Experiences of booking online Holiday Packages including Flights, Hotels and local facilities || What kind of portals are good sources of information to take right decisions for your holidays
For last few days, I have been spending some time with online portals like MakeMyTrip, ClearTrip, TravelGuru, Yatra.com & Traveltraiangle.com etc. It's my first experience when I was looking for holiday packages online. Usually I always planned my holidays by exploring first hand information through traveller friends and amazing communities like Ghumakkar.com. So far, quick inputs from friends and frequent travelers have always been quite useful and save lot of planning time. Here I am going to share some experiences I had with online holiday booking portals.
I am strong believer of internet being rich source of information and suddenly some of my beliefs started dropping one by one. Also I also got to understand why digital marketing is picking up. At the same time, I started realizing about how customer expectations are built by exploring various options on web & how it's related to human psychology.
During this whole process, I realized that every portal has different style of offering holiday packages, although there are very few who have updated information on their portals. So initially we end up wasting time and then start contacting their customer care people. After initial 2 days, the real story started. When some of the players like MakemyTrip had set expectations high, in terms of offerings. On other hand, players like Cleartrip were offering quite cheap bookings but least offerings (inclusions). Suddenly when I started contacting hotels, I got cheaper deals as compared to I was getting through Makemytrip, Expedia or Cleartrip.com. I was wondering, if this is the real scenario then why would someone book their holidays through these intermediary portals.
I am strong believer of internet being rich source of information and suddenly some of my beliefs started dropping one by one. Also I also got to understand why digital marketing is picking up. At the same time, I started realizing about how customer expectations are built by exploring various options on web & how it's related to human psychology.
During this whole process, I realized that every portal has different style of offering holiday packages, although there are very few who have updated information on their portals. So initially we end up wasting time and then start contacting their customer care people. After initial 2 days, the real story started. When some of the players like MakemyTrip had set expectations high, in terms of offerings. On other hand, players like Cleartrip were offering quite cheap bookings but least offerings (inclusions). Suddenly when I started contacting hotels, I got cheaper deals as compared to I was getting through Makemytrip, Expedia or Cleartrip.com. I was wondering, if this is the real scenario then why would someone book their holidays through these intermediary portals.
At times, some of the well rated hotels impress with great web portals, detailed information and then suddenly very odd mistakes breaks down all the confidence & trust. Check out following link - http://www.thezurihotels.com/goa/specials/honeymoon-packages/honeymoon-spa-package-zuri-white-sands.html . Here this hotel talks about Honeymoon Packages and mentioned some conditions around accommodating children in the room. After all great stuff and impressive details, such small mistakes create doubts in the minds of folks exploring various Holiday options.
Overall I felt that internet has too much information and it's difficult to take right decision on the basis of facts available online. At times, it becomes a trust issue that whom to believe. Still I am finding appropriate place to stay, although fights are booked :). I shall be writing another post after I complete my bookings. I am pretty confident that all time spent on these portals would be useful for viewers of PHOTO JOURNEY.
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