Summer's nearly here, and hopefully we can all enjoy a well-earned holiday. If I had to classify myself as a certain category of holiday-maker, I'm unquestionably a perfect example of the "last-minute" traveller (as determined by an extensive user, task and environment analysis, of course!).

As an expert with first-hand experience, I know that during his or her holiday this type of traveller has zero interest in anything as rational as planning or time boxing ("Can I manage to visit 14 cities in 7 days with half a day per city?"), resource allocation ("How many FTEs do I need to unpack and pack my luggage every day?"), or budget control ("What is the available budget for sun cream with a factor of 45?").

Put another way, under the pretext of "We’re on holiday" last-minute travellers sometimes throw all the basic principles of project management out the window. For example, they don't care about when the Indonesian chicken bus transports real chickens and not just people. Here I can assure you that I speak from experience.

To avoid these "minor difficulties", this year I resolved to book an all-inclusive holiday on the Croatian Riviera via the Internet, with everything looked after down to the last detail. Last minute, of course. I hadn't expected that my search for a trouble-free holiday would cause me so much trouble. "All inclusive" apparently starts right up front with booking: all of your time, all of your resources, and all of your patience.

On the first website, I chose Croatia as the destination and the Dubrovnik Riviera as the region. There I found wonderfully enticing descriptions of azure-blue bays and emerald-green hills, but (less wonderfully) no list of all-inclusive hotels. I decided to try the "All locations" selection list. Unfortunately, "All locations" was the only location in the list. That’s my idea of adventure: to go boldly where no-one has gone before!

Then I decided to try my luck on a second website. The only destination I could see right away on this site was "Nearby", so I tried clicking "Air travel holidays" in the main menu. It turned out that filtering the long list of hotels was not part of the "package deal" on this site, and before I knew it I had spent 15 minutes just to find the only all-inclusive Croatian hotel.
My luck took an even stronger turn for the worse when I couldn't manage to fill in my date of birth in Step 3 because "the fields marked with a (#) are not completed correctly" (so they said). A bit later, after a stubborn bout of turista, I still couldn’t figure out what was wrong.

My courage was gradually reaching the level of my sandals. After consulting with one of the "FTEs" who would be joining me on the holiday, I risked another attempt to book my "all in" on a third website. There I found a list of hotels, but aside from other peoples' opinions of the hotels I couldn't find any information about them – not even whether they were close to the ocean. I'm willing to take a lot of risks when on holiday, but this was too much for me. After an hour and a half of concentrated searching, I still hadn't booked a holiday.

What I just described may sound anecdotal, but it is a good illustration of the state of e-commerce in Belgium. Companies spend thousands of euros on marketing, Web 2.0 and flashy websites, but the average holiday-maker can't manage to book a holiday easily, quickly and efficiently.
All three of the sites I mentioned suffer from serious usability problems that cannot be corrected with the flick of the wrist – not even "last minute". The market will ultimately decide who will succeed in the online travel market and who won't. You can take it from me that usability will be a decisive factor here.

Erwin De beuckelaer, Project Manager

PS: We decided to go on a camping holiday this year. Naturally, we'll choose the destination at the last minute. Maybe next year I'll take a day off to book my holiday. I'll have to check with HR whether that counts as excused absence!