Yeoh Siew Hoon gets caught up in the travel web and has to fight her way out.
Try to make changes in your Web bookings and you get caught up in a sort of Pan’s Labyrinth ...
- Picture courtesy of Pan's Labyrinth’s official movie site / Picturehouse
“Online travel bookings will surpass offline bookings for the first time in 2007”, screams the headline.
It says that for the first time, transactions on the Internet will account for over half (54%) of all US travel bookings, citing a new PhoCusWright report.
At the same time, I am struggling – and I mean struggling – with two bookings I have made on the Internet in the past month.
One was for tickets on Bangkok Airways to Samui which for personal reasons, I had to re-schedule to a different date. The other was on Silk Air to Siem Reap.
Because they were point-to-point, I thought the Internet was the best way to go. I also thought there wouldn’t be too many differences in the air fares from other websites because both routes are “monopoly” sectors.
I mean, if you’re flying from Singapore to either Samui or Siem Reap, you’re kind of limited in your choice of carrier. It’s either Bangkok Airways or Silk Air, or the highway, or you go via somewhere else.
And since time is the most expensive commodity of all, I thought I’d choose the most direct route and book my own tickets.
Well, problem with Web bookings is, they work when you have no changes to your plans. The minute you try to make changes, you get caught up in a sort of Pan’s Labyrinth with the “devil who has no eyes”.
If you haven’t seen the Gullermo del Toro movie, go catch it – it is a brilliant movie and has remarkable parallels with the travel world.
There’s the little girl (us) who seeks to escape the harshness of the real world (travel agents, other intermediaries), there’s the fly (media) that promises to lead her into the enchanted land and there’s the wise sage (Internet players) who says things you desperately want to believe in but when you start delving deeper into the labyrinth and interacting with that other world, you encounter all sorts of monsters – the giant frog or the “devil with no eyes” (airlines, hotels, suppliers) – along the way.
With Bangkok Airways, it’s dealing with a Singapore reservations office which keeps telling you to deal with headquarters in Bangkok because the booking you made is through them. It’s like dealing with two different airlines.
With SilkAir, it was being told I had to collect a physical ticket at the city office anyway because the airline has no ticketing counter at the airport and because the Siem Reap route does not support e-tickets. So why offer it as an online booking without any advice that you have to collect the physical ticket?
I only found out the booking confirmation I received via email was not a valid ticket until I called to try to change my flight.
Yes, there’s still a great divide between the physical and virtual world, and ne’er the twain shall meet.
It almost made me wish I hadn’t stepped into the Web Labyrinth in the first place.
