UK Hotel Price Comparison

[altyfc]

Hi everyone

We recently re-launched our site at http://www.ukhotel.com with a new feature. Now you can do a 'price comparison' search for your chosen dates and requirements, and it searches multiple affiliate partners and returns the best price.

Please can you try it out and let me know what you think?

Thanks.

[Jobbertown]

I thought I would give it a try and in just about every request I filled out there were no hotels available. Even for months that were far out ( I tried for the month of September in the area of Armagh in northern Ireland and Carrickfergus and Port Charlotte) still nothing. Is everything booked around that time?
And there are a ton of ads on the site. Almost overbearing the main content of your site.

[altyfc]

OK, let me answer this... there are two types of hotel entries on UKhotel.com.

One is an affiliate entry (where we have availability info/online booking) and the other is where a hotel advertises directly.

In the case of Port Charlotte, we have just one entry and that is of the second variety so there is nothing in that place where you can search for online availability - despite the search box being there (I need to get that looked at).

In the case of Carrickfergus, there are just two entries. One is a direct ad, and the other is an entry from an affiliate that doesn't provide availability info so can't be used for price comparison unfortunately.

In short, the fewer the number of hotels in a particular place, then the less the likelihood of us being able to return results. I need to look at what we can do to address what you've raised, though, so thank you for that.

Please try again with somewhere like Edinburgh or Manchester... I think you'll get far better results.

Thanks.

PS - Not sure what ads you were referring to - there are some ads tucked to the side in the right margin and, other than that, I think it's just a few graphics at the bottom of each page.

[Alex R.W.]

Hello altyfc,

Had a look at your site this evening and first impressions are very good. The layout, design and navigation are good, clear and easy to use and you can go straight to search easily. The ads do not compete with your content in my opinion and there are useful things there like weather forecast. Great idea to have pubs and location of nearby attractions - details on each one a little thin.
We looked at hotels and other attractions in Norwich, where we are based and found one pub - the White Horse listed as being local but it is not even in Norfolk let alone Norwich it's in Suffolk.
We felt that the one big feature missing from your price comparison is the ability to set your budget. We know the hotels here a little and felt sure that there would be more availability for only a 2 night stay and a far greater range of prices. Most of the results seemed to be at the expensive end. Do you mean to include guest houses and B&B's? It doesn't look like you do right now but there is a grey line between the good guest house and hotel.
On the whole I think it is a good site and there is a good list of accomodation so from the listing point of view well done.

[atlantadentalcenter]

It's a pretty simple design - I would try sprucing it up a bit. Maybe making it look like some sort of console - but not to space-ish or something.

[altyfc]

Thanks for the feedback, guys. Design-wise, I know it's nothing special, atlanta... but it kind of does it's job in that respect (easy to follow) so I'm not too worried about that. It's more usability that I'm interested in, in particular of the price comparison facility.

Thank you for your in-depth look, Alex. You are right... we are very thin on the ground as far as content on pubs is concerned. With time, we'd hope to address that. (Would you mind telling me which one it was that was wrong - if you can remember - so I can fix?) Attractions, though, we are quite strong on them. We have content on over 10,000 attractions in the UK now, all with unique descriptions and most including pictures.

As for accommodation, we do hope to add more in that regard. So far we have incorporated Active Hotels, LateRooms and Superbreak. Active Hotels tends to be more budget oriented than Superbreak but for some reason not all of their availability is coming through properly, so that is something we need to fix and might account for the slightly limited range in the prices you were getting. On top of that, we plan to add others such as Alpha Rooms, Venere and more. The more we manage to include, the better the service will hopefully become.

Thanks again for looking, everyone... more comments always welcome as it's exactly this kind of feedback that helps us to take a step back and see it from the point of view of our users more.

[D3n!ss3_gÜrL]

Originally Posted by altyfc

...Design-wise, I know it's nothing special, atlanta... but it kind of does it's job in that respect (easy to follow) so I'm not too worried about that. It's more usability that I'm interested in, in particular of the price comparison facility.

Yay! I was supposed to mention that but you have a point anyway.

The site's width is too narrow though I think...

[2advance]

Add some other layout and add some more graphics to your site which will improve the attraction..

[iffydonny]

Good job!
I like it, really fresh and friendly.
I would change the colors of the map
making the county looking different
at list when u go with the mouse on them.

[felixt]

I find it not captivating enough for me to stay on your site. Although, I like the simplicity and the design of this website but your website doesn't "stand out"

Your website type is mostly based on credibility, so I think you should focus more on adding credibility factors in the website. Maybe a slogan? "We find you the best hotel"

Good luck :=)

[funktrust]

Its attually pritty cleaver!! good one.