How is the Best Travel Booking Services and how to win?
by Yair Bar Zohar Turist Information science Review: How is the Best Travel Booking
Services
Who operates them?
Who is the cheapest?
How to find the best deals online?
Dear reader, I am willing to help you
plan your escape/vacation and search for the best online touristic booking
services that will help your dream come true.
You are familiar with the big names:
Expedia, Kayak, Orbitz, Priceline, Travelocity. They are all very good and very
useful, and yet you might be confused trying to figure out which one will give
you the best offer.
I began my journey with few simple
questions: What distinguishes between those websites? Which site is the
coolest? Which one brings the best offers?
1. Priceline Group
A leading name in the online hotel
bookings domain, with over 170,000 worldwide hotels participating. This group
is made of 4 main brands: Booking.com, Agoda.com, Priceline.com and
Traveljigsaw, and other connotative brands. Priceline group provides online
touristic services in Europe, North America, South America, Pacific Asia, the
Middle East and Africa.
Three of their companies are leading within the bookings market
1.1 Booking.com
This site specializes mainly in
European hotels, with an emphasize on private hotels, and offers competitive
rates. The costumer's credit card is given upon booking, but charged only while
checking out.
1.2 Agoda.com
A website located in Thailand.
Specializes in hotels of the East market, and provides exclusive deals for this area. It was
sold to Priceline in 2007.
It is designated by the cancellation
possibilities, given with accordance to specific terms and conditions.
1.3 Priceline
Priceline presents a reverse bidding
gimmick. It is the costumer who suggests the rate to the supplier. If the offer
was approved by the supplier, there is no cancellation option. In addition, the
costumer is required to have a valid postal address in specific countries such
as the US, Canada, Mexico, UK and more.
2. Expedia Group
An online trip booking site which is
the biggest and most experienced travel
agency. They specialize in working with big hotel chains, and in providing
integrated services such as flights, concerts bookings and airport transfers.
The company was established by Microsoft
15 years ago and is used by dozens of millions.
The group is consisted of 8 main
brands:
Expedia, Hotels, eLong, Hotwire,
Egencia, CruiseShipCenters, Venere, Classic Vacations.
Hotwire – Specializes in a unique
reverse bidding. The potential customer receives several low cost offers
without knowing the hotel's name or address.
Hotwire is only told about the area, the stars rate and the public's
rate. If an order is being made, the name and address of the hotel are exposed
immediately. The costumer knows he is choosing between hotel chains which are
known and approved by the company, and which are listed on the website. The
disadvantage of this method is that ordered cannot be canceled.
3. Orbitz Group
A global company leading in the online
traveling business, using new technologies in order to offer leisure and
business travelers with a variety of low cost touristic services.
Orbitz has started as a website
focusing on booking flights reservations. During 10 years, the owners- 5 of
America's biggest airlines: AMR, Continental, Delta, Northwest and United
Airlines- have expanded their services into additional areas, such as hotel
bookings, cruises, car rental and satellite products.
This group consists of 7 main brands:
Orbitz, CheapTickets, ebookers,
HotelClub, RatesToGo, away, Orbitz Business
4. Kayak Group
An excellent global group, leading in
the online traveling business, using new technologies especially with Mobile,
in order to provide a variety of low cost tourist services to business and
leisure travelers.
This group consists of 3 main
brands: kayak.com, sidestep.com and
swoodoo.com
5. Travelocity
Established in 1996, this American
site is considered the oldest online travel agency and is still today one of the
6 biggest in the world market. The
company is also operating full traveling services to business customers. It was
established by Sabre Travel Network.
This site enables you to spend money
easily, as he who enables you to save it. Yet this is not a reproach. When it
comes to inventing new ways to plan and book a vacation, Travelcity is the the
most innovative touristic company to be found online.
This information was
taken by the group’s prospectus and from the companies' websites.
One thing in common to all the groups
All of these groups together hold more
than 80% of the online booking market.
The information basis of each group is
similar, although differences in rates can be found very occasionally. In addition, the daughter-companies use their
visitor’s feedback page as their information source for public opinion.
