Well the first boo.com was famous for all the wrong reasons, its basically crashed and burned. Back in 2000 (ish) it was a fashion site based heavily on flash and javascript when the internet just wasn’t ready for it, broadband was only just becoming available to the masses so many people using the site were on 56k dial up modems and the load time was just too long.
I personally didn’t know much about it, nor was I that interested but based on an article I just read at Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boo.com) the company was poorly managed and just burnt money trying to make things right and get it going, but it never did and inevitably it died off.
Well its back! New site, new company, completely new focus. It’s a travel site now and im not that keen.
Im not really sure what its trying to achieve but the homepage is quite clean and user friendly, but once you get into the site its horrible! Lets have a bit of a walk through, the main screen asks me where I want to go, why not Barcelona.
Now the next screen is what gets to me, rather than setting the site out like other web 2.0 sites, or just making it easy to use and having “weather”, “accommodation”, “reviews” as separate pages, separate tabs or distinct areas they’ve thrown everything onto one page. See below
Now looking at this page what do we have I’ve got some city reviews done by members on the left, also some popular Barcelona tags which aren’t links or anything just a collection of words. Down the middle I’ve got a photo gallery type thing, then 3 suggested places to stay and some things to do and see. Then we’ve got a hotel search ‘section’ which is… unique in that its nothing like I’ve ever used before! Not saying this is a bad thing, but why be different for the sake of being different? If I want to go from the 10th to 17th of a month ill generally click 10 then 17 with this you have to hold your mouse down and kind of drag the availability to the date you want, and then they’ve got a slider for number of guests? What’s wrong with a drop down, the slider limits you to 8 guests. Wedged down the edge of this are a few random bits such as car hire from Hertz, a Boo ad and a “Searching Barcelona ??” box that doesn’t do anything.
Hang on there’s even more below the page fold! A “Been there done that” box with Boo members who’ve been here and then a weather in Barcelona feature.
All good features but it just feels like they’ve tried to fit way too much on one page and tried to take everything one step too far (taking lessons from the old Boo.com?).
Anyway im going to try and get a hotel now for a week, I think ive filled the dates in right im after a 3* from 22nd to 29th of May for 2 people and im down to 3 hotels. The next page isn’t to bad, not the ost user friendly but I can live with it.
The hotels im left with don’t have any reviews but I presume they would load up in the centre box if they did. At the top I can either book with Boo or book direct. Book direct just takes you to the hotels site or hotel chains website if they have one, if they don’t the button doesn’t appear.
The book with Boo button takes you straight to a credit card form asking for your details and credit card number theres a non refundable €1.50 charge for booking online with Boo and then you pay the rest when you arrive at the hotel. Below you can see the room breakdown and the fact that my deposit for making a €1014.00 reservation is only €1.50
I’ll be keeping an eye on this one, not sure how well its going to do but based on the current online environment Google will probably buy them at some point for a ridiculous sum.
