on 03 February 2010 
(No Ratings Yet)Travel metasearch once was lean, mean and hungry, but now it seems that websites like Fly.com and Kayak may be getting a bit wimpy, and might be forsaking consumers’ needs in deference to the sensitivities of online travel agencies and airlines.
In the early days of travel metasearch, consumers could use metasearch websites to compare prices of flights and hotel rooms, and in the search-results grids you’d find flight ticket and room prices from various airlines and intermediaries lined-up side by side.
Ah, those were the days, a seemingly bygone era.
Look what’s happening now.
The following is a Fly.com results’ display for a Newark-Fort Lauderdale flight on US Airways.
While consumers can readily see that they can book the US Airways flight on Travelocity for $403, the Hotwire price is a blank — and a mystery.
To see if Hotwire — a discount travel website — beats Travelocity on price, you’d have to click on the Hotwire link and navigate to Hotwire.com, where you’d see the following display.
Hotwire is offering a bunch of US Airways flights for Newark-Fort Lauderdale for $402.80 — and that may be the issue. Hotwire — which declined to comment for this story — probably doesn’t want to see its prices displayed next to Travelocity — or other competitors — over and over on metasearch websites because Hotwire isn’t offering travelers any kind of a deal in some instances.
This sort of prices-gone-missing approach apparently is becoming more common on metasearch websites as players like Fly.com and Kayak give in to the brand sensitivities of online travel agencies and airlines.
In so doing, the metasearch websites may be doing a disservice to consumers, many of whom certainly want to view the price of a flight or car rental without having to click over to another website.
I am sure the travel-metasearch engines would love to do right by consumers and display as much pricing as possible, but they are letting the OTAs, in these cases, conduct their merchandising efforts in ways that may not be in the best interests of consumers.
Expedia.com, a sister company of Hotwire’s in the Expedia Inc. portfolio, is taking a somewhat similar tack in Kayak’s hotel displays.
Look at the following display for InterContinental — The Barclay hotel in Manhattan and notice that Kayak displays no price comparisons — other than a generic $237 price — or booking options in the initial display.
From here, the consumer is still two steps away from beginning the process of booking The Barclay. The consumer has to click on the details link to view the following options on Kayak.com. (Incidentally, only Booking.com comes close to the $237 base room price that Kayak listed on the previous screen.)
Here, consumers finally can view room pricing from the various booking websites — except for Expedia’s. Kayak doesn’t display Expedia’s rates, and if consumers want to view them, they’ll have to select “click to see rates” and navigate to Expedia.com.
Kayak’s stated mantra is to making the user experience as easy as possible, but by allowing Expedia to display “click to see rates” instead of The Barclay’s room rate, Kayak and Expedia are making the consumer experience clunkier.
On a side note, one positive aspect of the above Kayak display is that it enables Orbitz to list its phone number for consumers who’d rather call then click on the website link. That’s great for consumer choice and for Orbitz’s merchandising efforts.
Online travel agencies like Hotwire and Expedia.com aren’t the only source websites which are throwing their weight around in metasearch.
Several airlines have followed American Airlines’ lead and are refusing to display their fares in metasearch results alongside the ticket prices of other airlines.
Both trends — OTAs refusing to disclose ticket prices or hotel room rates, as well as airlines refusing to submit their fares for side-by-side comparisons — are making the complex trip-planning process even more complex for consumers.
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Interesting to note that the Hotwire and Expedia rates are listed on the TripAdvisor flight meta-search results. Seems that the Expedia controlled sites are playing more nicely within the family than with the neighbors…
TripAdvisor also includes American airlines flights. Looks like the carriers may be playing favorites with the meta-search sites as well…
Is it more common for meta search to work on a pay per click or a fee only for actual bookings generated or hybrid models ?
I guess the challenge comes when some airlines just start to say that they don’t want to pay anything – or even charge for access to data (?!) It creates a dilemma for the meta search company. Include for a better user experience or exclude and make more cash.
Interesting thoughts. For completeness, and a flight meta search that tries to hold on to the old days and compares as many options as possible, you could check out dohop.com. And yes I work there so don’t take my word, just check it out
Robert: About TripAdvisor, they don’t have hotel metasearch yet, so we’ll have to see how Expedia.com plays that one. And, a lot of the metas have AA flights, but you’ll notice — and you probably know this — that you will never see an AA flight from an OTA and you will never see an AA flight in the same core search results with a competitor.
Thanks, David, I’ll check out dohop.com. Do you search Hotwire or Expedia.com and are they playing anything differently on dohop?
We actually don’t search either, but we do search Orbitz. We have direct agreements with a lot of airlines and then we search a ton of smaller OTA’s like one called TravelPapa, and for some reason they for example tend to have lower prices than the big ones.
I guess our specialty is finding alternative routes between two places, by connection otherwise unconnected flights, with separate OTA’s or airlines. When there is a connection like that available it usually means lower prices, and these are routes that you’d be hard pressed to find elsewhere.
Bill: Yes, I think you identify the business dilemma for the metasearch companies. They want to be comprehensive. They risk losing business and comprehensiveness if companies like Expedia.com, Hotwire.com or American Airlines can’t play in the manner which they want to play. Unfortunately, the consumer is the loser in this equation.
David: So here’s the question for you and dohop.com. When your sales team goes out and strikes deals with source websites — OTAs, airline, hotels, car rental firms etc. — do you give these companies the choice of not displaying fares? Do any of them choose not to display rates on dohop.com?
I suppose if Expedia.com knocked on your door and said they would participate in dohop hotels, but only if you agreed that Expedia.com wouldn’t show room rates, then you would probably jump through hoops at the chance of landing Expedia, no?
Or would you stick to your principles — maybe they are mine, not yours, now that I think of it — and tell Expedia, show your rates or else?
Oh, what a fantasy world I live in?
Well, to tell you the truth, we stick to our guns. We try as hard as we can to avoid exclusivity deals, and any kind of terms set by vendors. Sometimes this means a lower commission rate, or no commission at all, and about half of airlines we display don’t pay us anything. We’re just going for as complete information as possible.
Regarding Kayak, I’ve been under the impression they decided to make full details “one click away” in order to clean up their design and not give away freebie brand awareness to advertisers.
Interestingly, though, they default to a pre-search opt-in to also search Expedia in a separate window, which I imagine might be part of a broader agreement.