Research Report on Transaction Broker - AsiaRooms.com

Introduction of Report...

As part of the UOL SG's guidelines, we are expected to learn and publish at least one web page. We are required by our lecturer, Mr Jack Koh to produce a mini research report on any of the transaction brokers all around the world.

What is a transaction broker? A transaction broker assists buyers, sellers, or both during the transaction without representing the interests of either party. Furthermore, they sell others products rather than their own product only. Transaction brokers receive commissions for every transaction that had been successfully made in order to sustain their business.

What is the purpose of doing this mini report? By doing this mini report, students will learn more about information system, and also make use of it, then apply it in the real world. Besides, it is a useful experience which strengthen our basic knowledge on information system. (example, knowing how to use website to publish our idea and connect it to the outside world - it is a flow of spaces) This is a phenomenal and enjoyable report that help us in our future life.

About AsiaRooms.com...

AsiaRooms.com has been operating online since 1994 with Head Office based in Manchester, UK. Beside online booking, they also accept hotel reservation via telephone.

AsiaRooms.com is a member of the TUI Travel PLC Group of Companies, the leading international leisure travel group. The TUI Travel Group is headquartered in the UK and is publicly listed on the London Stock Exchange. It operates in approximately 180 countries, serving more than 30 million customers in over 20 source markets, and employs approximately 48,000 people worldwide. Their sister company LateRooms.com is a leading European accommodation specialist website with over 24,500 properties across the UK and Europe.

Want to know more about AsiaRooms.com? Click here!

Things they do, mission & vision...

At AsiaRooms.com they specialise in hotels.

They have thousands of hotels listed on their website located all over Asia and beyond. Key destinations include Thailand, India, Australia, Indonesia, Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, New Zealand, China, United Arab Emirates, Singapore, Cambodia and Hong Kong. They also have great deals and availability across the UK and Europe offering you the best possible rates and guaranteed secure reservations.

All hotels listed on the site update their own prices and availability.

AsiaRooms.com also provide you with a comprehensive and up to date travel guide for your convenience.

By constantly reviewing the hotels they offer, AsiaRooms.com ensure that their clients receive the quality they expect at the very best value for money. Their aim is to make your travel arrangements easy at an attractive price.

Features
Business Model

In order to smoothen their operation, there is a need for AsiaRooms.com to have:-

• Business to Business Model (B2B)
  

They involve this model with their business partners through negotiating contracts. Besides, AsiaRooms.com also act as a Transaction Broker who receive commissions from their existing business partners for every successful payment made in order to maintain their operation. These are some of their existing main business partners:-

• Business to Customer Model (B2C)

They involve this model with their prospective customers, existing customer, and even non-prospective customer who can also obtain various kind of travel information and travel guide through AsiaRooms.com services.

Modes of Payment/Reservation

AsiaRooms.com receives only certain credit cards or debit cards to secure your reservation. These cards included Visa/Delta, Mastercards, Diners Club, and Visa Electron.

However, the credit card used at the time of making your reservation is only used to secure your booking. travelers can pay using the same, a different card or by cash at the hotel.

If you wish payment to be taken from the card holders card, you'll need to contact the hotel directly to authorise payment to be taken unless a full prepayment offer has been booked.

Design Scheme & Graphics

AsiaRooms.com is a phenomenal hotel search engine worldwide. They use easy & simple language to present their wide range of hotel partners around the world. Despite, it is a English-based website which is not suitable for those who know nothing of English language. This makes them loss of a great number of potential customers.

Besides, they are well done in classify more than hundreds of countries into 7 parts of region. Then, each region will clearly demonstrate the country within the region that might meet the taste of your trip. It make things simple and not so complicated. This make their customers more easier to find their ideal vacation hotel and it is look more attractive with more graphics presented.

AsiaRooms.com provides many classical image gallery from different hotels. This not only draw customers attention, and also shows the quality that these hotels provided. Besides, there are also video gallery for some of their partners hotel. This is a pretty good tactic of advertisement of their business partners. Their layout's contrast is also fairly good as their presentation is clearly seen and simple.

Others

i)Reviews

AsiaRooms provides hotel reviews that written by travellers all around the world.

