Review: Hotel Reservations

How does Hotel Reservations stand out among its peers and competitors?

Here's what I think. Because of my background, I will be coming mostly from an Usability point of view and I do hope that the website owner will find my criticisms constructive enough to actually implement some of my recommendations to further enhance its website.

Homepage: Upon entering the homepage, I am bombarded by tons of information. Tons! The Homepage is too cluttered, just like most other online websites. Online surfers are impatient people with short attention spans, so they are easily put off when an encyclopedia wealth of information is being thrown in their face.

Recommendation Sub-page: I have problems getting started or even knowing how/where to get started; If I happen to be brought to the homepage without a destination in mind, will I know what to do next or will I just look for the exit? I hope the website can design a "Recommendations" page for those who were stung by the travelling bug but are clueless as to where they wanna go in the meantime.

Book Online: If you guys notice, there's a "Book online" tab near the top right hand corner of the screen. It would be useful to turn this plain text into a hyperlink to direct potential customers straight to the "Hotel Reservations" page.

Hotel Filter: At the Hotels sub-page, you can sort the Hotels according to "Best Value", "Quality", "Price" and "A-Z". Here's a breakdown of what this means:-

"Quality" - Hotels are arranged from 5 stars to 0 stars
"Price" - Hotels are arranged from the cheapest to the most expensive
"A-Z" - Alphabetical order

My question is - What does "Best Value" mean? Cheapest Hotel in each Quality standard? How does it differ from "Price"? (I did a sort according to both "Best Value" and "Price" and they both return different results) Maybe it would help if there's a pop-up text box which explains the above 4 categories when users do a scroll-over.

"Save up to 70% off": At the top right hand corner, I am sure you will be attracted by these 5 words. It would definitely help if HotelReservations.com can explain or give a breakdown as to why users can save up to 70% off when they make online bookings through the website.

"$100 Rebate" Promotion: There's an ongoing promotion which gives up to $100 cash rebate with online booking. The catch? You gotta make a 12-night booking. I'm sure you have heard of the phrase: "Nothing in life is free". Well, I have a personal saying which goes: "Free stuff often comes at a high price".

Conclusion: I have seen about 10 out of the 71 posts made by other bloggers, and they were all generic in nature, and nothing which were specific to HotelReservations.com. I do hope that the owners will appreciate my honest review of their website and implement some of my recommendations. Competition is stiff in this industry, and we must all strive to improve continuously. Overall, I think it is a good online travel website, but with a few tweaks, it can become better.