Computer Application free essay sample

The three hotels we chose to use for our assignment are the Shangri La, Concorde and Tune Hotels and we chose these three as we thought they would give us a wide range of information and they would each have quite different styles of websites as the star rating that they have widely differ. Description of Chosen Websites Including Their Features, Available Information and Comparisons of the Websites The Shangri La website has an extremely inviting look to it. The colours used are very homely and warm which gives it a very welcoming feel which makes you want to book a room and stay there straight away. The picture used for the home page shows the relaxation and great hospitality that occurs as soon as you step into the hotel and with all of the green nature in the background it gives the hotel a very natural and environmental vibe. Thisgave us all the impression that booking a room will be very simple and enjoyable, just like being at the hotel. The Concorde website doesn’t have the same first impression. We felt that when you first go on to the website, it doesn’t make you feel like you want to stay there. It seems very ‘showy’ and black and white and it doesn’t give us any attraction at all to book there. It seems almost too focussed on the business lifestyle and doesn’t make us attracted to stay at the hotel at all. TuneHotels websites first impressions aren’t great. There isn’t anything that makes you want to stay there and it’s all very basic and boring. There is nothing but information and it wouldn’t have a chance of making us book a room there. Based alone on first impressions out of these three hotel websites, we decided that the Shangri La won by a mile. The tool bar menu at the top of the page for the Shangri La is simple and doesn’t have too many things which we feel is a good thing, because it has the main topics; the things that you would initially go onto the website for. Unlike on the Concorde’s website, there are way too many options on the top tool bar and it makes the user feel like they are being bombarded with information and you just don’t know where to start. All of the options on the tool bar of the Concorde website can all be found on the Shangri La’s as well, but the Shangri La’s is much more concise and better managed as they have a top and bottom tool bar with different information on each. The Concorde website has a lot of options and they are the same options for the top and bottom tool bar, which we felt wasn’t very conducive for the websites layout. The Tune Hotel’s tool bar menu is a plus for their website because it’s simple and easy to navigate around. Even though the layout of the Shangri La’s tool bar menus are much better, on the tool bar of Concorde and Tune Hotel when you hover your mouse over one of the topics, there is a drop-down menu which is really good because it makes it very convenient for the user as they can see all of the submenu’s that are under each category. Rather than with the Shangri La’s where you have to click and be directed to the next page to find out what other information is on that page. Having this function on the Tune Hotel and Concorde website makes the websites much more user friendly than the Shangri La’s in terms of looking for information, because it’s so much easier to navigate around as you know exactly what information is on which page. For the Concorde and the Tune Hotel website, on the homepage they both have booking forms, but on the Shangri La’s website they don’t have this function on the homepage, you can only access and browse this once you go to it under the tool bar function for ‘Rates Reservations’. This has both positives and negatives for each of the hotels. For Concorde and Tune Hotel its very good because as soon as you enter the website it introduces the user to the booking form which may enhance the users decision to book that hotel as it will be easier as they don’t need to go searching for a booking form, which could result in these two hotels getting more online booking than the Shangri La as the booking form for that hotel isn’t as conveniently available. However, the Concorde and Tune Hotel’s booking form system isn’t as aesthetically pleasing as its small and bundled together with a load of other information and they both aren’t enjoyable to fill in your criteria to stay, but on the Shangri La’s you don’t mind filling it in because the aesthetics are there to make it enjoyable to fill in as it has its own separate page. One feature that the Concorde hotels website has that the other two don’t have is that whichever page you’re on on the website, you have a slideshow of a few ictures relating to the particular topic you’ve clicked on. This gives the user a further insight to more of the hotel itself rather than only having one picture per page there are three or four. Having a slideshow on every page also gives the website more of a better user interface as it makes the website more interesting as there are moving things to interest the user, rather than like the other two websi tes where everything is stationary and can lose user focus which may result in them stopping looking at the website after a short amount of time. With the different photographs on every page, through them it seems like the Concorde hotel is trying to convey the feel and mood of all the different things such as all of the cafes and restaurants and show all of the