Finding an ideal travel itinerary within a constrained period of time (e.g. depart Friday, return Monday) can be challenging enough. Doing it when you have more flexibility (e.g. depart sometime next month, return five to eight days later) is nearly impossible.
I’ve just had the frustrating experience when booking a trip to Vieques, Puerto Rico, for a friend’s destination wedding. My wife and I knew we wanted to leave sometime on or around 13 April and return on or around 20 April. Provided we wouldn’t miss the wedding ceremony on 17 April, we didn’t care if we lost or added a day or two on either end.
Finding the most affordable and hassle-free air itinerary was tiresome enough, involving countless searches on countless airfare providers. Throw into the mix finding a reasonable hotel accommodation with availability within our shifting window, and the task became downright tedious.
We eventually did figure it all out. But we spent hours in the process that we’ll never get back.
That’s why I wish I would have known about Fareness.com. As a piece in Condé Nast Traveler details, the new distribution platform thrives off of folks with flexible travel schedules to return the most favorable itineraries across a number of metrics.
Instead of searching by specific dates or cities, travelers can enter “Europe” or “beach destination” within October and November. The site spits back results showing the lowest fares for dozens of different destinations and trip durations. When an itinerary is selected, Fareness.com then returns various hotel searches within that specified itinerary.
It’s a novel approach to the booking process born out of frustration, Fareness.com’s creator and self-proclaimed “travel nerd” Scott Wainner, told Condé Nast Traveler.
“It takes me days to book even basic trips. … If you go to any online travel agency, it’s a very narrow search; it assumes you know exactly where and when you want to go,” he said. “But how can you know if you can’t compare the vast differences in airfare between dates, trip lengths and destinations?”
Truth, Wainner. Truth.
Having poked around Fareness.com quite a bit the past week, here are the top three things hoteliers can learn from it:
1. Give your customers what they want
Your guests want to be in control. That means they want to be able to search for hotels and flights in the manner that best serves their needs. Don’t force them to book the way you want or expect them to. Provide options, including the flexibility to search for bookings over wider date ranges and unspecified locations. (I realize the latter won’t work for your one property, Mr. Independent Hotelier. But the chains could have a field day with this.)
2. Keep it simple, stupid
The best thing about Fareness.com is how simple and easy it is to use. I give it a rough estimate of when I want to travel, click the location type(s), give rough guidelines for length of stay and boom—back comes a handful of options. Let me repeat: a HANDFUL of options. Sometimes too much information is too overwhelming. Pick the best results and serve them back. It’s easier for me to digest that way, making it more likely I’ll book.
3. Pretty sells
I’ve written a lot about slick booking experiences on non-hotel related websites (read: Airbnb) in the past. Add Fareness.com to the list. The site is big on visuals, has a very simple interface and is responsive to work seamlessly on any device.
This look was just as important as the functionality, Wainner told Condé Nast Traveler:
Wainner's main aim was to make searches fast and simple, he says, claiming the site gives consumers the ability to browse, simultaneously, the lowest prices for over 190 departure dates. The other goal was to eliminate clutter—the site is free of ads—and to use the space instead for appealing visuals like gorgeous photos and maps. Revenue instead will come from commissions on flight and hotel bookings.
I don’t know quite how high those commissions will be, but Fareness.com appears one to keep an eye on. I’ve got it bookmarked and certainly will be back.
Now on to the usual goodies …
What’s making me happy this week?
This awesome stat: During 2012, 40 million international tourists chose their destination primarily because they saw a film shot in that country, according to the Tourism Competitive Intelligence.
I could have easily included this in my stat of the week below, but it made me too giddy not to include in this section. I love movies—and to a lesser extent, TV. I love them because of the communal experiences they foster. (e.g. I’m on the edge of my seat with 500 other moviegoers in a theater in Cleveland, experiencing the same thrills as hundreds of thousands of others in cinema houses throughout the country.)
That movies and TV could encourage travel is so cool. It’s also big business. Just ask hoteliers in New Zealand who still see demand from tourists along the Lord of the Rings trail. Or operators at the Finse 122 hotel in Norway, which served as the base for the film team of “Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back.”
For more, read this oldie but goodie from the HNN archives: “Film tourism offers hotels turn in spotlight.”
Stat of the week
-0.5%: Decrease in annualized gross domestic product during the second quarter in Canada. This follows a revised annualized decrease of 0.8% during the first quarter, which puts the country into a recession for the first time since 2007.
Quote of the week
“You can probably take a guess as to how it’s doing. Anywhere from significant declines to—you can almost classify it as ‘catastrophic.’”
—Eric Watson, COO of MasterBUILT Hotels, when asked how his portfolio of hotels in oil-reliant markets in Canada was faring. The country entered into a recession after reporting its second consecutive quarter of GDP declines, largely driven by drops in oil prices and related industries.
Reader comment of the week
“Yes, great idea. Let’s continue to paint Expedia as the savior to the industry offering great advice to hotels instead of labeling them as what they really are: a company that has no skin in the game yet dictates the fortunes of so many hotel owners by driving prices DOWN. Shame on HNN for continuing to promote this shameful way of doing business.”
—Reader “Anonymous” giving me a wag of the finger for sharing some good advice from Expedia in my column last week.
Good advice is good advice, Anonymous. Sharing it doesn’t propel the source into the stratosphere of “savior.”
Email Patrick Mayock or find him on Twitter.
The opinions expressed in this column do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Hotel News Now or its parent company, STR and its affiliated companies. Bloggers published on this site are given the freedom to express views that may be controversial, but our goal is to provoke thought and constructive discussion within our reader community. Please feel free to comment or contact an editor with any questions or concerns.