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 
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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.