Objectives
The research is done in conjunction with the recommendations of the UOL-ISORG study guide. This year, the focus is on e-commerce transaction brokers. Students can learn not only about teamwork, but also about the e-business model itself with more depth and understanding that can enhance learning.
Requirements of this mini project
Students are to form a group of 2-3 to conduct a research study of one e-commerce transaction broker e-business model and set up a website stating clearly the purpose, features, designs, strength and weaknesses, etc of the transaction broker being researched on. They are to show how a customer can go about purchasing what they desire to purchase from the broker-website with a third party(agent) being involved in the whole transaction.
Introduction
www.Travelsupermarket.com is an UK-based online transaction broker specializing in flights, hotels, car hires, cruises and insurance. For this mini project, we will focus on flights. Customers are able to book a flight according to their personal budgets and preferences with just a click at the comfort of their own homes. In addition, it enables customers to compare flight prices over 35 flight companies. It also makes payment method easy by the use of credit cards.
Designs
This is the homepage of travelsupermarket.com. It is very organized with the flight details option all located on the left side of the page with questions ranging from flying from where to where, when to when, trip type, class and the number of people travelling. These enable customers to select their desired flights with convenience and ease. On the right side of the page, they included links to their latest deals and other added services such as airport parking, airport transfers and travel insurance making it seem more attractive as a whole for customers to travel with travelsupermarket.
Strengths
The major strength of this website is that it enables customers to compare flight prices over 35 flight companies all on one page as shown above. And moreover, they do provide customers with details of the airline companies which they have chosen, as shown below.
In addition, after the customer has selected his/her preferred flight option, the site will show the flight and price summary, breaking down the price after tax for each passenger as shown below.
Weakness
Upon e-booking of tickets, they did not categorize the travellers into adults or children. They simply classify them as travellers. Perhaps this means that travelsupermaket.com may not have made provision or special arrangements for travellers with children or infants. This seems to show that they did not go the extra mile for their customers.
The second weakness is that the site does not offer as many flights as some other competitive sites offered with regards to the flights from Singapore. They only cater flights to 50 places, of which majority of them are in the UK.
