Site review: thomascook.com
Travel operator Thomas Cook introduced a number of improvements before Christmas, including an improved holiday search function, and the addition of more multimedia content.
Since I had written a post last year listing ten different problems with the Thomas Cook website which were affecting the user experience, it seems only fair to give credit for some of the improvements that have been made since then.
These are the ten criticisms I made of the Thomas Cook website last year; some have now been fixed, and some haven’t:
Returning no results
Last time, I encountered a number of ‘amend search’ messages advising that there were no holidays matching my search criteria, which can get annoying after a while. Now, when there are no results that exactly fit my original departure date I get a different message, informing me that there are no holidays on that day, but offering similar holidays a few days later. A big improvement:
Lack of user reviews
Thomas Cook recently added over 300,000 reviews to the site, giving ratings for destinations and hotels. Hotels and resorts always sound good from the travel agent’s description, but customers would be much more confident in booking a holiday having seen recommendations from other holiday makers.
A reviews section allows users to search for reviews by destination, so they can find the hotels and resorts with the best scores. Average ratings are also displayed on holiday search results, though some more detail beyond just a mark out of five may be more useful.
Slow loading search results
This is still a bit of a problem at times; it can take 10-20 for search results to load, which isn’t great for impatient web users like me. When searching and comparing a number of holidays this can become frustrating.
Hidden charges
Still an issue, and this is something that annoys web users and makes it difficult for them to compare prices. For instance, when I search for a flight to and hotel in Milan for two people, I’m quoted a price of
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