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Hotels, Web Sites Try to Get Lodging
 Information to Add Up Right
By Christopher Boyce, Columbus Ledger-Enquirer, Ga.
Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News

May 22, 2005 --A man walks into a fancy hotel, drops his bags with the bellhop and approaches the check-in desk. He presents his ID and credit card, which will allow him to raid the tempting mini-bar, and he takes his room key. Just before he walks away, the customer asks the attendant for directions to the indoor pool. The attendant informs the customer there is no pool -- indoor or otherwise.

It sounds like the introduction to a National Lampoon's vacation movie, but it's happened at The Ritz-Carlton's hotel in Central Park South in New York City. And no one was laughing.

All hotels go to great lengths to ensure their reputations are upheld, especially those in the five-star luxury class. But as third-party travel Web sites have increasingly become the gateway for the masses to hotels, a new obstacle to upholding those reputations has emerged.

Hotels and Web sites -- such as giants Travelocity and Expedia -- acknowledge incidents have occurred where specific requests have gone unmet. Non-smokers get a room with ash trays and odor. A room with an ocean view instead has a great view of concrete and car roofs. Or two double beds fuse into one king size bed. And suddenly customers are back at the front desk asking, "What are you going to do about this?"

In the Ritz-Carlton incident, the confusion came from promises made on a small third-party Web site. Barth Leins, vice president of revenue management and distribution for the Ritz-Carlton, said this incident was not solely motivating, but is just one example of why the hotel runs its own Web site.

"We're very careful about who we like to distribute our inventory and who we don't like to," Leins said. "Now when you get to the big guys, they're pretty much reputable and they'll cease and desist anything that would misrepresent us."

Leins said these incidents don't happen often at the Ritz-Carlton, as less than 1 percent of its bookings occur online through the third party sites, including "the big guys" -- Expedia, Travelocity and Orbitz.

But other hotels were concerned because the number of people who see Web sites as a trustworthy way to book is growing. The percentage of online travel bookers who use the Internet to make all their travel purchases jumped from 29 percent in 2003 to 40 percent in 2005, according to the Travel Industry Association.

Despite the growing popularity, inaccurate bookings could shrink that market. At AAA Travel in Columbus, travel manager Roxanne Towler said there are plenty of customers who run back to travel agents when they get frustrated with the do-it-yourself approach. She said she often gets customers who not only have dealt with mistakes by the hotels and Web sites, but those who enter the wrong dates or times and can't change their own mistakes.

"They've tried to do it on their own and get it wrong," Towler said, "and we basically have to start it all over again."

Towler said many customers that return to travel agents like knowing they have someone to call if something goes wrong while they're on their trip. The aim of the new initiatives by third-party sites is to create this feeling for online customers, before they flee the online market.

The hotels started the customer service jaunt in 1999, when five hotel chains -- Hyatt, Starwood, Hilton, Marriot and Intercontinental -- paired with Dallas-based tech company Pegasus to help develop an interface that would allow a Web customer to tap into the in-house reservation systems in the same manner that five-star operations like Ritz-Carlton were already doing on a smaller scale.

The result was Travelweb.com. This helped solve the problem because, to be fair, part of the problem lays in the hotels, said David Dennis, spokesman for Expedia Inc. Dennis said if the inventory of available rooms is not thoroughly managed on the hotel's end, including descriptions of the rooms, then errors about what can be promised can easily slip into a Web site.

Despite the tenuous relationship that was developing, the hotel industry happily took the business being produced by the bargain-basement prices offered on the independent sites in the wake of attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, said Nicole Hockin, spokesperson for Hotels.com, a sister site to Expedia.

"Post-9/11, there was a real need for heads-in-beds," Hockin said. "But as the economy has bounced back and people are no longer afraid to take vacations, price is not the only variable. What you're seeing in terms of competition is, if you're selling the same hotel room and prices are the same, you have to do something else (to gain customers)."

What third-party sites are doing is shedding their limited-liability, fine-print shields, which protected them when errors were made, and offering guarantees of service that would make the Ritz blush.

