Mochidelight

54 minutes ago, OlsSalt said:

 

I hope you take the time to go back into the HAL website one more time and use the sidebar "feedback" feature and tell them exactly what you just posted here. This website failure has to be impacting their bottom line by now and we get reports that travel agents hate it too.

 

Amazing HAL management has not scrapped it entirely by now - it cannot be fixed because its approach, format and as you say lack of intuitive feel cannot be tweaked. It needs to start from the bottom up - not the top down. 

Good suggestion, but... unfortunately, based off of the experience of someone I know there, the feedback really don't reach anyone. Maybe once in awhile, something gets surfaced or sent to marketing or product team, but no one really much reviews the Feedback comments because they already know all the issues that need to be fixed and have them backlogged. It more of a matter money/time/resources in getting to those items that need fixing. If they are losing revenue and they switched to some horrible site format that doesn't look like it's using J-angular or javascript, it could be something where they are having trouble finding the right developer who have the right experience for a UI language that nobody loves ... 

I am for sure no longer cruising with HAL. What do you guys recommend a better replacement for HAL AND preferably one that has an easier and more intuitive website to book things? I was eyeing Princess Cruises, but wanted to get feedback from this community. Thank you in advance!!

Hola! Wondering... has anyone tried raising these website concerns directly to HAL's pres? Not sure if there is a way to actually do that or maybe he is already aware of these issues and choosing not to act. What really gets me -- and probably another reason why I'll be switching to a different cruise line in the future -- is, in terms of the website, HAL thinks that they know what's best for their customers. Learning a new site is fine, but inducing customers to learn a new site that is totally counterintuitive is a waste of time on the customers' part, unfortunately. This experience reminds me so much of Ron Johnson's tenure at JCP. Apart from the wonderful customer service and hard-working onboard staff... HAL's corporate folks and IT seem to be very money-driven more so than customer driven or user-research driven. Maybe they are unable to revert back to old site due to potential financial loss (could it be that it was built by third-party vendors rather than relying on the abundant tech/IT professionals in Seattle area?). But settle the losses and gain back valuable customer base by making small adjustments to the old site. Walk before you run. Princess Cruises, the sister cruise line, has a pretty good site ... but they probably can't or won't help HAL out and don't want anything to do with HAL's site. understandable... I bet no one in Seattle's tech scene wants to go near the HAL site either. Of course, as a business, I hope HAL floats long enough for the thousands of onboard staff to retain their jobs. But I've lost hope that corporate HAL will ever fix their site... so I'm out. :(