What is Your Ideal Method to Book Leisure Travel?

Social media may be the rage, itinerary sharing web sites may be proliferating, and new online travel sites seem to be focused on advertising as their primary revenue stream, but the bottom line is that airlines, hotels, car rental and attractions rely on reservation sales conversion to generate the margin and profit required to continue operations.

This poll is designed to evaluate the most popular, IDEAL, method for booking leisure travel arrangements. The results will indicate the “Bookularity” of the preferred category comprising the booking method and type of travel seller that those surveyed feel provides the greatest value in the travel reservation process.

Ground Rules:

1. Vote for the CATEGORY of Booking Method and Travel Seller you would ideally prefer to use for LEISURE travel
2. Only One Category May be Selected – If you could only pick one, which one would it be? You would use it for all your reservations in a given itinerary
3. You Destination & Itinerary May be Researched Using Any Other Methods – This question only pertains to your preferred method to make the purchase
4. The Sites Listed are Only Examples for the Category – If you have a favorite site, find the most similar category
5. The List of Categories is not Exhaustive – If you notice a major category missing, use the contact form link below to submit a suggestion

Below is a list of booking method categories summarizing both HOW you would contact & WHO you would contact to book leisure travel – if you had your choice, in a perfect world. The options range from online to telephone, supplier direct to travel agency, and mobile to specialize membership-only sites. Remember, if you could only select one type of booking method with one type of travel seller, which would it be?

[polldaddy poll=”2984812″]

Try this link if you do not see the poll embedded above.

Important – No Whining Clause:

• It is understood that this is not the perfect poll structure. There could be millions of valid exceptions. I consciously chose not to list them all.
• Yes, I realize that the poll excludes business travel. That was an intentional decision.
• I also realize that there are a lot of choices. This is to satisfy the people who would complain that there were too few choices.
• This is not a binding legal commitment, it is simply an online poll to gauge the “Bookularity” of various travel booking methods with types of travel sellers. I promise, you will not be forced to solely use only this method for the rest of your life.

Note: Apologies to anyone who wanted to vote for “Fax.” I felt if that if fax was included, teletype, telegram, carrier pigeon, morse code, smoke signals and chiseled clay tablets would also need to be on the list…

If a particular booking method/seller type category was excluded from the initial list, please drop me a note using this link and I will consider adding it to the list. I am looking for booking method/travel seller type categories, not specific web sites, so if you launched a niche site last month, please can hang onto your press release and/or sales pitch.

Voting will remain open until Friday morning, April 16, 2010 at 7:00am US Central time. Sorry, only one vote per person, so rally your social network to support your favorite.

Many challenges face the global travel industry. New business models, competitive marketing strategies, emerging mobile technologies, interactive customer engagement and the constant need to drive profitability create complexities that were never previously imagined by hotels, destinations, airlines or online travel companies.

Each week, RockCheetah and the Views from a Corner Suite blog will present a new poll to gauge the sentiment of the travel industry, and of course, allow respondents to comment on the issues at hand.