Almost half of those surveyed (46%) believe that a glass ceiling for women still exists in their market, with respondents from Vietnam (63%), Thailand (56%)

This Survey Reveals How Generational Differences in Attitudes Contribute to Workplace Inclusivity

Digital travel platform Agoda launched its first-ever television advertisement in India today. The video is part of Agoda’s ‘See The World For Less’ campaign and stars multi-talented Bollywood sensation Ayushmann Khurrana.

Ayushmann Khurrana turns globetrotter in first-ever Agoda TVC

Vietjet launches new services to Cambodia, Indonesia and China, offering 1 million promotional tickets across its domestic and international network.

Vietjet Announces New Routes to Cambodia, Indonesia & China

Agoda launched its first-ever television advertisement in India. The video is part of Agoda’s ‘See The World For Less’ campaign and stars Bollywood sensation Ayushmann Khurrana. Agoda launches its latest and the first-ever TV ad in India running ...

Agoda Joins Hands with Ayushmann Khurrana For Its First TV Commercial

Mastercard is expanding its partnership with Agoda to enhance B2B payments in the travel and tourism industry, making it easier for digital travel platforms to make payments to hotels, airlines, suppliers and vendors globally.

Mastercard, Agoda to streamline B2B payments in travel industry

IBS Intelligence (IBSi) is the world’s only pure-play Financial Technology focused research, advisory, and fintech news analysis firm, with a 30-year track record and clients globally. We take pride in covering 400+ technology vendors globally – the largest by any analyst firm in this space.

Agoda and Mastercard to drive B2B payments for the travel industry

Vietnam’s total revenue from tourists is estimated at VND582.6 trillion (US$23.7 billion) in the first ten months of 2023, according to the Vietnam National Authority of Tourism.

Vietnam's tourism sector earns US$23.7 billion in ten months

Vietnam’s total revenue from tourists is estimated at 582.6 trillion VND (23.7 billion USD) in the first ten months of 2023, according to the Vietnam National Authority of Tourism.

Vietnam's tourism sector earns 23.7 billion USD in ten months

Mastercard has expanded its partnership with Agoda. The partnership will look to enhance B2B payments in the travel and tourism industry, addressing the challenges of legacy payment processes and driving innovation beyond traditional card payments,

Mastercard and Agoda expand partnership

Mastercard, a global technology company in the payments industry, is expanding its partnership with Agoda, a digital travel platform headquartered in Singapore.

Mastercard expands partnership with travel platform Agoda

Agoda

agoda

How Big Data and Analytics are Shaping Traveler Behavior: Insights from a Digital Marketer

Along with the internet, there are various applications and platforms that give travelers the ability to make their own decisions about the way they want to travel. Travel itineraries have become flexible due to a wide range of options Flexibility and the ability to is something that is widely desired in today’s landscape. Everyone wants a personalized travel experience and it’s easy to get a personalized itinerary because of the wealth of information and platforms available that help make it possible. adapt to various needs If you want to stay in a local home, you have the option of going through AirBnB or - depending on how intimate you’d like to get. But if luxury stays are more up your alley, there’s also elite-class apps that can arrange for that. ThirdHome holds the key to high-flying members of society that have luxury holiday homes in various countries around the world. Couchsurfing It’s a private club filled with wealthy travelers and homeowners who wish to spend their holidays in luxurious estates or yachts and don’t mind opening the doors on their estates. Membership is only open to those with very deep pocketbooks and own properties that are worth a minimum of 500,000 USD. From the very basic couchsurfing to the very , the options are indeed endless and all-encompassing. There’s an answer to every desire, catered to every demand and it is prevalent in each sector of the travel industry. Whether it’s what you want to do, where you want to stay or what you want to eat. luxurious holiday home sharing Online reviews and recommendations increasing travel satisfaction How many times have you gotten to a hotel and felt that it wasn’t as advertised? In the days prior to the social media revolution, when tours were still booked through travel agencies, the answer was plenty. But today, thanks to the digital presence of consumers, the likelihood of that happening has been decreasing. In the beginning, it was just small niche blogs that covered hotel reviews and shared information such as itineraries, tips, and attractions. But as social media took hold of the travel industry, it exploded with information and innovators jumped at the opportunity to create travel review sites. Today, travel blogs are a dime a dozen, alongside post-pandemic travel influencers. They have become the new authorities in the travel industry, there are also official sites that are trusted, much like Tripadvisor. Tripadvisor has become a reputable source of information and businesses now strive to be listed on their website’s rankings in order to increase their exposure. Accommodation booking sites like Agoda or Booking have incorporated reviews into their platforms in order to increase customer satisfaction and it’s working. More people are booking through online means rather than through traditional channels, but it could also be in part due to the ease and convenience of it all. Ease of planning, managing, and arranging in the palm of your hand When the smartphone became a household item - or rather, a personal device that never left the sides of many individuals - who would have thought that it would become that multi-functional device that it is today? It started as a means of communication, allowing for basic texts and calls, but that gave way to picture texts, emails, and mp3s. Before we knew it, our smartphones had become an extension of our home and office combined, on top of a global library and camera. The accessibility that our phones afford us is limitless, and it has also contributed to the changes in the way that we travel. Common travel apps on a phone would include Google Maps, a ride-sharing app, an accommodation and flight seeker, among others. All of these apps allow us to arrange for a place to stay, something to do, transportation, and it can also handle our booking for meals, and there are apps that can consolidate all that information into a comprehensive itinerary. Talk about convenience. Where is travel headed beyond 2023? Technology has taken us in . It has assisted travel to go from being booked through a third party agent to , from the comfort of our own home. It has made travel planning a breeze. leaps and bounds booking tours online One of the great things about living in a digital age is that payment can also be done seamlessly and securely over the internet. E-payment has taken on a whole new meaning when cryptocurrency took off. The first Bitcoin payment accepted by an airline was by AirBaltic in , and surveys suggest that over 20% of Americans intend to pay for their next holiday with their . Aside from digital currency, there is also talk about travel being incorporated into the metaverse - part of the Web 3.0 revolution. The idea is that travel will happen from the comfort of one’s own home, though how that would really take off would really depend on how they intend to recreate the taste of New York bagels digitally and simulate the fresh air from Finland. 2014 crypto-assets Perhaps down-to-earth innovations are much more practical in the long run. Being able to plan and completely book a trip in a matter of minutes securely is now a common reality and technology will continue to take the travel industry to new heights. Some predictions for the near future include more sustainable and affordable travel options that can be booked at a moment’s notice instead of being planned in advance, because if there’s anything that the pandemic taught us, it’s that we never know what might disrupt our travel plans next.

