This is the second article in the series "What is wrong with booking tools". The first article can be found here.

 PART 2/3: Complexity of the process

Booking an airline ticket is not an easy task for customers. Designing a good booking tool is not easy either. This article highlights some perks in how airlines need to balance their requirements with the needs of the customer. 

The booking process often exists of many different steps. The customer will get in the process to choose from a lot of different options, which in itself is very good. Online consumers like to have choice. However, too many options distract from the main goal of the booking tool. I don't understand that many booking processes distract their customers so much before the actual sale is made.  

After you have found your departure and arrival airport (you need to know from and to where the airline and her codeshare partners fly from and to) , you will often get to choose from a number of different flights. Sometimes color coded to indicate the cheapest prices. Often, it is a long list full of choices, sorted in an unknown order.

With different rates for the same routes, usually there are different conditions like entitlement to free changes of your ticket, cancelability (sorry for that word but I love it), number of airmiles granted, luggage allowed, and other amenities. Some combinations of flights and return flights with their travel conditions may not be availlable. This (non-)combinability is caused by the revenue management systems that airlines as well as hotels have implemented to make sure that the operation will be profitable, and that prices vary with demand and competition. It is far too complex to explain in this post, but believe me, it causes many headaches, for booking tool designers, and not only for the customer.

Many inexperienced travellers are getting stuck at this step in the process... They don't understand the differences, or the way to select a rate (and that of the return flight) is illogical. For airlines it would be very good to know why people are not continuing the process from here, but I am also never asked why I don't finish the booking. Shouldn't be too hard to implemented.

After selecting flights the customer is often offered to also book an hotel or a car, or parking, or legroom, or whatever, even if I indicated I only need a flight. Cross-selling helps the airlines to gain bottom line income, but how much is it distracting from the booking itself?

Then, on to passenger details and payment. Due to government regulations (different in each country to make it easy) the customer needs to enter all kinds of information. This information is send to the authorities before the aircraft leaves depending on country of origin and destination. 

The payment options cause entirely different issues. To be short: not all options are valid in all countries, not all options may be used when the flight leaves today or tomorrow, some options require additional information from the customer. In addition: some payment options cost more to the airline, since the transaction commission differs per option. A payment surcharge is the airlines' instrument to steer towards the least costly and most secure option. Security of the airline actually being paid, that is. 

Finally, at the end the process the customer is ready to the confirmation message. The airline is trying confirm all flights in their internal reservation and financial systems, and many things can fail. It is up to the smartness of the booking tool how such failure is handled: an error to the user, handover to callcenter or blank screen? Avioiding insecurity at the customer should be the goal of good errorhandling. Better yet, overachieving in the handling of errors is always recieved positively.

The booking process above can at least be described as complex and lengthy. I am still longing for the one-click booking, although I know that buying a ticket is not the same as buying a book. But why are such lengthy processes the standard for everyone? Business bookers are different from leisure bookers, romantic weekenders different from venue visitors. Why not take the main driver of the customer (price, best buy, or efficient booking process) and optimize/tailor the process to the needs of that particular customer group?

Feel free to comment underneath!

Next week: part 3: User interface

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