Websites for ideas and for customer

[Val]

Please post your findings here! Mine will follow shortly.

Firstly, this is a good website to find a lot of hotel sites in Scotland:

http://www.scotland-hotels.com/hotels.php

I have noticed a lot of hotels seem to have an availability checker option. I think this could be a good thing for us to implement, too.

[Val]

I like this site:
http://www.oldpines.co.uk/
Good Points: Its simple looking, but sorta elegant. The booking system is easy to find and use. The side bar makes navigation easy.
Bad Points: It doesnt grab you, really. But it does the job.

Another one which is quite good:
http://www.burnhousemanor.co.uk/
Good points: Looks profressional, has promotions well displayed, booking online is asy to find.
Bad Points: Seems a bit cramped in places.

http://www.allisonhousehotel.com/
Good points: I like the drop downs on this, and the way the availability checker is prominent.
Bad Points: I think it looks a bit plain, the font is a bit small. Nothing special.

This looks professional:
http://www.heathmounthotel.com/index.htm
But there doesnt seem to be an online booking facility. What a waste! =)
Good Points: Looks nice, easy navigation.
Bad Points: Again the information is displayed quite small and the information is not very clear.

This looks alright:
http://www.lovatarms.com/
Similar to the allison one.
Good points: Well laid out, easy to navigate.
Bad Points: not very good use of the space - huge sprawl of wasted space down the bottom.

This is what I would call a bad website:
http://www.burlingtonarran.co.uk/
Its messy, its garish its just awful. The information is a mess. Bleh!

[Emma-Jane]

You are right - the last website is just cheap and tacky, definately not the look we will be aiming for!!

An availability checker seems like a good idea, maybe we wont mention that to Peter though until we have actually done it!!

I'll have a look to see if I can find any more...

[Emma-Jane]

http://www.dornochcastlehotel.com/

I like this website - it's well laid out, easy to navigate round and has just the right amount of information!!

[Val]

Thats an excellent website Emma Jane. Maybe we could show it to him and see what he thinks?

[Emma-Jane]

Yeah, I will write down the link and bring it with me today, I'll also email it to him if he is likely to forget.

Nice to see we have all been busy eh....

[Elliot<SephSora>]

From the meeting with Richard we drafted up the following set of risks:

Staff Illness
Arguments with customer over requirements
Customer is not happy with delivered work
Power cuts
The hotel encounters a financial crisis and cannot complete the project
The company encounters financial difficulty
System parts do not communicate properly
Server arrives late
Computer system breakdown
Delivery of system is late
Internet communication problem
Requirement changes
Deadline not met
System is hacked into
Project data is lost during development

That's all we have, I'm posting them here so that other people can add in any others they can think of, I'm sure we've missed a few obvious ones! After tomorrow afternoon I'll take all of the risks we have and make the Risk Analysis table. I also want to ask Peter a couple of questions about the marketing of the hotel for the costs and some of the risks that may face the hotel before during and after development.

[Elliot<SephSora>]

Also i found this site:

http://www.starwoodhotels.com/sheraton/index.html

I remembered staying in on when i was little so i had a look and as it happened this site is pretty good. Probably a bit to extensive for us to emulate but there are a lot of good points to it, maybe a couple to flaws such as the rather small plain font but overall it looks dynamic and professional

Finally:

http://www.roxburghe.net/

This wasn't the hotel that i was looking for but i bumped into this one as well :s. This one looks professional but again the writing is a little small and it lacks dynamism.

[Emma-Jane]

I just had an idea for the website...

Can we add in a page for guests comments?

So people can leave what they thought of the hotel and give it a rating sort of thing?

BRAINDUMP over

EJ

[Elliot<SephSora>]

Yer that's a good thought actually, could put it in with some of the hotel info and stuff

Good Braindumping :-)!

Is there a Tuesday meeting this week or are we just meeting on thursday?

See y'all Soon

SS

[Val]

Regarding comments...

we should prolly add a "Comment" entity to the ER diagram if we dont have one. Since people can leave more than one comment in different periods of time.

Just a thought!

[Emma-Jane]

We have discovered according to the initial spec sheet for the requirements that online deposits and payments arent necessary!!

They are confirmed by letter later, so all we need is a function to add a deposit to a booking. Is this in the GUI? If not we will need to add it in....