Tech Vs. Travel: How Innovation is Disrupting One of the World's Oldest Industries

Tecnología vs. Viajes: cómo la innovación está alterando una de las industrias más antiguas del mundo

Tech contre. Voyage : comment l'innovation perturbe l'une des industries les plus anciennes du monde

टेक बनाम। यात्रा: कैसे नवाचार दुनिया के सबसे पुराने उद्योगों में से एक को बाधित कर रहा है

技術対。旅行: イノベーションが世界で最も古い産業の 1 つをどのように混乱させているか

Tecnologia Vs. Viagens: como a inovação está revolucionando uma das indústrias mais antigas do mundo

Công nghệ Vs. Du lịch: Sự đổi mới đang phá vỡ một trong những ngành công nghiệp lâu đời nhất thế giới như thế nào

技术与。旅行：创新如何扰乱世界上最古老的行业之一

The impact of Libra on Global Finance Satoshi Nakamoto (probably) had zero experience in finance.  He (probably) never worked in a bank and (probably) does not have an accounting or a finance degree. He (probably) never worked as an accountant. The World’s Greatest Mystery: In 2008, due to the frustration with the financial crisis Satoshi issued a white paper “Bitcoin, a peer-to-peer electronic funds transfer” and joined forces with other technology professionals – together they launched Bitcoin. And for the first time in the history of our world, people can move money from one person to another electronically, skipping the banks and skipping the high fees that banks charge for money transfers. To this day Satoshi’s identity is an enigma, his identity is one of the worlds’ greatest mysteries. Bitcoin is a currency beyond the control of the central banks.  It is not vulnerable to inflation.  As we all know, the US dollar has been losing its purchasing power since its inception. Twenty thousand dollars today does not have the same purchasing power that it did back in the year 2000, driving the American dream further and further into oblivion. Bitcoin’s value is determined by supply and demand and not a centralized controlling authority.  Bitcoin’s model mitigates the risk of corruption by centralized authorities as we witnessed in 2008’s financial crisis. A New Economic Model: In 2012, a computer science student in university in Canada – Vitalik Buterin, was intrigued by Bitcoin, he was so impressed by its model and what it can do, he launched an online forum, Bitcoin Magazine, where he collaborated with other technologists to understand the technology that powers bitcoin. Vitalik does not have an accounting degree, he never worked in a bank, or a company.  He does not have a finance degree.  In 2013, he issued a white paper, “Ethereum: The Ultimate Smart Contract and Decentralized Application Platform “. Vitalik received funding of over $19 million and moved to Switzerland.  In July 2015, Ethereum was born, and with it, it created a brand-new economic model for the world:  ICOs – Initial Coin Offering. JP  Morgan’s Report – 2018 – Blockchain & Decentralization: In April, 2018, JP Morgan “Blockchain and the Decentralization Revolution” issued a report The report outlines JP Morgan’s recommendation; companies of both financial and non-financial line of business should actively engage in learning about blockchain and its advantages. The report confirms that a decentralization ledger has substantial advantages that can be leveraged in the real world, such as reduced opex cost, improved settlement time and faster time to market. The report mentions astonishing numbers such as: $ 6 billion raised in ICO’s in Q1 2018 alone There are over 86,000 active blockchain projects world-wide (at the time of publishing). Telegram raised one of the largest ICO’s funding to date, $ 1.6 billion The report mentions how company directors and executives should get into blockchain and learn how it can be leveraged for different use-cases.  The numbers in the above graph prove that there is an insatiable appetite for products and services beyond what banks are offering today. The fact that people were willing to put their money in an ICO; companies that did not have any occurring revenue, did not have a working product/service, did not have any existing customers, or staff; yet the public pored their money into them by subscribing to those ICO’s. The popularity of ICO’s proved to the world that there is growing demand for services beyond what we are seeing today from traditional financial institutions. The objective is to leverage the right technology and combine it with a product or service to achieve that silver lining.  The explosion of fintech ventures world-wide is validating this truth. This is also the reason that now many of the big accounting firms: EY, KPMG, and Deloitte are now offering their own blockchain products and services, aiming to capture a share of this demand. A Titanic Reality: From 2017 to late 2018 as the popularity of ICOs exploded world wide, many of the ventures behind those ICOs failed to deliver on their promises.  There were numerous reasons for these failed ventures, some could not deliver due to technical reasons, others had conflicts with their teams, and many simply took the money and ran. There are reports that almost 50% of those ICOs did not deliver, they took the public’s money and transferred it to their own wallets.  With no regulation or contracts behind those ventures, the public had nowhere to go to get their money back. In late 2017 the SEC in the US made a clever move, they banned all US citizens and residents from subscribing to any ICO’s knowing well the high risks involved.  With nowhere to go, the public blamed the Ethereum platform, stating that they are to blame for not taking proper action against the failed ventures. Since they created the platform, the Ethereum alliance should have responsibility to check those ventures and their teams.  The main-stream media then caste a dark cloud on the Ethereum platform and its founders.  Consequently, Ethereum’s reputation sank so fast into the ocean like the Titanic. A Bright Light: Fast forward to 2019, ICOs are now termed STOs – Security Token Offering.  The SEC in the US started to impose strict regulations on STOs to ensure the stakeholders are protected.  Regulation authorities in Europe and rest of the world are taking similar actions. The great news is that the regulators understand the potential of this technology, hence decided to harness it and impose the right regulation methods such a KYC – Know your Customer and AML – Anti-Money Laundering; to ensure the investors interest is protected and legal due diligence is applied. Enter the Dragon: Facebook’s management was monitoring closely the progress of Ethereum and its ups and downs.  