Travel industry setting records due to bad weather, last minute rates are on the rise.

While the ones left behind are soaked and the weather is a trending topic on Twitter, the travel branche is in a state of extacy. It is no secret that bad weather conditions cause last minutes to soar, but in a July that resembles November, it's raining records. The 13th of July will hit the books as the lowest maximum temperature ever measured in The Netherlands.

No wonder that business is booming in holiday companies this month. Easytobook.com recorded the best Sunday in it's history yesterday, month to date is 40% ahead of July 2010. In a response to this tweet it became clear that ANWB, Thomas Cook and Sundio also measured record traffic.

Best. Sunday. Evah. More rain, I want MORE rain! #record #bookings

— Wouter Blok (@WouterBlok) July 18, 2011

  Unfortunately for the traveler, the uptake in last minutes has caused a relative scarcity. This in turn leads to rising hotel rates, signals easytobook.com. Where warmer cities like Rome, Barcelona, Madrid and Venice were showing comparable hotel rates to 2010 in the beginning of the month, last week they were up 10%. Both hoteliers and Touroperators are using the record visits to their sites to compensate for a relatively slow second quarter. 

  To enjoy a sunny holiday in the home country, we'll have to wait until end of the month, next 7 days the forecast scores a meager 4/10.

Booking a trip to Greece...and getting an angry monkey.

Today I was looking for an all-in package holiday with the family in Greece. Am I planning to go there? No. Do I intend to go to an all in hotel in Greece? No. I was asked to do so by WUA, a panel research company in Amsterdam. The idea: get 6 travel idiots in a lab (Martin de Boer, Patrick Mulder, Matties Otter, Reinier Linthorst Homan, Marc Sijtstra and yours truly) make 'm do the research for booking a trip, measure the results and have a discussion. Meanwhile some of the travel brands were following our discussion on the big screen with noteblock and pen. Big fun to do some travel research! I thought....

Summer Sessions Compilatie Travel from WUA! Web Performance on Vimeo.

Sitting behind a double screen, one for browsing and one for the endless questionnaires, I felt like a guinea pig in a lab. How to do research in 2 hours where a real parent about to book his once a year summer holiday in a lot more than that? I decided to stick to 4 big brands: TUI (Arke.nl), Thomas Cook (TC), Neckermann (also TC) and Jiba (Sundio group). Without going in detail which site made me swear the most: I felt like an angry monkey. (Like in @rubzie's blog www.usarchy.nl) 

Coming from a non package background, traveling with the family to holiday homes or hotel only, I did not know the websites that well. But I found that they have lots to improve still, and there's a lot of opportunity for sites that don't have their legacy but do offer packages (dynamically or not). The biggest agitation moments I will share with you in this top 10 (insiders and people involved will know how which point belongs to which site): 1) When clicking on a hoteldeal on an external site, please bring me to that hotel page, not the search result list with 1 result. 2) Please show me the prices in the resultlist for date and the amount of people I am traveling, not the lowest price you can find ever. 3) Don't make me think about how a slider scale on length of stay that ranges from 1 week, 2 weeks, 3 weeks, 4 days, 8 days, etc. Please stick to the internationally accepted rules of logic. 4) Pictures, I'd like to look at them without a magnifying glass, preferrably at screenwide size. 5) Filters, of how I love to add 5+ of them. Please remember these when I navigate through your site. 6) I have no problem providing you with the age classes of my children, but to enter all birthdates of them AND the grown ups in the group...why? 7) Navigating the new is nice, but searching where to enter bookdates seems a trip to nowhere. Could you move them from the middle of the filterbar and the bottom of the page to somewhere above the snippet? 8) Reviews, I understand you like to have your own unique content. With only a few reviews per hotel, and not enough engagement to tell me what I need to know, please add externals that I trust like Zoover and Tripadvisor. 9) I love homepages with big pictures that lead to winter, summer and far away destinations. When choosing far away and searching for Greece in the free search field because I think it's pretty far, please let me find it even though it's not. 10) Booking confirmation is the moment of truth, I want you to have my business. Why do you make it feel like applying for a green card? Is there a way to let me book the trip in under 10 minutes?

kthnxbai!