Hotel booking process design & usability

5.1.3.1 Using guidance rates with style A 
Although we believe that style B is preferable to style A for evaluating hotels, there are some 
helpful improvements that a style-A website can make. An obvious improvement is to display on 
screen 2 the range of prices that users will encounter on screen 3 (the rates display page). 
TABLE 2: Style A – Rate display examples 
Rate display style 
Examples 
Rate range 
FROM > TO 
(opodo.co.uk) 
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 
Rate display style 
Examples 
Rate FROM 
(placestostay.com) 
 
Source: Travel UCD Research, January 2003
TABLE 3: Style A – what rate is displayed on screen 2?  
Rate display – screen 2 
Travel 
agency 
Hotel only 
Hotel chain 
Total 
Rate range – FROM > TO 
3 
3 
1 
7 
Rate FROM 
4 
5 
- 
9 
Average rate 
1 
1 
- 
2 
Example rate
- 
1 
- 
1 
No rates displayed 
2 
3 
5 
10 
Source: Travel UCD Research, January 2003
Table 3 demonstrates that only seven of the 29 websites that apply style A are assisting the user 
by giving a rate range (FROM > TO) rather than other, less helpful, rate information. 
Implementation note 
It is better to display live rate data on screen 2. If you cannot use live data, non-live 
‘approximate’ data would be more helpful than no rate guide information at all.