Hockin said both Hotels.com and Expedia are building direct connections into hotel reservations systems and expanding their fleet of hotel inspectors to eliminate the old snafus. The expanding fleet of inspectors is actually the focal point of a new ad campaign for Hotels.com, which features dozens of inspectors, clad in black apparel donning the site's name, giving the thumbs-up to various hotel features.

Hotels.com is also on the verge of Web site overhaul that will allow more focus on customer-logged hotel reviews, so the site can be used as an expert source for travelers.

Most importantly, both Expedia and Travelocity have set policies that ask customers to call them if anything goes wrong during the trip. Both say if nothing can be resolved with that hotel, options at other hotels will be considered at no extra cost to the customer.

Don Addington, director of hotel merchandising and pricing at Travelocity, said the company has realized it's not only helpful to take pride in customer service, but it has become necessary.

"It's a price-competitive marketplace and we have competitive prices," he said. "But, ultimately, that's not a sustainable advantage. In the long run, that's not what resonates with consumers.

"The brand needs to be credible. Regardless of whose fault it is, we want to take care of you. If we find the hotel has caused the problem, that's really beside the point."

In fact, credibility is so important for Travelocity, Addington said it would seriously look at removing any hotel that can't keep up with its attempt to win the "customer championship" -- the marketing campaign they've given their service initiative.

"If we had one hotel that was that egregious," Addington said, "if they're unable to support the business model, we'll communicate to them that we may move them down on the ranking, or, in worst case, we may remove them from the site."

But as much as sites are trying to impress customers with these new promises, their representatives are also trying to show hotels that the sites can be worthy counterparts in quality control, said Hotels.com's Hockin.

"We see ourselves as a business partner for the hotels," she said. "There is certainly a section of customers, the brand agnostic traveler, that are looking for the right price, or location, or pool... We provide a storefront for many hotels."

THE BIG THREE TRAVEL WEB SITES:

Orbitz.com: The Chicago-based company officially launching its Web site in 2001 with the help of five major airlines -- American, Continental, Delta, Northwest and United. The company went public in 2003 and was bought by Cendant's Travel Distribution in 2004. The company employs about 400 people. In 2003, gross travel bookings exceeded $3.4 billion, a 34 percent increase from 2002 levels.

Travelocity.com: With $4.9 billion in travel bookings in 2004, the roaming gnome has made its mark on the travel industry. Established independently in 1996, the company merged with Southlake, Texas-based Sabre Holdings in 2000 before Sabre bought Travelocity outright in 2002. Sabre is now a $2 billion travel products and services company, employing 6,800 in 41 countries.

Expedia.com: Expedia and its sister travel sites, such as Hotels.com and Hotwire.com, are soon to spin off of owner IAC/InterActiveCorp. The $6 billion IAC owns 28 Web sites including the Home Shopping Network's site, invitation site Evite, events and locator info site Citysearch, financial services site LendingTree and is working to acquire search engine AskJeeves.

TRUST BUT VERIFY:

Though third-party travel sites are doing all they can to reduce errors in hotel bookings, there are a few things experts from the sites say you can do help your own cause.

--Print your reservation and bring it with you. This will allow you to show the people at the hotel desk exactly what you reserved.

--Call the hotel 24 to 48 hours before arriving to check your reservation.

--Make sure you've got the phone number to the customer service department of the Web site you book through.

--If the hotel can't help with your problem, call the online customer service department immediately. They may be able to help you during the trip, but don't expect a free future hotel-stay or refund if you call after the incident.

--Remain calm if you have a problem. Most sites free themselves from responsibility of mishaps such as overbooking or unmet reservations. The fine print says they don't owe you anything, so don't call them with a ransom list.

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To see more of the Columbus Ledger-Enquirer, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.ledger-enquirer.com.

Copyright (c) 2005, Columbus Ledger-Enquirer, Ga.

Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News. For information on republishing this content, contact us at (800) 661-2511 (U.S.), (213) 237-4914 (worldwide), fax (213) 237-6515, or e-mail [email protected]. TSG, IACI, HOT, HLT , MAR, IHG, PEGS, CD, ASKJ,

 
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