New Travel Search Engines Start to Gain Ground
We all have heard of the Expedia’s and Travelocities, but there are new search engines coming out that may transform this marketplace. Sites like Sidestep, Kayak, and Farechase are coming into their own as great alternatives for finding the best fares.
These sites do not book travel, but they do let you find the cheapest prices for air fares, hotel, and car rentals. They have no vested interest in who you book with but allow you to book directly with the providers with the full information.
”These guys have become a credible threat and competitor to Orbitz, Travelocity, and Expedia,” said Al Lenza, vice president of distribution and e-Commerce at Northwest Airlines. ”It’s good for the consumer, because the search engines highlight the fees the travel agencies charge.”
Not everyone is convinced. Henry Harteveldt, vice president of travel research at Forrester Research, says travel search companies, sometimes called metasearch sites, are generating only about 1 percent of airline bookings. He said that’s not enough to survive.
”Metasearch 1.0 is dead,” he said. ”It’s time for Metasearch 2.0 to emerge and service a slightly different purpose.”
The travel search engines definitely face an uphill struggle. Expedia, Orbitz, and Travelocity handle the bulk of online travel sales in the United States. They are online travel agents that help customers find fares, rooms, or cars and then book them, usually charging a fee for the service they provide.
Travel search engines have a very different business model. Instead of selling travel, they assemble travel information. The searcher chooses the fare or hotel he prefers and clicks through to make a purchase directly from the airline or hotel chain. The travel search engines don’t charge their customers anything. Instead, they make money from small referral fees paid by travel suppliers and advertising on their websites. High volume is the key to their business. via Boston Globe
Another guide to inexpensive airline tickets is Cheapflights.com. They also have a blog. Another link for my favorites.
December 4th, 2005 at 6:12 pm
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December 4th, 2005 at 11:48 pm
The meta-search engines have yet to show how they will be profitable in the long term. Until then, take this type of info with a grain of salt. Also note that they still yet to provide the lowest fares all the time.
December 5th, 2005 at 1:30 pm
Hi
The UK-based Cheapflights website does exactly what you describe here for airlines based in both the UK and US.
But we are also using a blog-style site to keep people up to date with the new routes and the latest deals.
RSS feeds are great for this as many deals only have a few days when they can be bought - so we are giving people the chance to hear of them as soon as they are on the site.
Take a look:
http://news.cheapflights.co.uk/
http://news.cheapflights.com/
Regards
Craig
December 12th, 2005 at 2:53 am
Not only are there some good consumer travel search engines but there are also some great business travel search engines like Cliqbook (from OutTask, for large company use) and mySmartTrip (from Enable Solutions for small company use) that are starting to appear.
The problem that travel search engines face is that many people think that Travelocity and Expedia are search engines when in fact they are not. They are purely merchants reselling supplier inventory - online travel agencies akin to offline travel agencies - which is why you find different fares for the same flights and differing flight options between the OTA’s. Hence the value of travel search engines.