Strengths :
ü Almost all-in-one travel booking website: A one stop convenience
The very first attractive part of the website is the variety of services it provides. This website is especially convenient for people intending to go travelling but did not want to lose the freedom to move around by taking up a tour agency package. One can get your air ticket, make bookings for hotel accommodations, and even get your travel insurance all at one stop. If one is also thinking about renting a vehicle to travel around the place, you could also make use of the online car rental service available here.
Airline comparisons: Make a wise choice!
After selecting your destination, a list of various airlines will load and this will enable you to choose and decide which airlines you would like to travel by, based on their ticket pricing and your desired departure date etc. This actually enables one to make comparisons without having to toggle between the websites of the various airlines which could be time consuming and even frustrating at times. Another good point about the website is that it reflects prices of the airlines that people are familiar with, and thus are more willing to travel by these airlines.
Priceline’s 7 Guarantees
To assure customers of the services they provide, they had actually come up with the ‘Priceline’s 7 guarantees’. The Guarantees included “We guarantee you'll always enjoy world-class airlines and hotels.”, ”We guarantee that credit card transactions through Priceline are secure...” etc. By listing out the guarantees, Priceline had, to some extent, provided customers with the confidence in using this online service.
Assurance that the online payment service is safe
What most people are most concern about when doing online transactions is how safe and secured is the online payment service? With the advancing hacking technology, you will never know when your details will be hacked and used. Priceline had once and again assured users that their online payment service is safe by stating they are using the Secure Socket Layer (SSL) technology to encrypt all the customers’ personal information including number, name and address to prevent it from being read during transmission over the Internet. They also bring in familiar names like VISA and HSBC when one is keying in details for the online payment to assure them once again that the online transaction is safe.
FAQs
Priceline also included a FAQ section for customers’ convenience. This is helpful to the customers when they have any queries in the process of their bookings, especially since this is an online booking service where it is more difficult for customers to get their queries answered.
Promotions!
Priceline also offers various promotions. This can actually attract more people to take up bookings with Priceline.
Offer Updates of promotions
Since this is an online service, it would be hard to actually persuade people who have visited the website to come again. However, Priceline is able to make full use of their opportunities by offering to send visitors updates on any special deals. This actually enables Priceline to retain a group of customers or even potential customers by staying in contact with them.
Weakness :
How safe is delivery?
Priceline had offered to send customers the tickets via post. However, how safe can sending by post get? There is still possibility of the mail getting lost in the process, but Priceline did not seem to have provided any form of assurance that the mail will be delivered safely. Since the delivery need to take up to three days, and the flight booking could be for within the week, there is possibility of urgency to resolve such problems. It would be better if Priceline could provide customers with an overview of how and what they should do if such a situation arises and they that will attend to the customers promptly to resolve any issues.
Is the FAQ really useful?
The FAQ for Priceline is very limited with only about seven questions. Hence, one can’t help but think about how useful is it? I believe that they did receive emails on other issues currently not listed in the FAQs and they should upload more FAQs to facilitate users better.
Waiting Time
The waiting time to process requests could also be quite long at times. This might frustrate some people abandon the wait.
