Banyan Tree Holdings Limited (“Banyan Tree” or the “Group”) is a leading manager and developer of premium resorts, hotels and spas in the Asia Pacific, with 23 resorts and hotels, 65 spas, 65 retail galleries, and two golf courses. Banyan Tree’s primary business is the management, development and ownership of resorts and hotels. As a leading operator of spas in the Asia Pacific, Banyan Tree’s spas are one of the key features in their resorts and hotels. Banyan Tree galleries, which complement their resorts, hotels and spas, help to extend the reach and scope of their brands.Website purposes
The purpose of Banyan Tree Hotels and Resorts website is to provide a channel for interested parties to access facilities and destination information of the company’s hotels and resorts that are located in the Asia Pacific, promotions and most of all making room reservations whenever they want and wherever they are with just a few clicks.
Banyan Tree Hotels and Resorts Business Model
Banyan Tree Hotels and Resorts (Banyan Tree) applied Business-to-Business (B2B) and Business-to-Consumers (B2C) business model in their website. In B2B, travel agents are able to enjoy agent pricing and commission for their completed online reservations with Banyan Tree. In addition, Banyan Tree also provides corporate rates to attain corporations business.
In B2C, customers are able to make room and various amenities reservations directly with Banyan Tree through the website. This is a bonus for consumers who prefer to make bookings online immediately without the hassle of making trips down to the travel agents for quotations and confirmation.
Banyantree.com Features
Website Design and Appearance
When one first entered the Banyan Tree Hotels and Resorts website, they will be greeted with Flash presentation, in either photos or videos form, filled with beautiful sights of and sceneries surrounding its hotels and resorts that are located the Asia Pacific. The website is presented in an orderly and user-friendly manner with a good colour combination choice.
Room Reservation System
Banyan Tree makes use of Flash booking engine to facilitate their online reservation. A HTML booking engine is also available if consumers experience a delay in loading the Flash booking engine. The booking engine is available in 3 languages namely English, Japanese and Chinese.
After check-in and check-out dates are being selected, Consumers could choose between the “Select Just a Room” or “Select a Room inclusive Package” according to their preference. Once a selection had been made, room type availability, and its price will be displayed almost instantaneously. Each room or package information and images will be displayed once selected. Additional chargeable enhancements like spa and massage, festival dining and recreations are also available for booking to avoid disappointment of guests should the enhancements are fully booked during their stay at the hotel.
After check-in and check-out dates are being selected, Consumers could choose between the “Select Just a Room” or “Select a Room inclusive Package” according to their preference. Once a selection had been made, room type availability, and its price will be displayed almost instantaneously. Each room or package information and images will be displayed once selected. Additional chargeable enhancements like spa and massage, festival dining and recreations are also available for booking to avoid disappointment of guests should the enhancements are fully booked during their stay at the hotel.
A thoughtful gesture by Banyan Tree would be the “Are you a Returning Guest “option. Returning guest would only need to login with their email and last four digits of their Credit Card to save them the hassle of filling in the reservation form again as the guest information are saved in the company’s data system and can be retrieve with successful returning guest login.
The payment modes accepted by Banyan Tree are mainly American Express, Diners, JCB, MasterCard and VISA.
Consumers could also state any requests in the reservation form to allow the hotel to have ample time to prepare.RSS Feed
Banyan Tree made use of Real Simple Syndication (RSS) technology to keep subscribed parties posted of the best room rates, latest packages and promotions that are available at Banyan Tree.
Strengths
By setting up this website, visitors can look for information pertaining to Banyan Tree hotels and resorts at their own comfort and pace. Regardless of timing difference and distance between 2 countries, visitors can go on to the website and search for details and make plan for their holiday trips. This make the work of visitors’ much easier where information regarding the hotels and resorts are found in the page, and reduce the hassle of going to multiple tour agencies or even make many phone calls to find out about the holiday trip. In this way, transaction cost is reduced and information can reach out to more people.
The website is also user-friendly. Users can also choose to view the sites in Mandarin and Japanese other than English. It also provides a search engine where visitors can input keywords to assist them in finding information more effectively.
Website is also well organized and provides a site map to allow users to know which web pages are linked in the same category. Design of the web pages is consistent and users are able to get information within the 3 click rule.
Visitors can also subscribe to their Enewsletter so that any new promotions or activities will be mailed to their email address. All these functions improve communication between parties.
In their reservation system, users are able to view the availability of rooms by selecting the dates. Travelers will have to input their confidential details in order to reserve and book their holiday trip. From the page, we can see that major credit cards are accepted, and the details of credit card are also VeriSign secured. The system is also able to capture missing fields and prompt the users to complete before it can successfully complete the transaction.
By setting up this website, visitors can look for information pertaining to Banyan Tree hotels and resorts at their own comfort and pace. Regardless of timing difference and distance between 2 countries, visitors can go on to the website and search for details and make plan for their holiday trips. This make the work of visitors’ much easier where information regarding the hotels and resorts are found in the page, and reduce the hassle of going to multiple tour agencies or even make many phone calls to find out about the holiday trip. In this way, transaction cost is reduced and information can reach out to more people.
The website is also user-friendly. Users can also choose to view the sites in Mandarin and Japanese other than English. It also provides a search engine where visitors can input keywords to assist them in finding information more effectively.
Website is also well organized and provides a site map to allow users to know which web pages are linked in the same category. Design of the web pages is consistent and users are able to get information within the 3 click rule.
Visitors can also subscribe to their Enewsletter so that any new promotions or activities will be mailed to their email address. All these functions improve communication between parties.
In their reservation system, users are able to view the availability of rooms by selecting the dates. Travelers will have to input their confidential details in order to reserve and book their holiday trip. From the page, we can see that major credit cards are accepted, and the details of credit card are also VeriSign secured. The system is also able to capture missing fields and prompt the users to complete before it can successfully complete the transaction.
Weaknesses
At the home page of the website, we can see that it incorporate the use of multimedia. Images and videos are nice and interactive but it could pose a problem to users if the user is not using high internet bandwidth. Using slower connection may take longer time for images and videos to load and this may cause users to be impatient and skip to other websites.
One other thing that Banyan Tree might consider to improve is to incorporate more languages. While most of the people understand English, there are still people who do not understand. They might consider adding more languages like French, or Italian, so that users can choose to view the websites at greater comfort.
Conclusion
Banyan Tree Holdings Limited (Banyan Tree) being a leading manager and developer of premium resorts, hotels and spas in the Asia Pacific, applied Business-to-Business (B2B) and Business-to-Consumers (B2C) business model in their virtual storefront. It adopts the use of technology to help them increase awareness, market their services, holiday trips and promotions and build rapport with both corporate and individual customers. The use of technology not only benefits themselves but also the users. However, Banyan Tree has to make effort to keep the information relevant and accurate always, so that it will then be meaningful for users to use the websites.
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