Norwalk-based Priceline.com Inc. jumped to the No. 2 position on a J.D. Power & Associates survey of travel Web sites, even as customer satisfaction with the sector declined.
For the third straight year, the Hotwire.com site operated by Expedia Inc. garnered the top overall ranking on the survey that polled more than 7,000 people in the past year on price, design, ease of booking, navigation, usefulness of information and travel package options.
Priceline.com ranked fifth in last year”™s survey. J.D. Power surmised that high fuel prices may have negatively impacted sites that rely mainly on airline reservations for bookings.
J.D. Power found that while 70 percent of travel reservations were booked online in 2008 ”“ up from 53 percent in 2007 ”“ only 16 percent were made through independent travel Web sites, a 1 percent increase.
Consumers who booked their travel using an independent Web site were “considerably” less satisfied compared with 2007, according to J.D. Power, which said attempts to add features to “beef up” sites can backfire as travelers get fed up with popup windows or software downloads needed to optimize a site”™s performance.