Facebook knew the positive impact blockchain technology could bring, and the potential for products and services that can be launched. With Facebook’s planet of 2.7 billion users, the possibilities are endless.  But how can they navigate the problems that Ethereum faced.. In June of 2019, Facebook’s announces that it will be launching its own crypto currency, called: Libra.  They issued a whitepaper which outlines the plans of Libra.  Some of the high level facts are: Libra will be built on a private blockchain platform Libra will be pegged to a basket of currencies (USD, JPY, Euro to begin with) Calibra, will be the wallet that allows the user to hold and transfer Libra coins Calibra will be integrated into Facebook’s apps: Messenger, Whatsapp, Instagram and future apps. Libra will have a programming Language called “Move” which will allow third party developers to create apps to transact with Libra. Libra’s main objective is to solve the problem of the “unbanked”, the two billion people worldwide who do not have access to banking services in many of the underdeveloped countries such as India, Venezuela, and some of the African Countries. Libra will make it easier for users to send Libra coins from person to another over WhatsApp with little or almost no cost at all.  The disruptive impact Libra would have on existing remittances companies, exchange houses, and money transfer companies is simply enormous. The announcement of Libra sent shockwaves across the news wires in global finance.  Facebook’s mantra of “Move fast and break things” will now enter the world of global finance with its own currency.  It’s bad enough that Bitcoin disrupted finance in a way that was never expected, now Facebook is launching its own currency to serve its billions of users for almost free of charge. Almost all central banks across the globe issued warnings about the risks Libra would have on financial services. The financial industry has no choice but to assume the worst.  Given Facebook’s history and massive user base, the impact will most likely be negative for global finance. If Facebook succeeds, most likely people will prefer to use Libra for daily transactions than to use the traditional fiat currencies in their countries, if that happens, the demand for fiat currency will simply decline. And the consequences of that are most likely disastrous. Why is Libra a Storm and not a Rainbow? Today in most countries, if you want to send money abroad, you have to go to an exchange house, wait in line, pay a transaction fee of about 12%, and an exchange rate fee. Remittances: If you notice, when you Google the exchange rate of the currency you want to send, it is not the same as the rate you are getting.  This is because the exchange house makes money of the exchange rate. Every exchange house has a different rate, depending on the volume of currency transfers they have. One of the primary sources of income for banks is wire-transfer fees.  For every wire transfer that a bank receives to any of its accounts, they charge a transaction fee. Wire-Transfers: For example, in the UAE the merchant bank is JP Morgan, meaning; for every bank wire transaction that the UAE receives, JP Morgan charges a fee in order to transfer that amount to the destination bank. And when the destination bank sends the amount to the account holder, they charge a fee on the amount to the account holder.  When you consider the hundreds of thousands of wire-transfers that get transacted you can imagine the volume of fees that banks collect. Libra, if launched successfully, has a direct impact on wire-transfer fees for banks.  Currently WhatsApp launched WhatsApp for business.  An app designed for business to use for their own services, either customer services or as an promotional channel. We are all familiar with showroom in car companies, when you visit a car showroom, you will see a sign “Add us on WhatsApp, and get the latest promotions and offers as soon as they are launched.”  Facebook aims to add Libra to WhatsApp for business. Hence, every small business on Instagram, will have a link to their Whatsapp Calibra Wallet, which will say, pay us directly in Libra coin to get your cupcakes delivered to you. Those businesses will no longer need to issue wire-transfers to their suppliers, they will just do it with Libra coins, because it costs zero transaction fees. Uber makes over $100 billion in revenue per year, almost 90% of that is generated through credit card transactions.  Uber pays 3% credit card fees for every transaction that a user conducts using their credit card. E-Commerce: Uber if one of the members of the Libra Association that will be setting policy for Libra when its launched next year.  Why Uber involved, imagine next year when Uber says you can now pay over Whatsapp with your Libra coin.  “Pay with Libra for the next ride, and get 50% discount on your following ride”. Naturally, with Libra, Uber does not have to pay the 3% fees that they normally get charged by the credit card companies.  Other e-commerce entities will follow suit naturally, booking.com, Expedia, Agoda and so on. Mobile telecom operators receive the majority of their revenue from credit card payments.  Imagine the next time you pay your mobile bill, you’ll get a message, “hey you can pay with Libra and get 10GB of free data on your mobile”. Telecom: This would be a powerful incentive because the more people use Libra for payments the less telecom will have to pay 3% of the credit card fees per transaction. , Libra’s success will have a direct impact on financial service companies.  Libra will be the dragon that will disrupt revenues for retail banks, investment banks, credit card issuing companies and remittance companies. The bottom line With Facebook’s mammoth user base of 2.7 billion, which is more than the population of China, they can launch their own digital planet.  And when Libra can be used by those 2.7 billion users with no cost, considering the public’s disinterest in traditional banks and their high fees; Libra will shine. The dragon will disrupt some of those traditional companies as they wonder how did it all change. If you don’t leverage new technology to improve your services someone else will.  To prove this point here are some examples: Blackberry disrupted Nokia, and iPhone disrupted Blackberry. WhatsApp disrupted revenues of Mobile operators. Airbnb disrupted revenues of hotels industry and the list goes on with Snapchat and Uber.  These ventures entered the market with zero experience in the industry. The combined an idea with the latest technology at the time and were able to gain massive success.  Libra will most likely succeed which will give Facebook a new level of corporate control.

