ISORG

Introduction

The world is gradually becoming borderless due to information technology. Information Technology has evolved over the years and has opened up many opportunities, from finding out information to conducting communications globally. All Businesses are able to take advantage of the Information Technology to explore new markets worldwide increasing their businesses opportunities and for their daily business operations.

About Priceline.com

Name your own price, make your own choice

Priceline.com is an Internet-based travel service that offers air tickets, hotel rooms, rental cars, air plus hotel combo and travel insurance at discount rates. The company is not a direct supplier of these services; instead it provides comparative pricing from an assortment of service companies.

It first gained prominence for its “Name Your Own Price” system, where travelers would name their price for airline tickets, hotel rooms, and car rentals. The price would be compared to undisclosed prices in the Priceline database, with the purchaser knowing the location and name of the rental car company, airline, or hotel only after the purchase had gone through, with no rights to cancel. (According to the web site, the no-cancellation no-refund policy is because Priceline offers the price to the hotel, airline, or car rental agency with the promise that the service would be sold and the seat or hotel will be filled, or the car will be rented.) Priceline's cut of the proceeds was the difference between the price an individual named and the price charged by the service establishment. More recently, it has moved to a more traditional model where travelers are presented prices and are also told the name of the establishment.

Purpose

The website of Priceline.com provide sale of cheap air tickets from different airlines, room reservations from different hotels, car rental and insurance to its customers. Customers are also able to name their own rate for air ticket and hotel rooms through a bidding system.Travel Guides are also available to customers to facilitate their travel.

Features

Business Model

Priceline.com adopts the virtual storefront B2C (Business to consumer) ecommerce website to conduct their business activity selling cheap air tickets, hotel rooms, special packages, rental cars and travel insurance online using online methods such as VISA and MASTERS. It has a brick and mortar office mainly for customer service although business is carried out online. Its customers could purchase air tickets, book hotel rooms, rent cars and buy insurance without the need to visit the office.

How Priceline.com works, thousands of airline seats and hotel rooms go unsold every day. Via the Internet, Priceline invites consumers to name their own price for these products, letting them to spend exactly what they want. Priceline enables consumers to name their own price - and thereby name their own savings - for air tickets and hotel rooms all around the world. They then go to work with their partner airlines and hotels to find a supplier willing to accept those prices.

Priceline is a great way to save on airline tickets. Whether you are traveling in Asia or around the world, you decide how much you want to pay for the round-trip tickets on a full-service, world-class airline.

• All tickets are round-trip and at economy class.
  
  
• Priceline's airline partners choose flights for which they have unsold seats leaving between 6am and 10:30pm on travel dates for flights within Southeast and North Asia. Flights to other international destinations may depart at any time, midnight to midnight, on dates of travel.
  
  
• Flights are assigned by the airlines and cannot be changed.
  
  
• Priceline airline tickets cannot be changed, refunded or transferred to another person.
  
  

What kind of hotel rooms the customers is expected? All hotel reservations are guaranteed for double occupancy (i.e. all rooms will accommodate up to two adults). Participating hotels will assign non-smoking rooms to Priceline guests on a best-available basis and will attempt to accommodate any special requests in accordance with the hotel's standard policies and practices. Special requests (pet accommodation, type of bedding, connecting rooms, view, floor location, etc.), the customers must call the hotel and verify if that special requests can be met after your reservation is confirmed. Also, additional charges may apply for special requests or special needs.

Website features

Users new to priceline.com need not worry as there is a guide available for new users. The website has a blue background is neat, well organized and has site map to guide users. More importantly the website is filled with air tickets, rooms, packages at a low rate to attract potential customers. It also shows testimonials of satisfied customers. The website consists of mainly 5 parts: Air tickets, hotels, air ticket +hotel, Rental cars and travel insurance.

Air tickets booking

Customers booking the air tickets just need to provide details such as the destination they wish to travel to, the travel date (departure and return) the airlines they wish to travel with and the budget of the ticket. Customers looking for cheapest air ticket can refer to the top deals list. Priceline.com has a Name your own price system for customers to bid their tickets at their own rate. Priceline.com will inform the customers if their bidding is successful.

After entering the details, customers would be presented with a summary of different airlines and the range of prices available. From there customers must choose one of the airlines to proceed for payment and insurance.

Payment Methods

Booking of airline tickets currently allows payment though credit cards: VISA and MASTER.


Hotel room booking







To book a hotel room the customer just need to key in details such as check in date, check out date, the country that they will be staying, the city, hotel name and its star rating. Customers looking for cheapest hotel room can refer to the top deals list. Priceline.com has a Name your own price system for customers to bid their rooms at their own rate. Priceline.com will inform the customers if their bidding is successful.




After the search, a list of hotels are available for booking. Customers need to choose the hotel they wish to stay to proceed to payment.

Payment methods




Booking of hotel rooms currently allows payment though credit cards: VISA and MASTER.

Air ticket + Hotel room booking




Besides booking individually for both airline tickets and hotel rooms, the website also allows customers to book them together as a package at a cheaper rate. Customers looking for cheapest deal can refer to the hot picks list.

Rental cars





Rental cars are also available at the travel destination at attractive rates. It saves customers the hassle to spent time and trouble looking for rental cars.


Travel Insurance





Some customers do not have travel insurance knowledge. To save time and trouble to look for an agent, travel insurance is readily available at the website. Customers just have click to find out more information.

The website’s strength is focused on the 2 different selling points where the clients will be able to bid for the air ticket where the business entity will choose which customer it wants. This has a pro and cons as the customer will not be able to choose which airline it prefers to fly with. The website to cover the flaws actually provided the second service where the customer will be able to choose which airlines it would wish to travel with but with a fix price given by each airline company.

The rest of the functions other than the e-bidding option are similar to other travel website such as airticket.com.sg and also websites such as zuji.com.sg.

The website contains all information required by user to book and even plan their own holiday package but there are also its limitations.

The limitations are as follows the hotels selections are very limited, mainly in the city areas of other countries. The price of the bidding is not confirmed and the fuel surcharged is added separately. This will increase the price of the ticket whether in bidding or selection based.



Priceline.com.sg is a wonderful website; it is user friendly and provides necessary information to the client and consumer. As the internet purchasing market is blooming, the users of internet gets more confident and with the transfer of word by mouth, the website is a success as it provides a budget travel and also a luxury travel where the customer does not have to queue or call for the ticketing services and could directly check in at the airline counter. We would like to rate this website giving it a 4 out of 5 star rating