To borrow a phrase from Gov. Sarah Palin, is price the be-all, end-all of travel search? I’ll give you that if different suppliers and online travel agencies are offering differing prices, then it is the most important factor. 

But these price differences have been getting smaller and smaller, and in some cases, are already insignificant. What if operational costs, distribution channels and technology are finetuned to a point where it becomes impossible to find better offers than what everyone else is offering?

And people who should know seem to think this is where we’re heading for - A world of travel search beyond price, where flight comparison sites and consumers doing travel shopping will be forced to change course and search for other factors.

Uptake CEO Yen Lee says that Travel Metasearch, as we know it, is Done. “So, negotiated prices eliminated structural price differences, broadly available software reduced technology-driven price differences, and online agencies just eliminated the final difference in price between suppliers and themselves. Who need price air metasearch?”

So… Assuming we reach this stage, what exactly are Kayak, TripAdvisor (with their new flight search engine), Mobissimo and the rest of the metasearch gang supposed to do? Aside from walking into the sunset, they could focus on presenting comparisons of the other aspects of travel - like time, safety and convinience. Regardless of whether or not there are price differences, people still need to make a decision.

And some of these factors are really important nowadays. Air safety is largely in the hands of God, the pilot, the airline and the TSA (in that order), but it’s almost impossible for an ordinary consumer to compare historical safety records of airlines, aircraft types, age and condition of the aircrafts, pilots and the flight crew while booking a flight.

Metasearch engines could also abandon comparisons of stand-alone flights, and focus on Hotel+Air and vacation packages, where there’s a lot more choice and hence wiggle room for price differences, addon fees and promotions. And there’s also the possibility of metasearching hotel reviews. 

But the sum of it is that flight metasearch, as a stand-alone proposition, is on it’s way to extinction. So TripAdvisor must be thankful they’re well established in hotel search, Kayak will thank their lucky stars they got into it in time, and TravelZoo could end up ruing the day they spent $1.8 million on buying Fly.com.

Not that this is going to happen in a day or in a few months. But some thing to think about, if you’re investing millions into working out the best way to offer flight comparisons.

Posted on March 13th, 2009 by PLing
Filed under: Travel News