HOTELMARKETING.COM

What do travel site rankings reveal?

February 09, 2005 |

A new consumer study indicates that the largest travel firms in the world vary greatly in how well they treat their online customers.

The Customer Respect Group evaluates each travel company’s online customer experience on its simplicity (ease of use), responsiveness, privacy policies, attitude (how customer-centric the site is), transparency and principles (regarding protecting customer data). These categories are derived from surveying a representative sample of the adult Internet population on their online experiences, along with analysis by the Customer Respect Group of corporate Web sites.

Overall, the companies studied do best in attitude and worst in responsiveness, with 19% of companies failing to respond to either of two online inquiries sent, and 10% only responding to one. Transparency is also a strong suit of many companies.

Interestingly, US Airways seems to be handling its online services well, despite its perilous financial position (the company has filed for bankruptcy twice in two years) and in contrast to the recent headlines it has received for bad service (including delays and lost baggage around Christmas because of weather and staffing problems, and a US Department of Transportation study which declared it the worst US carrier based on consumer complaints). In the Customer Respect Group study, US Airways receives the highest rating among airlines for how it treats its customers online.

Get the full story at eMarketer

Visit our sponsors: