payment method. This could mean that only customers with credit cards have ability to use these online services which in turn narrow down the pool of users to almost all working adults. However this problem could be easily overcome by lending the cards from trusting family members and pay back in cash. However, it also creates the problem of being unable to identify the cardholders' identity, leaving it wholly to the issuing bank. It is possible for a user to use lost or stolen credit card to book a flight. Moreover, they only offer credit card payment and not other paying methods like PayPal. This may caused some users to be diverted away from the website.
Web Design
The site is very user friendly as it provides step by step instructions to get the registration done. Moreover the navigation buttons and bars are easy to understand and use and navigation is consistent throughout web site. Most importantly, the pages download quickly and the search function only takes up a few seconds. This is definitely a plus point for users who are usually in a rush. Another benefit is that the colors used in the website are of a contrasting nature so as not to tired the users eyes who probably have been looking at their screen for long hours. As the colors are pleasant, users are willing to take their time browsing through the website for better deals. A suggestion may be that the site can improve on is to put up more itineraries pictures or animations to attract more customers but at the expense of the downloading speed.
Strength
The traditional commerce basically relies on "bricks and mortar" infrastructure - meaning physical market places conduct the exchanges. Whereas, with the advances of e-commerce technology, exchanges are conducted virtually. In this case, customers can acquire the products and services rendered by businesses via bookaticket.com 24 hours a day, 7 days a week as long as they have an internet connection and a computer. This speeds up the searching and waiting process, with the former conveniently allows customers to book air tickets without having to step out of their home to find any travel agencies. The latter shortens whole process of booking the tickets to retrieving the tickets from 1 week to (1 to 2) days.
They meticulously take into consideration the needs of the customers, from the usual air tickets and hotel bookings to car rental and cruise trips services. These consideration includes enabling the customers to be able to view the itineraries of the arrival destination, choose passenger seats from the deck plan and also, to be able to refer to the detailed hotel reviews from past customers. This is an important aspect as it greatly reduced information asymmetry and assures the customers that their money are well spend with regard to the services they will receive. More conveniently, there are short explanations of expectations and attractions of the destination.
The website also allows users to book hotels and flights. This allows them to check the details and other cost related to searching of details will be saved as no double checking will occur. And also, by using credit card payment, both the transaction broker (bookaticket) and the business (airline) need not check for the repayment of the goods transacted. All related financial issues are taken care by the banks that have access to their own and the interbank record to determine the credit worthiness of the card holder. This in turn save bookaticket and the airline a cost which will be incur if they choose to collect the fees by themselves. Thus, this savings also translate to a cost saving by the traveler allowing a better offer to be considered. Thus, the brokers are able to give a better price; attracting more customers to their websites.
The site also have features to show the date when you depart so that wrong dates will not be booked. in events that if the date are wrongly input, the site will also prompt an error message to remind the users to check the dates again. Customers will be able to sort flights selection by pricing, duration, departure time, arrival Time and by airline. These functions allows the client to be able to choose the flights most suitable for them. Clear confirmation data of selection of flights, e.g.: time, day, departure and destination airport, airline and plane model are placed on the top of the website for ease of confirmation. Last but not least, prices are clearly computed and shown. This table will be useful to travelers who have a tight budget and those who have a need to know what are they making payments for to solve the usual asymmetry information of have hidden cost at payment due. At the end of the registration, passenger’s information is collected in a concise manner and trip summary is provided. The smooth flowing of information ensures that optimal accuracy is presented to the customers.
As compared to AIRTICKETONSALE, they have definitely done better in terms of information flow. AIRTICKETONSALE do not provide traveler information as to whether if the flight is a stop over or a single flight. The lack of this information may cause traveler more time and money which makes AIRTICKETONSALE a worse off website as compare to BOOKATICKET. Moreover, there is a chance of booking failure if there is no flight found matching with the requirements given by the user. This failure booking notice is given at the end of user's data collection, thus wasting a lot of the user's time.
Weakness
Credit cards transactions as mentioned above are prone to security issues, especially when it comes to online transactions. The details found in credit cards are not really embedded in secure channels. Anyone who manages to intercept the data found on your credit card can easily use your line of credit for their own purposes.
Similar to the above weakness, there is no absolute foolproof security to prevent internet threats leading to data and information losses. Data and information fallen in the wrong hands will result in undesirable consequences.
It may also be that the booking is not properly registered and that the payment has already been collected but the booking is not processed. The traveler will be in for a bad surprise if that occurs.
Another weakness is that there is no verification of the passenger until the passenger reaches the airport for departure. If any information is entered erroneously, the trip ticket and booking would be in waste. There is no more 3rd party to double check the information entered.
However, when compared to other websites like AIRTICKETONSALE, BOOKATICKET is unable to identify the user's departure country. This result in confusion when booking of tickets as all websites define the departure countries differently. In this regards, AIRTICKETONSALE is better as they provide the countries and airport in a drop list manner which allows the users to have ease in defining the destination intended.
Another point to improve on may be to offer travel insurance like TRAVELOCITY. TRAVELOCITY offers travel insurance together with air ticket and hotel accommodation. This allows the users a more "all-in-one" service, saving the trouble to find a insurance company just to buy a travel insurance. If the user bought airticket together with hotel accommodation and travel insurance, the website will be able to show a full breakdown of the cost incurred and payable by the user. This is to prevent information asymmetry in cost and prevent users form worrying about hidden cost.
However, when compared to other websites like AIRTICKETONSALE, BOOKATICKET is unable to identify the user's departure country. This result in confusion when booking of tickets as all websites define the departure countries differently. In this regards, AIRTICKETONSALE is better as they provide the countries and airport in a drop list manner which allows the users to have ease in defining the destination intended.
Another point to improve on may be to offer travel insurance like TRAVELOCITY. TRAVELOCITY offers travel insurance together with air ticket and hotel accommodation. This allows the users a more "all-in-one" service, saving the trouble to find a insurance company just to buy a travel insurance. If the user bought airticket together with hotel accommodation and travel insurance, the website will be able to show a full breakdown of the cost incurred and payable by the user. This is to prevent information asymmetry in cost and prevent users form worrying about hidden cost.