Facebook's Libra is a Banker's Nightmare and the Banks Will Fight Back

Blockchain technology represents the area where business ideas for small and medium-sized startups grow faster than anywhere else. Every year brings thousands of highly promising startup projects to the stage, which hail from various industries, including tourism. A record of venture capital has been invested in tech startups in the first quarter of 2018, with several budding travel-oriented projects on the list. This number has grown to 49% if to compare with equal timing last year, according to CB Insights. 22.1 billion As a huge steadily growing market, the capacity of which will reach dollars by the end of 2020. Tourism attracts more and more ICO projects, and the most remarkable of them are destined to face a wide recognition soon. 12.3 trillion As a technology, blockchain has already found implementation in finance, medicine, banking, and healthcare. For now, its core will be empowering brands involved in tourism to grow their competitive advantages: eliminate intermediaries, reduce fraud, personify experience, and improve the quality of services. 1. Direct marketplace for home rentals The Bee Token is the first decentralized network that enables finding temporary housing rental services directly without commissions or inflated prices. Their is based on Ethereum protocols which connect the property owners and tourists who want to rent housing directly. The Bee Token protocol aims to eliminate the third-party commissions typically standing in between rent giver and housing seeker. Furthermore, if both tourists and apartment owners will have BEE tokens, neither of them will have to pay commissions to Beenest platform for transactions. Beenest platform Since this project is based on a decentralized ledger, all operations will be completely transparent and available to platform users. The platform will also include the data considering participants: addresses/accounts and averaging reputation score including evaluation ratings for hosts and guests. Recently, Beenest has prepared the protocols for automatic resolution of disputes as well as reputation rating management system for users. The first version based on Ethereum was launched in January 2018. 2. Tourism without intermediaries is a decentralized network for service distribution inside the spectrum of various tourism services. Built on the basis of Ethereum, the project is aimed to increase the efficiency and convenience of the buyer-seller interaction utilizing smart contracts. Winding Tree Similar to Beenest platform, Winding Tree project aims to eliminate intermediaries, by creating a platform for direct interaction between service providers (hotels, airlines, etc.), and service sellers (travel agencies). Suppliers will be able to post information about their services without commissions, and buyers will be able to make purchases quickly and conveniently. In addition, the participants will be able to track the activities and the effectiveness of their partners inside the ecosystem. In the long run, such levels of transparency should create conditions for perfect competition, while significantly increasing the efficiency and quality of services. Winding Tree is designed as a public initiative project. It does not plan to charge for services, however, it only asks for a small commission to in order to maintain the computing network. 3. Individual experience for every traveler Inside the focus of project are travelers and their personal journey experiences. The creators plan to increase the convenience and simplify travel services delivery. Introducing the global platform where every traveler can receive concierge services tailored to their needs and budget. MeetnGreetMe The fundamental idea behind the project is to create a community that will unite global travelers and locals within a single ecosystem. The trusted relationships between different parties and effective reward system for certain actions will be guaranteed by smart contracts. MeetnGreetMe is already working as a service platform that connects people from more than 200 cities across the world. The theory is that local communities can provide travelers with more diverse and immersive experiences than traditional tours. This way has been proven to be right. In order to elevate the existing project on the brand-new level of quality, and ensure the safety of operations it will be merged with blockchain. The interactions, calculations, and transactions within the ecosystem will be performed using the WelcomeСoin (WEL) utility token, that is supported by the real services delivered on MeetnGreetMe. 4. Universal traveler’s currency plans to offer users a comprehensive solution that increases convenience of travelling and reduces the costs associated with transactions during journeys. The service, however, will be available for any payments, not only travel-related. Travelflex Travelflex application is a social application with an extensive built-in functionality that helps solve typical traveler’s problems. It enables transactions with lower commissions, ensures safe storage of funds, and convenient communication via social networks. The traveler’s currency will be based on DAG algorithm, which according to the creators, will process up to 1400 transactions per second, which is much faster than, for instance, PayPal (193 transactions) or Bitcoin and Ether — (2 and 20 transactions per second) transactions. Currently, Travelflex connects new partners among banks, hotels, and airlines. This is the main priority for the next two years of project development. The reputable names on the list of collaborators, however, can be already found on their website, which features Agoda, Booking.com, British AirWays, Emirates, Hilton, and other renown service providers. 5. Trust between service providers Performance marketing is an effective mechanism that enables tour brands to measure KPI of their ad campaigns, defines the cost of each call, orders, and the final costs of attracting the customer. As a rule, the big data for such analysis they gather with the data platforms. The integration of such with programmatic ad platforms provide an opportunity to serve highly targeted individualized advertising. It was revealed, however, that still has many loopholes for scammers and is plagued with uneven money distribution among parties as each programmatic chain participant defines commissions individually. programmatic advertising Since Blockchain is known for its transparency and fraud-resistance, many startups build their projects on utility tokens for internal transactions. This helped to completely remove intermediaries, which many of those are regularly represented on . TechCrunch Startup Alley The other initiatives include programmatic blockchain-based ad platforms, that have already gained adoption among many publishers and advertisers. Technically, they work like programmatic ad platforms, but the transactions in it are arranged into the public ledger blocks that form the incorruptible chain. This way, supply and demand partners defend themselves from fraud, cut intermediaries such as traffic quality arbitrators, and audit all commissions and operations without having to bother their partners. To sum up The travel industry has been stagnant for many years, that’s why it has accumulated way too many issues related to service monopolization and insufficient transparency. A couple of big industry players oftentimes control access to the best flights, hotels, and tour offerings, but with blockchain-based innovations coming to the scene in 2018, the situation is bound to change. Blockchain technology is transparent and secure by design. This will help to decentralize services and remove budget-consuming intermediaries, thereby naturally reducing the cost of services, and increasing their quality.

