global offerings

We Americans like to believe that we *own* the internet - that we invented it, made it what it is today, and that American-owned websites are the best in their field. Conveniently fitting into our overall bloated national ego, this attitude is likely the result of a few things. For one, we have people like Al Gore stating that it was his invention. Our search engines (like Google, et.al.) only serve up sites in our country, so we are fairly shielded from the rest of the world, and if most of us are graced with a foreign site in some other language, we usually don't stay long enough to evaluate it in any way.

So, when PayPerPost offered an opportunity for me to review an indian hotel booking site, how could I pass? Granted, the site is written in English and geared towards Americans, so I'm not exactly braving a new frontier, but it is always interesting to see how webmasters from other countries build an interface for Americans.

The site (INASRA.com) is fairly straight-forward. Like most online American hotel booking portals, you pick your destination and your travel dates and you are presented with the search results (conveniently in American dollars). One thing that you'll notice right away is that there aren't tons of annoying ads all over the page, like you would expect to see from an American based site like Orbitz. Once you receive your search results, you then have the option to filter the results even further by your requested amenities. I had to look up the word "penultimate" in the dictionary to find out what that meant, as there was a status block on the right side of the page stating that my reservation was in the "penultimate" stage. I discovered that this means the "next to last" stage of booking your stay. I'd recommend changing that wording to something more obvious like "you're almost done" or "only one more step to go" instead of "penultimate" as I have never heard anyone use that word before.

From a web user's standpoint, the site is quick, and easy to navigate. The branding is a little off, and perhaps it is a language barrier, but as an American, I have no idea if INASRA is supposed to mean something. Maybe it is an Indian word, or perhaps it is an acronym. In addition, I don't really understand what their slogan, "move on. live on," has to do with hotels. My only real complaint is that none of the hotels that I clicked on from the listings had photographs. One thing that I know about Americans is that we like to see what we're getting for our money when we're planning to travel, and a picture (although they can be misleading) is still worth a thousand words. (It can mean the difference between spending $25 more at another hotel.)

Overall, it's a genuine travel niche site (no fake affiliate search results detected), and highly recommended if you're planing on travel to India at anytime in the future.