Hotel booking process design & usability

7.1 Overall structure of the booking process 
Travel and hotel booking agency 
1. In order of preference, you should aim to implement: 
a. Booking process style B (all relevant rates displaying) 
b. Booking process style A (range of rates displayed – FROM > TO) 
c. Booking process style A (FROM rate showing) 
Hotel chain 
2. If you only have a few properties with minimal overlap in any particular location, use 
either directory style E or F.
3. If you have multiple properties in an particular location, your requirements will be similar 
to a travel or hotel booking agency. Guideline 1 is therefore the most appropriate.
General 
4. If you are planning an ‘exotic’ booking process, ensure that the difference is clear to 
users and that it is explained well.
5. Consider creating functionality that gives users a quick overview of the rough costs for 
different quality hotels in a city, to help with budgeting prior to deciding to travel. This 
will save users from devising their own navigation strategy on how many dates or rates to 
check in order to generate their own average price.
6. If you are using a booking-process style, such as style A, where a user has to select a 
hotel prior to seeing what rates are available, ensure that the hotels that the user has 
previously viewed are marked in some obvious way. This will help to stop users 
accidentally selecting the same hotel again. A simple method of implementation is to use 
the default browser behaviour of letting the font colour change on visited hyperlinks. 
Multi-room reservations 
7. Aim to allow all multi-room and uneven occupancy combinations to be booked online: 
a. one room, for two adults 
b. one room, for one adult 
c. two rooms, each with two adults (same room type / rate, same occupancy level)
d. two rooms, each with one adult (same room type / rate, same occupancy level)