5 Most Promising Blockchain-Based Tourism Projects

245 Tools & Resources for Travelers and Digital Nomads

When Following The Numbers Goes Horribly Wrong Booking.com’s practices and user experience is a great example of what not to follow as a start up. Last week I tried booking.com’s apartment booking for the first time. What happened next lead me to writing this piece that was first titled “How Booking.com’s Horrible UI Tricked Me Out Of $70”. Needless to say I wasn’t thrilled with the results. I have used booking.com for hotels/guest houses and share houses multiple times and never had a complaint. I am even a member of their genius program. So I am very used to the way their website works for booking hotels. What you see is what you get. No hidden fees, no mumbo jumbo. At least that’s what I thought. I assumed Apartments were the same deal, but that’s where I was wrong(and not just me, apparently). Search Page: Seemingly Nothing Wrong What booking.com looks like when searching for apartments. You search apartments, and you can arrange them in whichever way you like. (I prefer score and price, or even lowest price first, as I’m broke, but that’s just me). Nothing wrong here, you think. Then click through on the result that you like, and it shows up like a hotel room, again, there seems to be nothing wrong here. Seemingly. Except, there is something wrong here. Something Fishy Something wrong with the price plastered all over it, in , and even shown in the search. fundamentally 4 different places None of them are the actual price. Booking.com considers the cleaning fee apartment owners have for their listings on booking.com an “excluded fee” (if only that meant that it was “excluded” from my credit card bill), but includes VAT and taxes in the prices listed. But okay, at least when you click through to reserve, the real price of the property will be apparent, right? Actually it gets worse. This is what greeted me above the fold of the booking page: Seems pretty straight forward, right? My price summary, with a nice and big price that seems to summarize the total price I have to pay. What I didn’t notice at the time, was the nasty “excluded charge” section that was , with no attempt whatsoever to stand out or inform me that , which you might want to inform potential customers about, lest they get upset and write a complainy blog post like this. hidden below the fold HEY, THERE’S ACTUALLY A SIZABLE EXTRA CHARGE HERE Not to mention, “excluded charge” sounds more like booking.com is giving me a special deal on a price that normally includes this charge, than a nasty surprise you’re going to tag onto the total without having to mention it before checkout. This is the LAST page where you actually book and commit to staying in a place, and they are still showing very unclear pricing, although finally the cleaning fee appears above the fold. Still horrible user experience. I found an apartment normally listed for ~$200 for about $60 and some change and wanted to treat myself before someone else caught the deal first. (It was a same day booking.) Even in my overview of bookings it shows up for the price I first thought that I got. And this is from the email reminder of my booking: The actual price was in fact not, 6,645 yen or anything even close. The cleaning fee of 8,000 yen pushed the price for the night to 14,645, the price of a night at a pretty good Tokyo hotel, with breakfast included. “Nobody Scammed You, You Are Just An Idiot” I sure felt like an idiot right after it happened. And at first I thought I might be the only one to make this kind of mistake. But then I saw in the follow-up mail from the property. this This is the for this property, and they feel the need to include this to reduce their customer support workload. standard follow up email I am guessing this is something they deal with fairly often. Then I did some Googling, and I found articles like covering the exact same problem, but for multiple sites. this one And honestly even if I was an idiot it’s Booking.com’s literal job to make sure things like this don’t happen often enough for a user of their service to employ a hacky fix like the one shown above, idiot end user or not. Look, I am not trying to make a legal case here that they scammed me out of my hard earned money. This is simply meant as a (because you ran off with my hard-earned cash, go figure) reminder to . not-so-friendly fix your damn user experience Why? How Did Their UX Get Here? So that leads us with the question, why on earth is their UX even like this in the first place? The answer is fairly simple, following the numbers. I am willing to bet my lunch that they simply tested different pricing models, and found that this interface “performed better”. Sure, making it seem like an apartment is cheaper than it is might appear That’s the problem with following the numbers. Sometimes Numbers Don’t Show The Whole Picture You made a change to X and your clickthroughs, conversions and sales are up this month? That doesn’t always automatically mean that keeping that change is the right decision. I might have ended up booking