Last week, Amazon announced a new feature adding to their website's already expansive services. Amazon Destinations finds and recommends places to stay in various locations for vacations, business trips, etc. So instead of using TripAdvisor or similar sites, people can go to the already trusted amazon.com to search for and book hotels for an upcoming trip.
A major deficiency that Amazon has is that this service is new so the areas where it finds hotels is extremely limited. Right now, you can only search in the Northeast, Pacific Northwest, and Southern California. These are very popular areas for vacations but it can't compete with TripAdvisor's global span. However, I would imagine that it will expand fairly quickly, Also, you can only book hotel reservations where other sites allow you to set transportation while booking your hotel. An advantage that Amazon has is that it can use its review system. Amazon reviews are highly utilized and beneficial when buying products already. Now, if the same users were to review destinations, hotels, and other vacation aspects, new customers would have a simpler time choosing their trip.
I think this is awesome for Amazon because they are expanding their market every day. What started as an online book store now lets you plan vacations. They've taken over online purchases being in one place. They added music and movie streaming and recently the Dash Button. Now with vacation help, it seems that Amazon has no limits. If you were asked "what does Amazon do?" there isn't a single answer anymore. You'd have to bounce around naming several of their services. It's approaching the point where if you need to do anything that requires spending money, you can go to Amazon.
Destinations sounds like an awesome idea, and I'm happy that an established company (whose sole business operates on E-commerce) like Amazon is entering the market. After having just booked vacation tickets through Hotels.com, it appears that almost every one of these types of websites are just constantly vying for our attention with incessant pop-ups and deals. Sure sites like Kayak come along that try to organize all the sites together for added convenience, but even then, your never sure if your getting a good deal. Ultimately, the companies you end up booking through are names you've never heard of, and if you go through another booking later on, you most likely will end up with a different company. Amazon on the other hand is a stable marketplace where we know were getting good deals and has been around and we know will stay around. Thus I'm excited to see this venture play out.
ReplyDeleteWithout having booked a hotel myself it is a little hard to give an accurate view, but in my opinion I believe the review system is Amazon's strongest advantage. Rather than just trying to find you the best deal I think Amazon may be able to help you find the most trusted best deal. For example, product A has two options a 50 cent version with a 1 star review or a 1 dollar version with a four star review, you may pick the 1 dollar version because you trust it more based on other people's reviews. Based on what I know it is not always clear where other hotel reviews may come from, whereas on Amazon you are almost always certain that the reviews come from other users who have bought what you are looking at. The seemingly inherent trust value of an Amazon review (to me at least) seems higher than wherever other reviews come from, so it will be interesting to see if this new service catches on.
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