Cheapflights Media launches Zugu metasearch in US

Make way for another flight metasearch offering in the U.S. — Zugu.

Cheapflights Media quietly unveiled the beta this week for Zugu US after launching Zugu UK in February and Zugu DE in April.

For Cheapflights, the move represents a product expansion from its traditional deal-publishing business into the live inventory realm of flight metasearch.

If some people say flight metasearch is dead, you’d never know it from the flurry of activity.

For example, this week Cheapflights opened the curtain on Zugu US while Fly.com launched in Germany.

In May, Travelport bought Singapore-based Sprice.

Also in May, Kayak brought Germany’s Swoodoo into the fold.

U.S. travel metasearch is a crowded field, too, so how will Zugu differentiate itself?

Meredith Hanrahan,  Cheapflights Media’s chief marketing officer, says Zugu will be different because of its “sleek elegant display,” its ease of use and comprehensiveness.

Zugu also intends to let the world now — in some way as yet undisclosed — that it is a really fun brand.

A TV and social media campaign will be coming out “sooner rather than later,” Hanrahan says.

So, here’s the clean-looking homepage:

And, here’s an example of a Zugu US flight-results page:

For clarity purposes, in the top result the cheapest flight from Priceline, for example, is highlighted in orange and in the same grid users can see there are higher-priced flights from CheapOair.

One interesting thing that Zugu does is enable users to sort the results not just by airlines, but by online travel agencies, as well.

And, sliders at the top of the display enable travelers to filter results by flight times, flight durations and number of stops.

Cheapflights, which operates in eight countries and has some 8 million unique visitors, uses a CPC revenue model.

Zugu, on the other hand, uses a transaction model based on cost per acquisition.

Hanrahan says Zugu accesses flight inventory from GDSs and through Cheapflights’ pre-existing array of direct feeds from airlines.

The beta period for Zugu US — the name has German origins and roughly means “ready to migrate” — should last 6-8 weeks, she says.

From there, Zugu will migrate, or transition, into a full launch.