LQ Management L.L.C. Is one of the largest operators of limited-service hotels in the United States. This is now a company that operates across the United States, Canada and Mexico with more than 700 franchise hotels. I had the opportunity to work for La Quinta Inns & Suites, Atlanta, Paces Ferry in the United States in the year 2000 as a part-time employee for about less than six months. The La Quinta Inns & Suites intended guests are for short stay over’s, low budget guests and relatively have meeting spaces for groups for up to 70.
The following are some of the strengths of the La Quinta Inns & Suites main website.
- Usability, you can either chose to navigate the website in English or Spanish, by clicking on the top right corner of the page Vea en Español and no need for translation for their Spanish guests.
- As a guest, you can make your reservation on line without calling a hotel reservationist and get to know the room rate, view the room details and even reserve a particular room.
The following are some of the limitations of the La Quinta Inns & Suites website.
- Some of the limitations of the website is the layout on the main page because the user cannot zoom, therefore making it difficult for people with poor eye sight who can’t zoom by Ctrl+Sroll wheel on the mouse .
- The main page does not have anything that will capture a first time guest looking for a hotel, like nice slides and pictures of the main selling points of the hotel, unlike hotels like the Sheraton Hotels and Marriott Hotels. Manage to focus users’ attention As web-sites provide both static and dynamic content, some aspects of the user interface attract attention more than others do. Obviously, images are more eye-catching than the text.
Two tasks attempted as a guest.
- Making a reservation as a guest on the website is easy to navigate because it takes you to your intended page and step one of the reservation even gives you a quick nearby attractions, businesses and entertainments on the bottom of the page. Step two of the page is where a customer selects a room choice if available, view room details and third step is where a guest confirms their room choice with credit card details. I tried making a reservation following the above steps and it was quite simple and easy with just three steps.
- Another task I carried out on the main page is that, I entered a city name on the search option on the left side of the page. For example, I searched by city and typed Atlanta and had a few hotels coming up which is really good for a first time guest.
Overall for the La Quinta Inn website, it could improve more on the layout, the page colour and maybe some nice pictures.
References
http://psd.tutsplus.com/designing-tutorials/9-essential-principles-for-good-web-design/
http://www.slideshare.net/mcongdon/lecture-1-web-design-usability-presentation
http://www.marriott.co.uk/default.mi
http://www.starwoodhotels.com/sheraton/index.html
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Tijan Demba