a more expensive place than usual through Booking, giving them a heftier commission, but that’s all peanuts compared to the value of me as a Booking.com user for life, (which is what they lost as a result of this whole interaction). A Note On Customer Service I was at work when I noticed my mistake, and didn’t have the opportunity to wait on the line to reach a customer service rep and then try to argue them into doing the right thing, so I sent a brief message about my problem and that I’d like to cancel if possible, and left it at that. The next day, this is all I got: They obviously didn’t even scan the contents to see what my complaint actually was about, this was just an automated reply informing me that I should have called. I don’t like calling customer service (and I know I’m not the only one), and honestly I shouldn’t have to. The whole process of having people answer phone calls seems a lot more complicated than having someone answer a short message from someone with a confirmed booking in less than 24 hours(not that hard to segment, honestly, it’s 2018). Nobody actually has to be available at the actual time the message is sent in, and if one person doesn’t have the expertise to deal with it, the person that does have that expertise doesn’t have to be immediately available either. The reason the emergency calling is in place, is probably because it deters a lot of emergency service requests, and lowers the overall work load (and cost of labor) because obviously, calling has a much higher barrier to entry than just sending a message. Not only are they doing the pricing on their terms, following the numbers that “convert”, they are also doing their customer service on their terms as well, again, likely “following the numbers”. This is what a “numbers centric” user experience feels like, I guess. Every OTA Is The Same, Booking.Com Needs To Do It To Compete This is just . wrong In fact, one of the reasons I prefer to use Booking.com is because they include taxes and VAT in their prices during the search, unlike Agoda, Hostelbookers and other OTAs that I’ve tried in the past. An OTA that does the same thing that Booking does, but actually includes cleaning fees in the price all the way from search, to property page, to check out, is AirBNB. Cleaning Fee/By Number of nights included in search. Sadly, AirBNB doesn’t include the service fee in search, but Airbnb users will be familiar with that, and unlike with Booking.com, everything is actually included in every total you ever see. As you can see, nightly fee plus cleaning fee tallied up in the total. Every other OTA is following the numbers and bordering on fraud as long as it increases short term profits, is not an excuse to do the same. It is the exact reason why Booking or any OTA that wants to win in the long term should be consumer focused, protect their reputation, and be 100% clear with pricing from search, all the way to booking and check out. Be respectable and transparent and you will gain customer loyalty you can take to the bank. (Or if none of the OTAs are willing to do that, this leaves a gap in the market waiting to filled by one of the very hackers reading this post right now. Takeaways For any startups out there that want my business, or any other “idiot” end user’s business, month after month, year after year, for life, there are a few lessons here. Numbers =/= Truth The numbers don’t always show the whole picture of what your customers are actually experiencing and thinking. Exactly how they are interacting with your service. Routinely go through your own sales journey and check that everything makes sense, that you are not cutting corners anywhere. Actually communicate with your customers and listen to them in ways that are completely unscalable (don’t take my word for it, over at masters of scale.) listen to the co-founder of Linkedin, talk with the co-founder of AirBNB about this exact thing Transparency Is Key For Healthy Customer Relationships I am not the first customer that has been burned by this lack of transparency, and I not going to be the last. (Unless this post inspires some change, which I highly highly doubt.) Needless to say I am not thrilled with Booking.com, and I have begun using alternatives, and fishing around for something better. Actual Customers First It seems to me like Booking.com is caught up in their growth, trying to sell as many Hotels, and now apartment/condo/rental owners on their service as possible. To do that, obviously better numbers, more bookings through their service, the easier the sell. But that shouldn’t distract them from the end user. At the end of the day, since Booking.com is a commission based model, not a subscription based, they are not getting paid by the hotels, they are getting paid by people like me, (through taking a cut from the hotel I’m staying at). Hotels and apartment owners are invaluable business partners that Booking.com can’t exist without, but no business survives for long after it loses sight of it’s customers.

What Booking.Com Can Teach Startups NOT To Do With Their UX (And How I Spent 130$ Instead of $60)

