RESEARCH ON AGODA

Agoda has been established for nearly 10 years. It used the brick and mortar business model where its office is located at Bangkok, Thailand. With the invaluable experiences and resources of an established organization, Agoda is able to combine local knowledge and connections with world class technology to provide the best hotel deals on the web. Agoda is focused on securing and providing the lowest available hotel prices in every destination worldwide. Agoda's reach in the Asia-Pacific region is unmatched, with instant availability at more than 9,000 hotels. Agoda is part of Priceline.com. Hence allowing them to have global connectionsl and able to offer the lowest prices at more than 90,000 hotels worldwide.

Their website is available in 21 different languages, facilitating the use for non-english users. With the Agoda Rewards program, members can save even further. It allows customers to earn points automatically, beginning with their first reservation. These points can be used across the site for thousands of hotels, freeing customers from brand-specific loyalty programs and blackout dates.

What makes Agoda unique is the pairing of technology and the human touch. They negotiate personally and directly with hotels to ensure the best possible value, and then use the latest technology to deliver these bargains to their customers. At hand, the 24/7 multi-lingual customer service provides assistance quickly at hand when it really counts. Agoda was awarded Best Accommodation website in Asia for 2008 at the inaugural TravelMole Web Awards for Asia.






Recognition:
Agoda was awarded Best Accommodation website in Asia for 2008 at the inaugural TravelMole Web Awards for Asia. Thousands of travel partners and websites have chosen Agoda to provide hotel bookings for their customers because we are always accountable, reachable and connected

Customer Centric:
Driven to offer the lowest prices. Whenever a customer has reserved a room with Agoda and then show the same room can be booked at lower price for the same date. They will either match it or beat it. In addition, it has a 24 hour custormer service support for any customers who are in need!

Well-established:
It has been established for 10 years. Hence Agoda has a very wide business relations, leveraging them to always giving the best deals. Furthermore, its website is readable in 21 languages. Making the site very user friendly and capturing a larger market share.

Rewards Program:
Agoda is looking to build a long term relationship with its customers. Hence, rewards program is being introduced to ensure customers keep patronizing its services. Customers will receive points for their transaction and these points can be used to offset their future transactions. Agoda knows that not only getting customers is important, retaining them is equally important as well.

Reviews:
Agoda has incorporated hotel reviews in their website written by Agoda customers themselves. Therefore, providing very good insights on Agoda’s and hotel’s services and hospitality.

Personalized Account:
You can be a member and have your personalized account. Under your account, you can view your transaction history, submit hotel review, refer a friend to the site, have your own profile.





Agoda’s purpose is securing and providing the lowest available hotel prices in every destination worldwide





Agoda acts as an intermediary between the hotel and the customers. It facilitate the “double coincidence of wants”, it connects both parties with a similar want in mind and receives commission out of the transaction.





Agoda implemented a Transaction Cost Design Model. Generally, every transaction done by Agoda is automated hence it eliminates the cost of labour that arises in the process of the transaction. For example, the sales person booking the rooms for the customer. In other words, Agoda can provide cheaper bookings for customer as now costs are lower.

On the other hand, customers do not have to go through the pain staking process of calling individual hotels to get the cheapest deals. Agoda has almost all the hotels listed in its website. In that sense, customers will save time and most importantly money and resources scouting hotel one by one.





Although Agoda has detailed information and relevant pictures to give consumer a close to perfect pictures of the hotel, it does still have a few weaknesses compare to some online transaction broker website. One of the features that they are lacking is the comparability functions, where this allow consumer to pick two hotels to do a direct comparison on them in a single page. This feature will help consumer to smoothen their decision making process.
Their information in the website may not be very accurate as there may be recent changes in the area of the hotels and they are not informed about it. For example, the train services may have being terminated in the area, and the consumer will only find out when they reach their hotel.

Next weakness is that Agoda have their office and call centre in Bangkok. The people they employ for the receipt of calls may be mostly Thai employee. There may be a language barrier between the call centre and the customers. This may lead to wrong information transmission and create many misunderstanding between both parties.





Agoda office is located in Bangkok only, they lack of the direct physical information of the places stated in their website. For example, when a consumer is asking for the bus services that brings them to the hotel from a specific location, they may not have the exact information for them, they may have to direct them to the hotel staff for these types of enquires. These cause inconvenience for the consumers

The lack of immediate confirmation for rooms is also another pitfall for Agoda. As a transaction broker, they cannot confirm with their customer immediately after booking through them. This will bring about great inconvenience if the customers are doing a last minute booking, they may end up with no accommodation when they reach this travel destination, and this is one of the greatest fears a customer will have.

As a transaction broker, they earn their profit from the commission for each transaction; they may categorize those hotels that give them the highest commission for each transaction first before the others. This may cause a certain degree of unfairness for the customers’ perspective.





Agoda is protected by ‘Verisign’ which is a quite reputable website security company. This help to assist in the security and privacy measures, which is extremely important for a transaction broker website.