The Hotel World according to Meta Search Engines - (Part 1)

Where most airlines have clearly demonstrated that they control their fares on any online distribution channel, hotels still struggle with rate parity and how hotel rates are displayed to the public. But the online travel consumer - known as the “ best deal” shopper these days - has access to some great tools in the last 2 or 3 years. Meta search engines started off with airfares but slowly but surely duplicated the model with hotel rates. And today the shopper has a plethora of websites to choose from: HotelCombined, Kayak, Travelsupermarket, Wego, VibeAgent, NexTag even TripAdvisor and more.

 

When looking into Google, the search “hotel search engine” comes back with 628,000 links. If you add “meta” on the query, 300,000 links get back to you.

 

So how can the consumer decide which hotel search engine to choose from? Are they already getting loyal to some and disappointed by others? Are we all driven by price when we use these online tools or is it something different we expect in terms of online travel search experience.

 

In the next coming weeks I will try and give my honest opinion on all these players and see how they compare in terms of user interface, level of content, accuracy with information displayed and most importantly how fast they are able to return results.

 

Just watch this space...

Comments

[Charles Knight]

Please keep us posted!

Charles Knight, editor
AltSearchEngines.com