Background - Mini-Research Project: e-Transaction Broker
This research is carried out in conjunction with the recommendations of the UOL-ISORG study guide. This is a group research to investigate into the nature and operations of one e-commerce TRANSACTION BROKER website. A transaction broker is an intermediary who acts as a middleman, merely providing the business link between a buyer and a host of sellers, and earning a commission for each successful transaction. Transaction broker do NOT own the end products or services transacted. They are NOT wholesaler or retailers (e.g. NTUC, Amazon.com, Vehicle Resellers).
Purpose of Hotels.com
To provide a variety of hotel choices to a large groups of customers in one website. It allows easy access and shortens time needed to search individual websites of the hotels.
Features
Business Model
Hotels.com is a B2C dealing in transaction brokering E-Commerce. It operates completely in cyberspace and does not have a bricks-and-mortar setup to complement the online business This business is a B2C model. The business to consumer model describes activities of business providing customers with services of products. This involves money transactions over the Internet or through banks. Its major competitors include ctrip, asiarooms, booking.com, all-hotels.com and eliterooms.com
Its website provides the following key functional online services: hotel room reservations, secured payment systems, narrow results.
Hotel room reservations:
When making room reservations, it has a features that allow us to choose whether we want a smoking or non-smoking room and the preferred bed size.
Enter your Billing Information
The name and billing address provided must match the credit card that is used to reserve your room. Please do not use titles or professional status (i.e. Mr. Jones or Jack Jones, PhD). Note: * fields are mandatory.
First Name *
Last Name *
Email Address *
Confirm Email Address *
Phone *
Country *
Street Address *
Post Code *
City/Town/Village *
Company
Enter name of guest and room preferences
Room1
First Name *
Last Name *
Smoking
Non Smoking
Bedding Preferences
Total Adults : 2
Total Children : 0
The hotel will do its best to comply with your room preferences, however they are on request and not guaranteed.
Secured Payment systems:
Whenever we confirmed our booking, payment would have to be made. Thus we would need to enter the information found on the credit card as well as the 3 digit code which is necessary for the transaction to be successful. This ensures a safe transaction process.
Enter your credit card information
Your charge card will be charged for the full payment upon submitting your reservation request. See Terms and Conditions.
Card Type *
Card Number *
Expiry Date *
Narrow Results:
Allow us to make more selective choices.
Star rating
• 5 S$143 - S$447 (27)
• 4 S$125 - S$464 (51)
• 3 S$71 - S$285 (47)
• 2 S$36 - S$696 (5)
• 1 S$67 (1)
Location
(city centre, Hong Kong Intl. Airpo...)
Distance:
Facilities
• Gym (67)
• Meeting Facilities (65)
• Pet Friendly (3)
• Pool (53)
• Restaurant (82)
• Spa (1)
• internet access (103)
Themes / types
• Airport (3)
• Family-friendly (22)
• Golf (1)
• Self-catering (1)
• Spa (11)
Chain
The strengths of Hotels.com
1)Removal of constraints
Having an online service will remove all the constraints of time. People can send in their report anytime of the day. There will not be any office hours that remove flexibility. As it is an international business, there will be also no constraints of boundaries. The business can function internationally without having offices around the world.
2) Time and Cost saving
As there is no need for a physical office, so rental of space can be eliminated. As most of the administration work can be done by computers, some redundant manual work can be reduced and thus the company can save on labor cost. Then, the savings can be easily passed on to customers. Customers also need not travel down to the physical office to send in their orders. They can just do that easily online. This saves a lot of time and also the cost of transportation.
3) Variety of choices
As there is a wide variety of choices on the website, people need not search around the web searching for products. Just visiting the website, customers can have plenty of information of the choices made available to them.
4) Informative
There is a lot of information of the products online. Examples are hotel descriptions, types of rooms available, reviews and photographs, facilities available in the hotel, locations, and even maps of the situation of the hotel.
5) Useful features
The website has features that ease the search of a hotel of the customers’ choice. The website allows customers to narrow their choices according to their budgets and location. These features aid customers to find hotels that match much more closely to their interests.
The weaknesses of Hotels.com
1)Fraud and security concerns.
Hotels.com uses credit cards for payment. Although there is security pin and all but hotels.com have to risk the fraudulent purchases using stolen credit cards or fraudulent repudiation of the online purchase.
2) Hard for the customer to verify the products quality.
For example some hotels do not provide detailed and accurate descriptions of their various hotel rooms. Some of the pictures shown maybe misleading for customers to assume that rooms look the same.
3) Hotels.com does not reaches out to people who are not internet savvy.
For those who are not they not be able to book online and would require to go to travel agencies to book their rooms.
In conclusion,hotels.com allow us to save time and effort to check individual hotels. With hotels.com, there are more varieties and availability. We can book directly from the website and thus no longer have waste travelling time to the tour agencies.
E-commerce has become part and parcel of our lives. In future, those tour agencies would have to gradually move towards e-commerce.
