Today October 25th, exactly 2 months away from Christmas, soon you will be in holidays and yet you have not decided where to go? If this description is similar to you, then I might have found a new website that could motivate you to pick up your credit card and book your next winter trip. Nowadays, numerous websites have been created in order to help people to choose a destination for holidays, book an accomodation and rent cars. However, most people will visit the well-known popular website rather than the less famous one. SO, today I decided to be curious and that I should have a look on a different website, to see if what the website had to offer would be as good as its competitors. That is when I found- Rome2Rio.com. I am now going to do a quick analysis of the website based on the informations provided by the article “The online consumer’s hierarchy of needs” written by three authors J. Valacich, D.V. Parboteeah and J. Wells.
Nowadays, we can find any type of websites for any kind of purposes. Rome2Rio is a multimodel website for anybody who is interested in travelling for a short or long journey planning. As mentionned in the article, “consumers visit sites not only to search for products and services, but also to have rich, entertaining experiences”. According to the article, websites can be put into three different categories: the utilitarian website, the hedonic website and the hybrid website. The utilitarian website is meant to help people who may have a problem and are looking for a solution or an answer, people who have a specific necessity would consult this website. The hedonic website is linked to entertainment and people who are looking for fun and leisure, like music. Finally both utilitarian and hedonic websites create the hybrid one, which is a part of both websites. I would consider Rome2Rio as an hybrid website, as it is meant for people who have a sort of necessity to find a flight/train/bus ticket, an accomodation and/or who desire to book any extra services such as renting a car. But the website also presents some hedonic features, based on travelling around the world and visiting the most famous destinations, Rome2Rio is linked to entertainment by offering new dream destinations possibilities to its customers.
The hybrid websites makes all the difference, meanwhile giving the information that the consumer required, it provides him additional details that may satisfy him even more. For example, you are looking for a weekend in Paris, you do not know all the airlines or trains routes going from your location, let’s supposed it is Brighton to Paris, then you would probably go on the Rome2Rio website and see all the possibilities. Furthermore, the website may have found for you the perfect transport offer, you still have to think of an accomodation. Well, it already did the research for you, and offers you some good deals for any available hotel rooms in central Paris. And just like that, you can book your trip to Paris for a couple of days at the best deal!!
Rome2Rio is facing a few competitors that have built a stonger worldwide reputation and therefore it is harder to compete with them. Even though you are a TripAdvisor or Expedia fan customer, Rome2Rio is well designed, is offering various choices for its consumers so it is definitely worth visiting it.