Hotel booking process design & usability

Notes from the usability testing 
In the second usability test, we asked 12 users to reserve the following room combination:
Room A – Double room, two adults
Room B – Any room type, one child (15 years old)
This task produced the highest number of task failures, with five of the 12 users unable to enter
the reservation correctly or understand why a website wouldn’t allow them to continue. All three
users who were given this task on the Expedia.co.uk website failed to complete it.
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Hotel booking process design & usability 
Travel UCD – February 2003 
Figure 9: Children entry on Expedia.co.uk
The primary reason for users failing to comprehend the above functionality is because, when
they place the child in the second room, Expedia automatically puts an adult in with them. The
user is given no explanation for this automatic procedure.
A similar situation was observed on the Opodo website, with the following poor message to the
user:
Figure 10: Error message on the Opodo website 
This does not explain to the user that each room must have at least one adult.
Other notes 
Business travel 
For business travel handling children is not important however this will affect the user’s ability
to book an extension to his business trip, during which his wife and child could join him.
Prepay rates 
It is particularly important to handle the correct rate sale for children on prepay rates, as there is
less opportunity to rectify the incorrect rate post booking.
Travel UCD - consultants in travel and hospitality website design