Why can’t it be as easy to buy a holiday online as it is to buy a new printer or a shirt? Why do you always have to start by typing in where you’re going and when and then wade through a lot of options you’re not interested in or can’t afford?
  It’s a question airlines, tour operators, hotel chains and car rental firms need to start asking themselves. Many of them assume that, because they’ve got a website up and running, they’re making life easy for potential customers. Dangerous assumption.
  According to a survey of more than 60,000 internet users in the United States, reported in today’s New York Times, 9 per cent fewer people booked travel online this year than in 2005.
  It seems that, while practised users of the web are spending ever more on online travel, other people are finding the whole business just too much trouble and giving up.
  Why? Because the travel trade is still using websites in much the same way it did a decade ago – a way that suits the trade rather than the customer.
  The survey was conducted by the technology consulting firm Forrester Research, which began tracking internet spending a decade ago and says travel is the first sector to have recorded a drop in shoppers in that time.
  Henry Harteveldt, Forrester’s online travel analyst, explains where travel websites  are getting it wrong:
  “Nowhere can you say, ‘I have this amount of money to spend on a trip. These are my interests. This is where I live. Show me my options.’ Whereas online retailers have done a much better job of improving the shopping experience in recent years, the travel industry has been standing still.”