Hotel booking process design & usability

4.4 Children – handle with care! 
Increased complexity comes when you want your reservation engine to handle reservations for 
children in addition to multi-room and occupancy combinations. 
For safety, legal and insurance reasons, some hotels do not allow children to stay in a room 
unless they share with an adult. Depending upon the hotel, a child can be classified as anyone 
under 18, under 12 etc. 
Travel UCD - consultants in travel and hospitality website design 
http://www.travelucd.com 
 
© Travel UCD Limited 2003. All Rights Reserved. 
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Hotel booking process design & usability 
Travel UCD – February 2003 
For example, consider a family (two adults and two children both aged 15) looking for a standard 
double room and a twin room for the two 15-year-olds. For this reservation to be accepted by the 
hotel, the user will have to allocate one adult and one child to each of the rooms. When the 
family arrive at their hotel, the check-in staff will probably turn a blind eye to the family 
swapping rooms back to their original requirements.
Our analysis shows that this hotel regulation is not well known outside the hotel industry, and is 
therefore a potential source of user confusion on hotel reservation websites.
4.5 Rates display 
Rate / price data are some of the most important pieces of information that users look for on a 
website. Price is often the primary factor in a customer's choice between competing hotels and 
websites.
How users make decisions based on price 
This report demonstrates that hotel booking processes strongly influence the user's choice, 
particularly the way that users compare different hotels and rates.
Price per room, or per person? 
In the UK and European marketplaces many travel operators and agencies sell ‘holiday 
packages’. These packages are priced per person. With the growing tendency of leisure travellers 
to organise their own travel, these customers are moving online to book their accommodation 
separately from their flight. 
In this report we highlight the need for hotel reservation websites to show clearly whether a price 
is per room (the hotel industry standard) or per person (the package holiday standard).