Research Report on Accomline.com

Background - Mini-Research Project: e-Transaction Broker

This research is carried out in conjunction with the recommendations of the UOL-ISORG study guide. This is a group research to investigate into the nature and operations of one e-commerce TRANSACTION BROKERwebsite. A transaction broker is an intermediary who acts as a middleman, merely providing the business link between a buyer and a host of sellers, and earning a commission for each successful transaction.

Accommodation Line is a leading global accommodation website offering hotel and accommodation bookings. It was established in 1996 and AccommLine provides consumers with wide accommodation choices in over 5,600 cities worldwide throughout 126 countries.
Accommodation Line delivers discounted hotel rates all year round - up to 60% off normal hotel rates. Direct relationships with hotels combined with strong purchasing power puts Accommodation Line in the position to negotiate exceptional rates for its consumers. The website provides key functional online services such as hotel room reservations, secured payment systems and a members login.

Research Report: on Accomline.Com

Accomline.com is a B2C dealing in transaction brokering eCommerce. It operates completely in cyberspace and does not have a bricks-and-mortar setup to complement the online business. Its major competitors are asiarooms.com.
The website provides key functional online services such as hotel room reservations, secured payment systems and a members login.
Hotel Room Reservations: Consumers are able to book up to 12months in advanced, which are priced competitively. For last minute bookings, there is a special website under Accomline.com, which is RatesToGo.com . Consumers can book a hotel room as late as 2 days prior to checking in.

Secured Payment systems: Consumers can be rest assured while conducting their transactions online as they have secured their website and this could be seen via the HTML link that starts with “HTTPS” instead of the usual “HTTP”.

Members login: Members are able to sign up at the website and to share their experience with a certain hotel so that others can benefit from the reviews.

The strengths of AccommodationLine: Consumers are able to make a rational decision based on the pricing as well as reviews by other travelers who have stayed at a particular hotel. This enables them to understand more about the hotel rather than just looking at the official website of the hotel.

The website is available in 14 languages which includes Chinese, English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Spanish, Swedish, Polish, Thai, Russian and Dutch.
It uses e-commerce which enables consumers to book their accommodation at their own convenience.

The weaknesses of AccommodationLine: They have to make sure that their website is secured enough to prevent hackers from hacking into it.

To make a hotel room reservation, one has to sign up as a member at their website before they can carry out a transaction. This may cause a little inconvenience for consumers who wants to just book directly from the site without going through the hassle of signups.