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Travel Web Sites

While the author presents an interesting case, some of his conclusions are specious. The thrust of the article is that the writer, on assignment, visited three travel web sites in an attempt to determine their viability as methods of Ado-it-yourself@ travel booking. As his operating focus, he presents the argument that a web site should manage Athe best balance between the three reasons a good commercial web site exists: content, community and commerce@ (ATaking in...@, 1999, 1). Within that framework, he proceeds to analyze three sites: Microsoft Expedia, Travelocity and Preview Travel. His test method was to plan three different trips on each of the sites to determine how feasible they were.

A visit to those same three sites brought about infinitely different responses than those shown by the author. For instance, he faults the Microsoft site for being too terse. AMicrosoft takes too seriously the idea that Web writing has to be terse. What=s with all the bullet points?@ (ATaking in...@, 1999, 1).

What he misses is that the Internet is not a Areading@ medium, it is an AInformation medium.@ Granted, the writing in Fodor=s and Frommer can be entertaining and even revelatory. But is the Web necessarily the place for that?

When a consumer goes onto a travel site, he wants information and data, not prose. In that respect, the hands-down winner is Microsoft=s site since it is information-heavy and graphics-light.

Why this is essential is that lush photographs (as shown on the Preview site) take a long time to download. In addition to the three AC=s@ that the author mentions, it would seem that there are more relevant criterion for judging, and that one of those is ease of navigability. None of the three sites were particularly easy to get around, and in many cases the links were loopbacks that either did not work or were outdated.

Another criterion that should be used is the security of the site.

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Travel Web Sites. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 04:12, March 29, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1695276.html