Thursday 22nd March 2007

Travel sites - the wrong way around?

Is it just me, but does anyone else think that travel sites are the wrong way around?

What I mean is that sites like Travelocity and Expedia are great and all, but they only offer limited flights and hotels. Basically the vendors who have signed up with them.

So if I search for a flight on both sites, invariably I will get two different results, with one site’s best price being better than the other.

Not the most optimal use of the internet, if I have to search multiple sites to get the best deal.

I say they are the wrong way around because they make us, the consumer do all the work. Offline, in the real world, the travel agent does all the work for me, based on the basic requirements I give to them. Online, it’s still a lot of work to find the best deal.

What I’d like to see is a site where I can post my basic requirements, and travel agents and airlines etc can contact me with their best offers. They monitor the site, and do all the work to provide me with the best possible deal. I can then play them off against each other to get an even better deal, like in the real world. And if the site was open, any agent/vendor could join, and therefore I wouldn’t have to go to various different sites to get what I was looking for. I just post my holiday plan, and they come back to me with how much it will cost etc.

In the real world the supplier does a lot of work and the consumer sits back and relaxes. E-commerce has revolutionised the business of putting buyers and sellers together, without doubt. But it still hasn’t achieved the level of simplicity that the real world offers. It’s still too biased towards the supplier, and requires the consumer to do more work, which is why travel agents still exist.

Yes, you can probably get a better deal online, but it is so much easier to walk into a travel agent, get the best options for your trip, and walk out, knowing that they did all the work to get you the best deal possible.

Comments:

  1. 1 On March 22nd, 2007, Ubuntu said:

    Travel Agent will access the same website and will tell you the price.
    You will pay him and he will make the booking with his credit card if you don’t have one.

    Yes, agree, having to access multiple web sites is a problem at the moment.

    For the consumer to access one website and compare prices will require all the airline companies to agree upon a common interface, a third party broker perhaps. Whiiiiiiiiich is a difficult task.
    Good, if you can find such a broker. Helloooo, anybody out there ?????

  2. 2 On March 22nd, 2007, Yo said:

    Sorry ubuntu, but I don’t think you understood the idea behind my post.

    I’m not saying that the problem is accessing multiple websites. Actually the problem is that I have to do any work at all. Even if there was one site that had all fares, I would have to do some work to find what I wanted.

    In the real world, this information gathering stage is carried out by the travel agent, while the customer relaxes. The supplier does all the work for the consumer, and then shows the consumer the various different options they have found.

    This is not how e-commerce functions. In e-commerce, most of the work is done by the consumer. The supplier only connects their booking system into the website, so that customers can search for fares based on availability and other criteria. After that, the supplier can sit back and relax.

    But in the end, business is always geared towards customer satisfaction. Sooner or later, someone will create a website that allows consumers to post their requirements, and allows travel agents to find the best deals and offer them to that consumer. When that happens, more people will move from real-world travel decisions to online travel decisions. And on that day, e-commerce will take a big step forward.

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