specialities which each place in the hotel has to offer and for each place it seems like they want to show the uniqueness to each of them. Even though there is this very good feature on the website, it still somehow doesn’t make it look as good as the Shangri La’s. With all of the glamour from all of the pictures that are used in the Concorde’s website, this adds to it being ‘showy’ and bright and it does get across the point that it’s very grand, but after a while, it getsquite tedious and boring, but with the Shangri La, having only one picture per page somehow seems to work a lot better. We think that in this case; less is more. However, for the Tune Hotel website not much is going on at all, in fact too little is going on, so it’s extremely boring to be on this website after a while as there aren’t any little things included such as pictures on the pages or any moving user interactive features. There is a gallery on the Tune Hotel website, but the gallery is of quite a bad standard as there are only a few pictures which seems like a half-job has been done on it and it doesn’t enhance the website by having these few pictures on. It does show you how the rooms are actually like and what additions they have in the hotel like Subway, so it’s not completely useless. The website designer just needs to put a bit more effort into it. For the information on the Tune Hotel website, it seems like they don’t want their customers and potential customers to know so much about the actual hotel that they will be staying in because they have information such as things like the shareholders and the management team, which isn’t quite what most people look for when looking into booking a hotel, so we think there is some unnecessary information that the Tune Hotel website offers for the majority of the eople that search these websites. There isn’t anywhere near as much helpful information that the Concorde and Shangri La offer which may just be a reason from Tune Hotels not having the same high standard as the other two hotels and maybe there just isn’t as much for the hotel to offer as the other two high rated hotels. The actual information included in each of the websites differs quite a lot in terms of the choices of what is included and not. When we looked deeper into the details of the information in the websites, we found that on pages about the restaurants and cafes on the Concorde and Shangri La’s website they had very detailed information that is very convenient for the user if they are looking for information on the restaurants and cafes such as the dress code. With having this information it gives the potential customers additional knowledge that they need and if this information wasn’t put on the website some potential customers may arrive in the incorrect attire and they would be forced to either change their clothing and go back to the restaurant or eat somewhere else. This information is really a service to the users as the information isn’t a necessity to be included in the website, but the management thought about how to make the lives of their future customers easier. The layouts of these two websites for the information pages like the dining pages have quite a different standard to each other. The Shangri La’s layout and colours used are very relaxed, warming and welcoming; on the other hand the Concorde’s layout is very black and white, too simple and looks too much like information. The font doesn’t make it inviting to read, however the Shangri La’s font makes it a pleasure to read. Some information that is included in the Concorde’s website is rather unique to a hotels website. There is information on careers such as how to apply for a job for Hard Rock Hotels, Concorde Hotels and Resorts and other resorts in Malaysia. This is something that nobody in my group has seen or heard of before. The Tune Hotels also include this feature on its website, however it isn’t anywhere near the professional standard that the Concorde’s is at, as there isn’t any layout of what specific jobs are available or where, but on the Concorde’s all of the information is laid out very professionally and clearly. Tune Hotels and Concorde also have a feature on their website which is Guest Reviews. However, we faced one problem with this. We originally saw guest reviews on Tune Hotels website and it was showed in a little box with changing comments and ratings of previous customers visits, but after that we couldn’t find it again anywhere on the website. On the other hand, the guest reviews on the Concorde’s website is easily sighted on its homepage. The two higher rated hotels, the Shangri La and Concorde have a feature where you can change the language of the website to suit your preference. The choices of language are English, Chinese or Japanese. These language choices are limited, however for this particular hotel in Kuala Lumpur these three choices of language are enough to suit the needs of the travellers that will enquire about these hotels as almost all of the users will be able to read or speak one of these three main languages. For all three of the hotel websites they give you the offer of joining their group on Facebook, Twitter, Youtube and a few other less popular ones on the Tune Hotels website. This shows that all of the websites are targeting all sorts of age groups and by having these features on the websites it will help them get a new addition to the target market of the hotels.