4. Online booking systems

With the rise of the internet, online booking systems have become commonplace. They are all interactive web sites because they have to update the master database whenever a booking is made.

A typical web site is shown below for booking a hotel room

There are a number of interactive elements in this booking screen.

For example, clicking the little pink box next to the date box caused a calendar to expand on the screen so you can click on the check-in date and check-out date. This is an excellent way to enter dates into a database because the customer does not have to care about the date format.

You can see that a drop-down box is used for the number of nights needed. A small crossed box in the 'rooms and travelers' section invites you to change the detail if you want to.

A well-designed online booking web site is very easy to use because it is obvious how it works. A poorly designed web site is much more difficult to use.