tdemba

La Quinta Inns & Suites Website Evaluation

Tijan Demba — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 16:12:03 +0000

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://www.lq.com/lq/

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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TJ’s Micro Blogging

Tijan Demba — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 10:36:29 +0000

Micro-blogging, services enables its users to send and read messages known as tweets. Tweets are text based posts of up to 140 characters displayed on the author’s profile page and delivered to the author’s subscribers. Micro blogging tools like Twitter, Jaiku and Tumblr can help a learner keep in touch with his/her network, in terms of finding jobs and global awareness. Also with Jaiku,a tutor can get in touch with his/her students or create channels for different groups of students so the right learners get the right message.

One of the draw back on some of these sites especially twitter, it should simply have a number showing how many users are online,so that you exhibitionists know how many people are watching. Another drawback is that messages may appear in any language; it would be nice if you could limit them to tongues you understand. Micro blogging is here to say.

Reference:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microblogging

http://mashable.com/2009/03/13/twitter-jobs/

http://twitter.com/GlobalAwareCons

http://davefoord.wordpress.com/2008/09/16/using-jaiku-to-send-text-messages-to-learn-for-free/

(Video about Micro Blogging)

http://www.howcast.com/videos/28772-MicroBlogging-With-Twitter

(Critique)

http://harakabaraka.wordpress.com/2009/02/27/existentially-atwitter/

(Picture)

http://www.lbhat.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/evolution.jpg

Jaiku