Are you hesitant to book this hotel? Do you need to know what people think about this hotel? Don't look further, as AsiaRooms provides real customer's opinion about this hotel, written only by their customers. As they would like you have the best stay ever, they show you all the good and bad hotel reviews travelers write.

Only AsiaRooms customers can share their experience. To write a review, you must provide:

- Your AsiaRooms booking number
- Your email address

By this way, are sure that we will provide real reviews from people who experienced AsiaRooms.com

AsiaRooms Ratings
	: The Best Stay Ever !
	: I would not hesitate to recommend this hotel to my friends
	: Nice Stay
	: It was OK
	: A bit disappointed
	: Will never ever stay there again

ii)Community

AsiaRooms Community is a forum which allows you to share your travel and vacation experiences. AsiaRooms Community lets you pass on your personal tips to fellow travellers and gives you access to tips and information from likeminded travellers. also hope that this forum will be a way that travellers with common interests can, if they wish to, get in contact with each other and share travel experiences together.

If you are asking yourself where are the best places to visit and the best hotels to stay in? Asking how to organise travel or how to find companions to travel with? Asking how to find somewhere to visit or something to experience that is not in a guide book? Then please look no further than the AsiaRooms Community forum and click on either Asia, Europe, Middle East, Africa, America or Oceania links to find what you are looking for.

iii)Travel Guide

This is a useful tool that tell you most of the things that you would like to know about a country. It shows you overviews of countries, culture of the country, popular destinations & sightseeing, festivals & events, how to get in, useful information and more. This is a must read guide if you want to know more of the country especially this is your first trip to the country.

iv)Travel Insurance

AsiaRooms also offers travel insurance that protect you along your journey. This Travel Insurance is sold to you by Mondial Assistance a member of the Allianz Group, one of the largest insurance companies in the world. 24 Protect includes substantial medical, cancellation, luggage and repatriation cover and is destined for people traveling domestically or internationally (medical expenses coverage is limited to accident only for domestic trips and other limitations apply to the domestic cover, please refer to the Policy Wording)

Comparable Service Provider

Booking

Hotelclub

Agoda

Hotels2stay

Quickbooker

Zuji


Strengths & Weaknesses

Strengths

After researching asiarooms.com, I found out some good features of this website as follows:

1. Wide range of area all over the world: it covers almost all the cities and nice destinations all over the world.

2. Sufficient information: for hotel, they provide different room rate, hotel facilities, images, map, guest reviews and even video gallery if it is available. It gives researcher a full picture of the hotel. Additional, they also provide more information about the destinations such as attractions, activities, shopping, nightlife, culture and customs. In the meanwhile, the website created a forum to allow people to contribute messages posted in the forum. You can get a lot of information about the place you are going to visit.

3. Currency exchange: website provides an option of different type of currency, let researchers to see the rate in that currency they choose.

4. Review booking and cancelling booking is easy. Once you book your hotel, you will get a reference number. By using the reference number you can check your booking or cancel it. (but you also have to know there is conditions in cancelling your booking.)

Weaknesses

The weakness of asiaroom.com it is also very obvious.

1. Price differences: people most time is seeking a good deal with a good hotel. Compared with other this kind of transaction broker, Asiarooms provide higher price on hotel rooms. Therefore, it will lose customers because of the rate.

2. Number of hotels they can provide is less than other brokers. I realized that the hotels provided by difference transaction brokers vary with the destination. But in some hot destination we still can see the difference. Asiarooms can provide 20-30 hotels, but other transaction brokers such as Zuji and hotels.com can provide hundreds hotels and catalogue them very clearly.

Conclusion

In conclusion, transaction brokers help in matching the needs of both parties (i.e the sellers and the buyers). They help in reducing the transaction cost when they pooling the bookings. However, it might turn up incurred more cost as the hotel will try to raise the price for these brokers' commission and hence increase the operational cost. However, with information system, human are now having more access to information. Therefore, there will be more efficient in gathering information to help them work things out better. As research topic, transaction brokers help improve the efficiency in a competitive market. Consumers will be able to compare and choose the best offer that satisfy them. However, consumers should be wise and careful in making decision (as their private information and financial details might exposed to risk) so they will not get cheated easily by bogus or fraud.