Hotel booking process design & usability

5.1.3.2 What does the rate include?
If you give a guideline rate, or even the actual room rate, you should explain what the rate
includes and excludes. In particular, is the rate:
• Priced per person or per room
• Priced per night or for the total stay
• Inclusive or exclusive of tax (and is there tax to add later in the reservation process – and
at what rate)
• Inclusive or exclusive of supplements (and is there potentially a supplement to add later
in the reservation process – and at what rate)
• Inclusive or exclusive of other value added items such as breakfast
• Quoted for single or double occupancy – in particular if the user has not yet supplied that
information.
The most important page is the first results page to state a price. This page presents the
information with which users evaluate different hotel options. On a style A website this is any
Travel UCD - consultants in travel and hospitality website design 
http://www.travelucd.com 

© Travel UCD Limited 2003. All Rights Reserved.

14

---

---

Hotel booking process design & usability 
Travel UCD – February 2003 
rate or range of rates stated on screen 2 or screen 3 (list of hotels, list of rates in a particular
hotel). On a style B website this is the actual room / rate on screen 2.
In the usability testing we observed that none of the 12 users on the Expedia website (style B)
navigated to screen 3, the page where sales tax (VAT) was added to some hotel rates in the UK.
Those users were not in possession of the correct full cost when evaluating different hotel
options. Since we undertook the usability testing, Expedia appear to have changed their screen 2
display. They now show rates inclusive rather than exclusive of sales tax (VAT), for UK hotels.
The following tables show how the 84 websites we evaluated handled the issues of rate display.
Only those websites that display rates on the results pages (screen 2 or screen 3) have been
included in this analysis.