is a thing. I’ve experienced it first hand! Before Agoda, I would’ve told myself that there’s no such thing. But after Agoda — well now I know there is too much of a . Dashboard fatigue real good thing At Agoda, we liked to . We were by . But how much is too much? In this post, I’ll talk about my experiences at Agoda to do with Dashboards and data. Say, for example, a dashboard monitoring sign ups — your KPI (Key performance indicator) — do you look at it every day? When does it stop becoming relevant and start becoming something you don’t care about? What about if I added four more dashboards about other monitoring KPIs? Would they all still be relevant? Would you be looking at them every day? experiment driven data Part I — New and Shiny When I first joined the Agoda Homes team, we were a and were building it from scratch. We because our was to . Just a side note: if you’ve ever signed up with Agoda Homes to list your Home (like Airbnb), that was built by my team. And then we finished. But now we needed to find a way to display how many sign-ups we were getting a day. We should build a dashboard. Most other teams have them! So, we used a platform called and made our dashboard to show . new product didn’t have dashboards KPI build the onboarding process Grafana sign-ups over time In the first few weeks — we were all very and . How many sign-ups did we have yesterday? How many today? Wow, it’s ! Our product is . Awesome! This dashboard was displayed on TV hanging on a wall. Agoda has several TVs around each team so you can always glance at your dashboard to see how your product is performing. We were, of course, very proud. excited interested increasing working Part II — Add Add Add It wasn’t just enough to know how many signs ups we were doing. As we’re a developer team, we also needed to understand our product is performing regarding . What are working and what is working ? What is the ? When do you put the — the point at which your application is first usable? Where do users ? How many users ? How many users ? how speed APIs fast slow First Meaningful Paint critical mark drop off in the funnel add photos edit their properties So you can already see, we were adding a lot of dashboards. These weren’t all added at once, but every time we added a new feature, we usually thought about how we can add or improve our dashboards. There was a lot we were monitoring. And it eventually got too much. Having your TVs flick through five different monitoring pages makes you switch off and stop watching. What Happened Next This is something that happen — but did. We didn’t put alerts on our dashboards because we were would be it. The Product Owner thought the development team was monitoring it. The development team thought that person X and QA were monitoring it. Person X believed that the rest of the team was monitoring. Etc. Etc. There is no one to blame but ourselves as a collective. shouldn’t so sure someone monitoring What happened was that one day our sign ups just dropped. No one noticed. No one reacted. It wasn’t for another couple of days until finally, someone saw the odd trend in our dashboard. We had dashboard fatigue. We were no longer paying attention to all the data we were collecting. It was overwhelming. We fixed the bug — but probably lost a couple of customers in return. Advice for Future Me Concentrate on having one focused dashboard that’s as simple as possible. Colours representing states makes your life easier and means that the dashboard can be understood at a glance. Avoid bar graphs and having dashboards too detailed (unless they are for following up on a problem). Add alerts for when something goes seriously wrong. Originally published at www.alexaitken.nz on August 6, 2018.

Dashboard Fatigue

I don’t know about you, but lately, I’ve been hearing quite a lot about SREs (or non-acronymized ). Now, there are probably a dozen different meanings for this role and it varies from company to company. I’m going to talk about what we had in the Agoda Homes team and the on and the on the actual of our platform. Basically, for my definition, an is an engineer within the team task with the of the product and the and the of . Site Reliability Engineers impact morale impact reliability SRE monitoring reliability investigating cause determining priority bugs The Job No Engineer Wanted Initially, we created the role within our product because we were almost at 100% features and we had traffic. So, we needed someone (or a team) to how our was performing and determine which bugs are to the of the project and what the actual of the bugs are. I can tell you now, that if you create this role out of thin air — your engineers will probably hate you. I’m being (of course), but in the end, engineer wanted to take on the role. It was rotated every sprint (we figured a week was too short and a month was probably too long). monitor production environment critical success impact dramatic no First a Team As I kind-of alluded to above, we first started out assigning this SRE role to a . We’d the number of stories the team would need to produce and let them have free reign on what bugs to tackle/determine impact. Now, as I said — the point of the SRE is not to solve the bugs — but . Can you already guess where I’m heading? Rather than investigating and — the team would usually investigate and . That sounds nice — until the team is spending a significant amount of time on bugs that probably aren’t a high priority when we have features that need to be completed. team reduce investigate and determine priority determining priority solve In the end, though, the SRE role led to morale (within the team chasing bugs), and very high . We really change the of our product and we ended up our . With bugs being reported all the time, the team were constantly dropping product work and context switching within a sprint. The cost of this constant ramp-up (think — where did I get with the story) was too great. assigned to a team decreased unproductivity didn’t reliability affecting velocity Then — a Single Engineer Right, so the team as an SRE role didn’t work. We also tried having a from the product every sprint as SRE. This was but still . Basically, the one poor engineer ended up being named the bug buster. Or bug boy. Or any play on the word bug you could imagine. Now, what happened is that this would need from the previous bug boy. That’s spent just getting to know what the bugs are in the system. Remember, this software engineer was meant to solve the bugs, but to figure out where they were happening and how big of a priority it should be. That’s hard. single engineer better not good software single engineer one to three days handover a lot of time not We had a . We didn’t ask for volunteers, it was . Also great for . But it worked. People got on with their jobs. But the bug boy was left isolated and alone. They were (even though they came to stand-ups and meetings). They had from the rest of the engineers. What we found was that this role became very inefficient. There was so much time spent ramping up each sprint and knowledge transfer — that bugs were left on our radar for weeks at a time because they were not reproducible (which should mean low priority, right?). rotating roster mandatory not culture no longer part of the team different priorities We also found that engineers who were the SRE didn’t necessarily come back with knowledge of the different parts of the system (as you might expect). What ended up happening is that a high priority bug would come through from the PO (Product Owner) and the QAs (Quality Assurance/Testers) and from customer feedback; the SRE would have to drop the current bug she/he is working on and figure out the new bug. So — their knowledge was reduced to the high profile bug. For the rest of the engineers, there were no more distractions. This was what we wanted, right? No POs nagging us and product work pushing ahead full steam. But having a member away from your sprint meant that the teams became disconnected. Knowledge of bugs was passed from SRE to SRE rather than shared among the team. It was like a “right of passage” to be an SRE. No one looked forward to the role. What We Do Now We no longer have SREs within the Agoda Homes team. The toll the role took on the people and the effectiveness of the teams was too great. We still get high priority bugs. We still investigate bugs. But it’s more like a Product task now. The PO chats with the QAs. QAs help determines how much of an impact the bug has on the product. The PO weighs up product and bug work and determines what will bring the most business value. It’s not perfect, but as engineers, we work together as a team again. Originally published at www.alexaitken.nz on July 23, 2018.