When asking for a price quote in each
of these sites, there are chances of getting similar offers within the same
group. When looking for visitor’s feedback, there are chances of getting
similar comments within the same group.
Number of rooms on each group is
limited due to their own exclusive agreements.
Questions to be asked
Everyone promise you the best offer,
and a refund in the case you find something cheaper. Have you ever really
checked other places after paying?
How can you find the best offer at a
given time?
Do you have the time to look in all
the websites?
Are you confused by all the
information?
Do you master the formation well
enough?
Solution
The solution is to use a website that compares rates objectively and with no
preference (no sponsorship, commercials and pop ups).
When it comes, this solution is still
being developed by http://www.flght-seeker.com.
There is a new online comparisons
website with a business partner who centralizes all the information regarding
hotel bookings: http://www.hotels-seeker.com . You may notice the large group of fans on the
Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/hotels.seeker
This website is not a booking site,
but uses only as an accommodation rates comparison engine.
How it is done: The site performs an
online scanning of all booking sites worldwide, sorting by country, city,
accommodation name, date, number of stars, distance from city center' touristic
services, rates range, popularity etc. The prices are valid to the same minute
if the scan.
To avoid commercial comments and spam,
each accommodation has a summary of feedback pages from big travel agencies'
sites where costumers published their comments after checking out, which
ensures that the person writing the comment has indeed stayed at the hotel. The
prices comparison engine performs an adjusted calculation of these pages and so
its authenticity level is statistically the highest.
The site is freed from commercials,
sponsors and pop ups to remain objective.
In the biggest source online there are
255,000 accommodations in 220 countries, 121,278 destinations worldwide. All in
all, 2,360,426 hotel offers (valid on 03.2012) which include all the
information from all booking websites.
Accommodation
services are: hotels, inns, hostels, holiday villages, BB, BB rooms for rent,
villas and more.
The Site Scanner 350
Accommodation reservations websites. Here's the partial list :
AccorHotels.com, Agoda.com, BestWestern.com, ShowSupplier
Description and Reviews, BookDirectRooms.com, Booking.com,
CarlsonHotels.com, ChoiceHotels.com, dhr.com, EasyClickTravel.com,
EasyToBook.com, Ebookers.com, eLong.com, Expedia.com, Getaroom.com, Show
Supplier Descriptionand Reviews, Hilton.com, HotelClub.com, Hotelopia.com,
Hotels.com, Hotels4U.com, HRS.com, ihg.com, LastMinute.com, LateRooms.com,
Marriott.com, OctopusTravel.com, Otel.com, Priceline.com, QuickBeds.com,
RatesToGo.com, Skoosh.com, Travelocity.com, Venere.com
The advantages of international price
comparison
1. A
much larger supply – In Paris, for instance, we a
comparison of about 1575 hotels, in each of them there are several types of rooms. An average local travel
agency offers roughly 60 hotels in Paris and a price comparison website based
on local travel agencies will find it difficult to offer more than 50 options.
The meaning of this supply is a more intelligent choice of accommodation.
2. Better
prices – We believe that no tourist website, not even the greatest in the
world, can offer the best prices all the time. The use of our comparison with a
sample of hotels or flights will prove this point for the most competitive
websites such as Kayak.com, priceline.com, Expedia.com, Hotels.com, Booking.com
and Easy Jet as well. While sole suppliers can't claim having the best prices,
automatic search tools such as ours are able to display the best deals in most
cases, sometimes in a probability of 95-98%.
3. Availability
and reliability of the highest standards – Whether it's payment security,
reliability, promises or promotional product authenticity, business standards
of the world's largest travel sites are usually higher than the standards of
the smaller operators.
Important notes:
1.
Read all the small letters before each order.
2.
Pay attention to low cost orders with no cancellation option.
It is highly advised to check with your travel agency or insurance agent
regarding health matters insurance.
3.
This is not a booking
site, not involved in any transaction. This
is a free comparison site
http://addyourpoint.com http://hotels-seeker.com http://flight-seeker.com
Sponsor Ads
Created on Dec 31st 1969 18:00. Viewed 0 times.