Years ago, I used to work in the airline industry having spent 10 years in it. My first job was with American Airlines working in reservations in Hartford, CT. (Sad, the office is no longer there). My job required me to be trained on using SABRE, the original computer reservations system developed by IBM back in the 60s. To my knowledge, it is still being used today.
To modernize it, they have upgraded the GUI by putting another application on top of SABRE to make it more user friendly. Here lies the problem. Most of the online travel agencies are GUIs on top of the 60s technology that are the computer reservations system.
There was a company out of New York City that had developed a new booking engine specifically for online reservations. They used the 60s technology to only look at the availability of inventory on a flight, but built their own schedule and fare program. Speaking with my old boss, their system worked and was bought by Get Travel which was eventually bought by SABRE. I don’t think they ever implemented the fast and easy booking system.
So, here I was, making a reservation online and finding myself back in 1997 again. See, nothing has really changed. I went to Orbitz, Priceline, Southwest and Air Tran. All of them kind of suck. It seems that the designs are made based on the underlying technology and not what the user wanted.
The example for me was on Priceline, there was no way to request the flight I wanted and the morning with the flight I wanted in the evening on my return. They had the morning flight with another morning flight even though I told it I wanted a morning with an evening return. As an old SABRE hack, I would have simply selected my segments and said, “Give me the best price for those flights.”
So, in 10 years, non of these online agencies have made any improvements in the online booking experience. They seem more like Christmas Trees with all their 2nd sale decorations than a I need to buy an airline ticket. I advise people on 2nd sale stuff, but do it like the displays in your grocery store. Don’t distract people from their primary purpose for being there, to buy a ticket. Even Bob Parsons lets you get your domain name before he bombards you with all his chotzke offers.
Like AT&T’s confusing pricing, maybe the data is showing these online travel agents they make more money by making their booking systems suck. It just seems that buying an airline ticket online could be easier after all these years.
Paul is an Internet consultant and President of Professional Blog Service. Professional Blog Service works with companies trying to beat their competition online using business blogging, social media and search engine optimization to dominate their markets. My interests are in Entrepreneurial pursuits, soccer, music, and travel.
It would be too expensive for them to change now.