Hotel price comparison and special offers
Archive for June, 2007
0870 Numbers and Travel Web Sites
Jun 21st
Price comparison is made difficult by hidden charges. sletoh displays the prices that supplier websites give to us but some websites exclude local country tax (VAT in the UK), credit card charges and other fees. Its similar to the airlines adding on fees for priority boarding, meals, baggage and even sitting next to each other – but that’s another can of worms for a separate blog!
In this entry I am going to focus on the after sales part of the equation and what happens when you want to speak to the website you booked with. Is it in the same country or do you have to call abroad at great expense? The scope of this matter is very wide so I am going to limit this blog to UK based websites and UK based customers. How much does it cost to call your travel company?
0870 Numbers
A friend of mine complained to me that he spent 45 minutes calling his bank to have an incorrect £11 fee removed from his account. The call cost him dear and a portion of it goes into the banks already bulging coffers. Its no wonder the banks are making record profits when they hide behind semi-premium rate numbers, keeping their customers waiting whilst clocking up more revenue.
0870 numbers are a problem because on average they cost a lot more than calling a normal UK phone number such as 0207 (London), 01422 (Halifax), 0113 (Leeds). 0870 are also excluded from most free call plans on mobile phones and landlines. Whenever you call 0870 and its cousins 0845, 0871 you are paying more than you should for the call.
Sadly, all but one of the websites that sletoh currently compares use 0870 numbers:
- ActiveHotels – 0870 7120689
- diytravel – 020 7183 7183
- Laterooms – 0870 300 6969
- OctopusTravel – 0870 1624033 or 020 7760 6051
- Superbreak – 0870 234 0354
I had a scout round the web and found more companies using 0870 and profiting from customers calls:
- reserveahotelonline – 0870 4215081
- Alpharooms – 0871 911 0030 or 0200 200 9366
- HolidayNights – 0870 027 2096
This is very disappointing! The use of 0870, 0871 is widespread in the travel industry and its not just for after sales care as I thought it would be – its for sales lines too. As soon as you make an enquiry with many of these companies you are paying too much for the phone call.
If you know of any other UK based travel websites that I should add to this list, please add a comment to this blog.
Hello world!
Jun 2nd
Welcome to the brand new sletoh blog and my first ever blog entry on any blog, anywhere. I have been told I am missing out – we will see!
Since this is the sletoh blog, it will be all about hotel price comparison. Well I say hotel, but it will cover all forms of accommodation from budget hostels, up to bed and breakfasts and guesthouses, through all hotels whatever their star rating, and onto apartments, villas and the like. It won’t cover camping or caravan sites I am afraid!!
I first launched sletoh 4 years ago but closed it down after 6 months to concentrate on another site that was doing the same thing but a lot more successfully. Now 4 years on, my knowledge of the industry is far deeper and broader and sletoh v2 is already leaps and bounds past the original site. And we haven’t even got started yet!
At the moment sletoh compares 5 accommodation web sites (ActiveHotels, Laterooms, diytravel, OctopusTravel and Superbreak) and 3 countries – Uk, Ireland and Germany. We will be adding more suppliers and countries over the next few weeks – I will keep the blog updated with progress.
That’s it for my first ever post. It was surprisingly easy and I think I might get into this – its feels therapeutic to write down what we are doing / have done – it might help stop it whirling round my head!
Ben
