During the three years of selling online booking services to the accommodation industry, there is something we've learned. The term online booking is a clear as putting on your great uncle's thick-as-a-Coke-bottle-bottom reading glasses and looking at a mountain vista.

So what is an online booking really?

In the accommodation industry, an online booking is a reservation made with a computer over a network (i.e. the Internet) for one or more rooms on a specific date of a specific type (e.g. a room with two double beds) for a specified price. The guests anticipate that the room they booked will be waiting for them upon arrival. If the room isn't ready upon arrival, guests expect the accommodation to do something about it.

In contrast, an online request requires that the accommodation provider respond to the guest to confirm availability and complete the booking process.

The way an online booking service and the accommodation work together has an impact the service given to a prospective guest as well as the cost of securing a booking.

The Expedia-type services require you provide a block of inventory that you guarantee will be available if they sell one of the room-nights. You provide a net price and then the booking service marks up the price. A couple of problems can arise. A guest can book one day and then return a week later and find a different price without you knowing about it. The guest doesn't blame the booking service; it blames you for the confusion. The booking service tends to ask you often to lower your net rates in order to facilitate sales. The booking service creates its own internal price war between accommodations in your market over which you have little control. In addition, the booking service collects payment from the guest and remits the net amount to you later, which can cause confusion if the guest upgrades the room during the stay.

The GDS (Global Distribution Service), which provides rates and inventory to the travel agent, community is also being used as the source of inventory for online booking engines. Typically a property submits regular and corporate rates to a central system that updates systems such as SABRE, Worldspan and Amadeus. These may or may not have your best prices, but they often vary from those on the net rate type engines. You have control over the rates, but it's not always the easiest system to put rates into, depending on how things are set up.

An often overlooked source of bookings are those that can be generated from your own web page. The Internet user is most comfortable when they've found your web page. They assume you are in complete control and that the site is the de facto information source.

Many accommodation businesses, especially independent ones, are using request forms, which are not as effective as an online booking system. The number one concern that properties have with these online systems is control. It's important that you directly control the online booking system that you choose. The Quokka Online Booking System is such a system, giving 100% control of the inventory of the system to the business, which it can access 24x7. Your guests are expecting that the booking engine on your web page be fully in your control. With such a system, you can put out private sell offs for slow nights or do other types of special offers.

As you start to work with various engines, it's important that your inventory isn't so fragmented that you create confusion for your guests or lose control of the rates. Consumers using the Internet are pretty perplexed, so make sure you don't add to it. And don't forget about your own web page. If an Internet user finds your page after being bombarded by ads and slogans from the various booking engines, you want them to feel as comfortable as they do when they put their head on the pillow of a bed in one of your rooms.

Robert Ford is the president of Quokka Systems Consulting Ltd. and is a regular contributor to ComputerWorld Canada. (www.itworld.com)

Robert can be reached at Robert@quokkasystems.com

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