The ultimate aim of this project is actually to learn more about how an e-Commerce Transaction Broker website operates and what are the characteristics and the strengths and weaknesses of this site.
In this project of ours, we will be looking at the website of Priceline.com.
Priceline.com is company that operates a commercial website. It helps users to obtain discount rates for travel-related items such as airline tickets and hotel stays. Hence Priceline.com classified as a transaction broker.
Transaction Broker acts as an intermediary between sellers and buyer and facilitates the flow of information between the two parties. It does not own the products or services that they are marketing to the buyers, such as Priceline.com in our case. It is not a direct supplier of these services or products; instead it provides comparative pricing from an assortment of service companies. It is an ideal solution for buyers seeking to view consolidated information in a single website. Lastly, by serving as a transaction broker, it will earn a commission for every successful deal formed between the buyers and sellers.
Report on Priceline.com:
Priceline.com is a business to consumer dealing in transaction brokering eCommerce.
Priceline is also an internet-based travel service that offers air tickets, hotel rooms, rental cars, air plus hotel combo and travel insurance.
How it attracts its consumers:
It gained prominence for its Name Your Own Price system, where travelers would name their price for airline tickets, hotel rooms, car rentals, and Vacation Packages. The price would be compared to undisclosed prices in the Priceline database, with the purchaser knowing the location and name of the rental car company, airline, or hotel only after the purchase had gone through, with no rights to cancel. According to the web site, the no-cancellation no-refund policy is because Priceline offers the price to the hotel, airline, or car rental agency with the promise that the service would be sold and the seat or hotel will be filled, or the car will be rented. Priceline's cut of the proceeds was the difference between the price an individual named and the price charged by the service establishment. More recently, it has moved to a more traditional model where travelers are presented prices and are also told the name of the establishment. Travelers can still choose to name their price for airline tickets, hotel rooms, and rental cars. The number of airlines, hotels, can car rental company participants in the name your own price program has increased as these suppliers utilize this opaque market Priceline created to sell their perishable inventory without lowering prices through other traditional sales channels.
Competitors of Priceline.com:
Its major competitors are Expedia.com, Zuji.com, Asiarooms.com and Hotels.com.
Strengths of Priceline.com compared to their competitors:
· Priceline.com has an Auction style-pricing models which are becoming customer preference, where the customer controls the price of the products and services to be consumed. This will certainly have an edge over its all competitors listed above as none of them offered this.
· Priceline.com provides a whole range of services such as offering of hotel reservations, cruises, airline tickets as well as car rentals unlike Asiarooms.com and Hotels.com where they only provide hotel accommodations.
• It allows group hotel reservations such that a group of people going for business meeting or other events can book rooms at least 10 rooms altogether. Other competitors do not provide this kind of services.
· It allows consumers to book sight seeing tours and activities. Asiarooms.com and Hotels.com loses out to Priceline.com on this as they either only provide online travel guides to introduce to consumers where those sight touring places are but do not allow them to book those activities or they do not even have these travel guides.
Weaknesses of Priceline.com compared to their competitors:
· In Priceline.com, it practices more of a buyer driven e-strategy where the buyer names his price and an intermediary negotiates with the seller. The customer is then almost guaranteed that he will obtain the best price by negation in Priceline.com. But a downside to all of this is that the customer will not realize all of the normal benefits of air tickets as they are sacrificed through online auction purchases. For example, in many cases the travel ticket does not permit an accrual of miles or any changes without significant penalty charges.
· Comparing to Expedia.com, Priceline.com is being disadvantaged against them as it does not show the flexible rates charged by the hotels charged at different days at one glance. With this unique feature of Expedia.com, customers will be able to see on which days are cheaper for them to book the hotels.
With regards to their security:
It has been said that a number of sophisticated safeguards are built into Transaction Broker, to give consumers complete confidence in the brokering routine. All transactions receive complete validation before they update the accounts, maintaining data integrity and generating a full audit trail.
However, is it really that secured enough for transactions to be dealt online?
Internet security has been a major issue surrounding the Internet community. There is an endless amount of information passing through on a worldwide basis. Not only is there a major concern for an overload of technology, but security is also an issue. Many customers are weary of disclosing credit card information over the Internet. Major online operations such as eBay have experienced serious problems where “hackers” have gotten a hold of credit-card records.
However from the link of www.thwarte.com,it teaches us how to determine if the website is secure by looking at the URL. Since at transaction page of Priceline.com,it shows the "https" on its website, hence it can be taken as it is secured.
In addition,Priceline.com Incorporated is a licensee of the TRUSTe® Privacy Program and abides by the EU Safe Harbor Framework as outlined by the U.S. Department of Commerce and the European Union.This hence furthers gains the trust of users of this Priceline.com.
Pitfalls and Problems faced by Priceline.com:
· Some of the complaints received from the consumers include them paying a higher price for a package that did not match what is shown when they booked online. http://www.complaintsboard.com/complaints/pricelinecom-c74271.html, http://www.complaintsboard.com/complaints/pricelinecom-c62959.html
· Some complaints of bad customer services have also been received.An example of it will be from this dissatisfied customer.
http://www.complaintsboard.com/complaints/pricelinecom-c80276.html
With these kind of complaints coming from the public, Priceline.com ought improve on their customer service in order to attract more businesses.
· Complaints of false advertising and wrong information given by the website are received.
http://www.complaintsboard.com/complaints/false-advertising-c161360.html
http://www.complaintsboard.com/complaints/pricelinecom-c234711.html
Conclusion:
The hospitality and tourism calls for a user-friendly platform containing a wide range of services that fit all customer interests. Web customers are looking for the ultimate experience when browsing through the Internet. A travel site that is quick, user-friendly, and includes state of the art graphics will prove attractive for web customers.
However, it is very important to see how internet technology will affect the future of the tourism industry. Although Transaction Broker radically reduces the cost of e-commerce web site and removes the need for a locally hosted web site and expensive telephone lines by brokering web orders straight into the order processing system, there are still many pitfalls and problems with regards to it. Thus there is still room for improvement, especially in the security and reliability areas.On top of this, future success of hospitality & tourism companies depends on their abilities to identify a target market and the strategic opportunities available for survival and growth.
Therefore if data is managed properly, the technology will definitely be able to bring the tourism industries to a much greater heights.
