Air New Zealand Air Points - HOT website not what its cracked up to be




Kiwi Flyer
Sep 19, 04, 7:14 pm
Had a quick play on www.houseoftravel.co.nz

Limited to NZ, Australia (main centres only) and South Pacific.

Looks okay for someone wanting cheapest possible dont care how I get there fare, not good enough for more demanding folk (like me).

Quite slow to search (well for me anyway). Has a big count down clock telling how long to go which seemed fairly accurate (unlike the microsoft blue squares for example but I digress). ^

Says it checks all carriers - but not all came up on the selectable options so I could not verify this.

Proudly announces found xx combinations but doesnt show them all. Can select from small number of return options or small numbers for each way. If a route only has one or two carriers then will probably allow to select most of the cheaper fare types, but where lots of carriers (eg AKL-SYD) it doesnt return any of the slightly more expensive less restrictive fares. Doesnt return any of the higher fares which may work out a better deal on some routes.

I am not sure but dont think it is checking availability. For sample dates next week it brought up the cheapest fares - I doubt they are available at such short notice especially in the school holidays.

To check other dates need to reinput and search again (with another equally long wait).


ntddevsys
Sep 19, 04, 8:10 pm
Early this morning I looked at this site and couldn't get it to find me ANY flights.

Does not offer Business Class [Well that I could see] or flexible ticketing options.

If only there was a website to satisfy a FTer.

Kiwi Flyer
Sep 19, 04, 8:32 pm
Not that I could see either. Its set to return the cheapest fare regardless with no option to select more flexible fares.


ntddevsys
Sep 19, 04, 11:46 pm
I was reading the DomPost and noticed this

Prospective travellers will be able to visit the multimillion-dollar website and compare the fares of 17 airlines flying to Australia, the South Pacific and domestically.

Kiwi Flyer
Sep 19, 04, 11:52 pm
Its certainly been a long time coming - long enough to have spent heaps. IIRC HOT announced well over a year ago (maybe 2?) that it was working on this.

Leumas
Sep 20, 04, 1:58 am
You kind of have to wonder why it took so long... Surely it can't be that hard to licence an engine from one of the many sites, e.g., Travelocity, Expedia, Zuji, ITN, etc...?

Kiwi Flyer
Sep 20, 04, 2:02 am
I think that's where they've gone wrong. Created something from scratch that is supposed to be "better" because they supposedly troll the websites of the airlines to scrape the web only deals that may not appear in the CRSes.

But then I am probably not their target audience. Want to see tradeoff between restrictions and fares, complicated itins, etc.

mad_atta
Sep 20, 04, 2:18 am
To be fair, if you click the 'show all fares' button it does display everything it has found, right up to the full-fare. It will be interesting to see how well it works once they have ironed out the glitches, e.g. at the moment, clicking on the 'fare rules' link produces an empty html box. Also, it does appear to be showing only available fares.



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