Rapidly becoming one of the largest hotel reservation sites on the web, HOTRES.com is a success story that BLAZE inter.NET is proud to be part of. A fully functioning E-Commerce web site that provides information on hotel room availability to thousands of people around the world. HOTRES.com accepts reservations for available rooms and at tremendous values for some of the most in-demand places in the world.

Web Objective: To create an E-Commerce web site that will allow visitors to reserve hotel rooms over the web at discount prices.

The Challenge: Although there were several hotel reservation networks already on the web, the HOTRES.com management felt that they were too difficult to navigate and not very easy to find what you were looking for, it just took too long to make a reservation. HOTRES.com wanted to change all that by creating a site so sophisticated in it's programming that it would be extremely user-friendly for the HOTRES.com staff to update and manage. More importantly, it would be a breath of fresh air for the user, ushering them through a reservation in just a few brief moments.

The BLAZE inter. NET Solution: The BLAZE inter.NET team, worked closely with HOTRES.com management for months designing and refining the look and feel of the site. A great deal of information had to be presented in the smallest amount of space so a visitor could quickly and easily view their options before making a reservation. Revision after revision was performed until the entire process, from entering the site to receiving a confirmation page, was reduced to only five pages. Only then did both teams step back and agree that they had achieved the perfect balance between simplicity and function. HOTRES.com was now ready for programming.

Several months were spent programming the very complicated code that makes the behind-the-scenes magic that is HOTRES.com. Countless hours of testing and program modifications were made until the program was able to not only perform properly on its own, but more importantly, to interface seamlessly with Cybercash™, an online authorization network that automatically approves or rejects each reservation order in real time while the customer waits for their reservation confirmation. Unlike many sites where the product being purchased must be shipped, HOTRES.com gives the customer the product immediately upon purchase in the form of a room voucher. This makes the programming much more complicated. Other E-commerce sites can batch their credit card orders and submit them for authorization hours after the user has completed their end of the transaction . All that is necessary is to make sure an order is approved prior to shipping and that can be many hours or days in the future. HOTRES.com must get the transaction approved or declined immediately; while the client waits.

Because intricacies such as this existed, a sophisticated back-end administration area had to be built to allow the HOTRES.com staff access to all databased information immediately. The HOTRES.com staff also needed the ability to create, print and e-mail Cybercash™ reports and database activity. These reports also had to be set to be sent automatically on a daily basis as well as to interface with the company's local database and accounting systems.

The site provides a tremendous amount of information for the visitor; including a full list of hotel amenities for each and every hotel in the database. The administration area had to be created with many different types of interfaces to allow the staff to make updates on everything from hotel availability, to contact information,amenities, room sizes, quality and countless other information that is made available to users. Special java-based input programs were built to allow the staff access to large amounts of data in a small space.

Another important feature of the site is the map area that gives the visitor the ability to search for hotels in certain sections of a city and then be instantly updated with the hotel name, address and it's star rating. If a visitor wishes to receive more information on a certain hotel, they can click on the hotel and they will be presented with a detailed hotel information page.

Visit the HOTRES.com Web site