SeatGuru is the website to help travellers find the best airline seats. Users can browse airlines to choose one airline and specific plane configurations. The website lists all the planes this airline provides with basic information about the seat width, seat pitch, seat type, etc. Users can browse one plane to see the seat map and see comments made by other users. If users have bought the flight, they can search their flight directly to find the seat map.
Initially, Seatguru was launched in 2001 by Matthew Daimler which was later owned by TripAdvisor in 2007 to give the travellers all the details and reviews about the services before they travel. It is a great resource for frequent travellers and savvy flyers. (Source: seatguru.com)
seatguru.com
Analysis:
Log In System:
Registration is free and Facebook id can be used for signing in. Since, the application is associated with tripadvisor.com, the users having account at TripAdvisor can access this site.
Navigation:
Navigation is intuitive for flight details and has lists of airlines and comparison chart of various service class. It allows travellers to search for flights and find the airlines according to their preferences.
Review System and Rating:
Users can only add comments without applying any sort of rating. Instead of reviewing the seats, users are more likely to comment the whole services. The rating has been identified in terms of extra-leg room, in-flight entertainment and best services.
Tools and Apps:
Users can access Seatguru via iPhone, iPod Touch and Android. It has over 800 colour-code airplane seat maps, real-time flight status and alerts and a powerful flight search engine. Users can take and upload pictures of their flights while travelling too.
Accessibility and Usability:
Although, the site has not implemented Assistive Technology tools, it is well functioning in Operating System (Mac OXS 10.5 or Windows XP). The site is working in latest versions of IE, Safari, Firefox, Chrome etc and is supported in both desktop and mobile platforms.
Discussion and Conclusion:
The website has helpful tips and advises for travellers about the airports, services as well as travelling guidelines for an overall better experience. The features of searching for airlines and flights also is linked to being able to make online reservations for the flight tickets. Hence, the feature is very useful for our project “Be Seated” to enable the users to make online reservations if the technical constraints allow for it.