SRE role in team

I don’t know about you — but when you talk about stocks, or markets, or funds — the general rule of thumb is: Past performance is not an indicator of future outcomes. Have you noticed that is software engineering, we tend to this advice? We tend to use our to our and our . We like to look at to determine what we can achieve within the . Why do we ignore this commonly accepted rule of thumb from finance? Are humans and our efforts really more predictable than a market? I don’t think so — but I’ll dig deeper. ignore current velocity calculate next velocity future velocities past performance next sprint/quarter/year Recording Velocity One of the things you’ll find most “ ” teams doing is recording . If it’s not the team, it’ll be the . It’s their job to give some security to a business and be able to say what they think they can while . Velocity is normally (from experience) regarded as the number of your team can get “ ” in a sprint. Basically, you record this over time to get to a point where you can predict what the deal will be able to achieve next sprint (and beyond). agile velocity PO (Product Owner) achieve minimizing risk story points done P.S. I put done in quotes because every team’s definition of done is different. Your team needs to figure this out for yourself. Some previous definition of done’s I’ve had are: Merged to master. QA tested. Deployed to live. Development finished. Story points? Story points are of the required for a story. They should be associated with a . Obviously, there are to every rule. When you’re first estimating, you’ll probably end up using . But it should be a direct conversion. Generally, I’ve used T-Shirt size estimates and sometimes they have numbers associated with those sizes. You add up all your story points done and that will give you the velocity for that week. very rough estimates effort never time exceptions days not one-to-one XS, S, M, L (after large, the stories should be broken up), XL, XXL, XXXL etc. 1, 2, 3, 5, 7, 13, etc. Is Velocity Meaningful? Normally, when a member joins a team (or leaves), it’ll probably take around for velocity to . Why’s that? Because it takes a time for a team to build and to measure their performance accurately for their products. So, while you can record velocity, it probably until your team builds the trust. That said, it is good to keep at it during this first six months to build up the trust in the numbers. But can you ever trust the numbers completely? They’re just rough guides remember. Some stories might have hidden complexity. Over time, your team will figure this out and your estimates will improve. 6 months stabilize long trust won’t mean anything Using Velocity — what does it mean? You can’t compare two teams’ velocities. It just won’t work. One team may and one team may . will have for the teams. So why would you even use them? In my team at Agoda, rather than the PO (Product Owner) say what will be completed in a quarter to management, we work the PO to determine our past quarter’s velocity and can use that to give an of what we’ll get done next quarter. This means that you have ample stories in the backlog estimated. underestimate overestimate Story points different meanings with approximation Now, this does not mean that you’ll work day and night to complete what you committed to. No. This means that you can manage expectations of management and the team. PO’s are always coming up with ideas and changing plans. Guess what? You can (based on your estimates) stories out of your commitments if your PO changes plans all the time. You can say “if you add this story — it will probably remove the bottom two from the quarterly goals. Are you okay with that?”. The PO will most likely answer yes and you aren’t stuck with unmanageable goals. kick To Sum it All Up is a funny metric that be across an organisation. You can to use velocity to future commitments and/or sprints, but that doesn’t mean that it’ll be 100% accurate. Plans change all the time. People will come and go from your teams. However, it can be useful to predict what features you might want to include and how to them. You should use story points and time to base your estimates. Story points should not be related to time, but to effort. Lastly, figure out what your “done” is. Velocity cannot consistent try predict roughly prioritise not Originally published at www.alexaitken.nz on July 9, 2018.

Past Velocity and Prediction

At my current company (Agoda), we don’t have a strategy for picking what packages that we use (that I know of). Mostly, you have to prove that installing this package is useful and that it wouldn’t make sense doing it ourselves. We don’t want packages that will increase our bundle size (for ) as that would increase the load on customers and that’s not a good thing. To prevent that, we have a in pull requests. So, how do you decide which packages to use? javascript bundle size checker Do you need it? Sometimes people include packages that they could’ve written themselves in two lines. What I’m really trying to say is that you need to think if this package is really necessary. Do they have complex logic (that’s tested) that would add a lot of time to your development? Have you looked into the bundle size and what it’ll add to your bundle? Do you need all the functionality that the package offers? Or are you only going to be using such a small part of it? These are things you need to consider before considering it. How active is the community? Are you downloading the most active package or one that the author hasn’t committed to in a few years? These types of things should also have an effect on your decision. I always look at the because you need to know that if there’s a bug — will you be able to ask for a fix or fix it yourself? Will they check your pull request? For things like which framework you’ll use (i.e. React, Angular etc), I check how many people are talking about it. How many plugins or extensions are there? Will they have everything you need? community Is it right for the project? I know you want to use the newest and shiniest technologies. You want to use React, Vue, or maybe even Angular. But you’re only building a simple page with a scroll animation. You probably don’t need these web frameworks. You need to ask yourself, what does this project really require? Am I building a SPA? What package best fits? Should I use multiple smaller packages or one that has everything? You need to look at what’s right for the project and not what’s the coolest. What have I learnt? I hope you’ve learnt something from this. The main thing is that you need to think before including packages. Not every package will be needed. Not every cool framework should be used. Look at how active the community is. Let me know if/what is your decision tree for choosing new packages. I’d love to hear and improve. Originally published at www.alexaitken.nz on April 2, 2018.

Stories, News & Mentions about AGODA

Agoda’s Stories on HackerNoon

Agoda's News & Mentions