Directflights.com

Review by Adrian Mann, owner of Adrian Mann Design, providing independent reviews and analysis of travel web sites in the UK.

Directflights.com is a long-established agent, catering for both business and leisure traveller. On the face of it, it seems to be a fairly conventional site, but what makes it special is the use of Sabre’s Meridia.Res online booking engine.

Overall
The design of the site gives the user immediate access to all the important areas of the site, with search engine, a selection of offers, tabbed links to major functions, and links to other travel products – scheduled and charter flights, holidays, hotels, cruises etc. It gives the appearance of a well-designed and solid site, and only takes 25 seconds to load the home page on a 56kb modem. There’s nothing here that will trouble the average web browser – just some Javascript that works on all platforms.

Content
The online search function is probably where most visitors will go first. This requires a basic set of criteria to perform a search, and allows the destinations name or airport code to be entered. Once ‘Search’ is clicked, the results are shown in a new window, which displays a range of flight options, a 5-step progress indicator, and the contents of your ‘shopping cart’. It’s also possible to perform the search and booking in Spanish, German, Italian or French as well as English. It’s also possible to increase the font size – a feature to be welcomed for those with impaired vision. It also shows whether the flight is available on the selected date, or if an alternative is available.
Once selected, the flight is added to the ‘Shopping Cart’, where the total price including fees and taxes is shown. From here, there are options to either hold the reservation or proceed to purchase. Also, you can check on flight information and airline schedules, and keep track of previous reservations.
There’s plenty more on the site besides flight booking. “Beat my quote” allows the user to enter details of a flight, together with it’s price, and wait for the consultants at Direcflights to see if they can beat it.
There’s a section for the business traveller, where you can apply for credit facilities and get your own Personal Travel Assistant to help making your travel plans. Directflights also has a newsletter to subscribe to, which offers some tantalising tips for travellers – how to get extra legroom on flights, how to make it easier to get upgrades, and how to find the best places to eat, drink and shop when you get there.
The design of the site is consistent throughout, and the telephone number to call to speak to a travel agent is always visible. Navigation is uncomplicated, and there’s always an indication of the page you’re on, and how you got there. Customer Service offers a comprehensive set of contact details and email addresses, and a map showing where their main office is.
Some other sections are provided by third party site, such as Holidayextras for airport parking and travel insurance, ‘aferry.to’ for ferry crossings to Europe and Ireland, and Qjump for UK rail travel.

Summary
There are a few problems with the site though. The links to the charter flights, package holidays and hotels page didn’t work, and car hire wanted me to search for more flights. Some other areas are, at present, either a just page with a phone number, or are ‘coming soon’. Even so, this shouldn’t detract too much from the site – they’re simple problems that can easily be fixed.
It’s good to see the appearance of a full online search, booking and payment facility on a site like this. It’s now possible for small to medium size sites to achieve a whole new level of functionality that was previously unattainable. Sabre are just one of a number of company’s providing this technology, but the Meridia.res system is definitely one of the best implementations of online booking and payment systems, and it’s got the weight of a solid, dependable and well known company behind it. This surely points the way forward for some of the smaller travel agencies.