Planes, trains and automobiles… Martin Ferguson reports on how new meta-search sites are making it easier to book point-to-point travel itineraries
How many websites did you visit to book your last trip? To make life easier, many of us use online travel agents (OTAs) such as Expedia and Orbitz to compare prices and then make bookings with their affiliated hotels and airlines.
For those of us who want a broader search of real-time rates and brands, with reservations instead made separately, there is also the option of meta-search sites such as Kayak and Travelsupermarket, which pull in data from a range of independent search engines, aggregating the findings in one place.
However, when embarking on a trip that might involve assessing the pros and cons of hiring a car versus taking the train, or travelling from one small town to another as opposed to a between two major cities (and, consequently, needing multiple forms of transport), these kinds of websites aren’t going to do the job.
Chances are you will need to trawl the pages of numerous individual websites to find and then compare the information you are presented with.
If you use a travel management company to arrange everything, you don’t have anything to worry about, but if you rely on sorting everything yourself, then the arrival of more comprehensive meta-search tools for itinerary building will be welcomed.
It was at the turn of the millennium, when broadband internet was finding its way into homes across the UK, that OTAs came to prominence. It wasn’t until around 2005 that meta-search sites began to build their own momentum.
Today, a new generation of meta-search sites may have found a way to simplify the process of arranging point-to-point travel. Rather than searching multiple websites for flights, hotels, car rental and transfers, a couple of innovative start-ups are pulling everything into one search.
Rome2rio.com was launched in 2011. On its homepage I’m asked to enter my origin, destination and preferred date of travel. I choose to leave my address in Clarkston, a suburb of Glasgow, to go to Naples city centre on July 6.
Eight results, ranked by price and journey duration, provide me with door-to-door options involving buses, taxis, planes and ferries. By clicking on each segment of the result, every aspect, including hotels, is bookable directly on the supplier website.
A massive time saver. Goeuro.com, launched last year, offers a similar service – type in the name of your town or village and where you want to go, and let the technology take you through the journey, step by step.
Naren Shaam, chief executive of Goeuro, says his site is growing in popularity across Europe, but has a particularly important role to play in the UK.
“Most of the big [meta-search] players, such as Kayak, Skyscanner and Momondo, work from airport-to-airport,” he says.
“That’s fine if you are travelling from Edinburgh to Madrid, when it’s more than likely you will fly. But [in the UK] there are a variety of options to consider if travelling from Edinburgh or Glasgow to London or Cambridge. There are combinations of buses, trains, cars and flights, and people want to evaluate price, convenience and how long a journey might take.”
However, these two modestly sized start-ups are not the only ones offering door-to-door travel options. Google has been providing a similar service in the US for the past year.
Type in San Francisco to Tulsa on Google Maps and you’ll be presented with intricate driving directions, the journey duration and estimated fuel cost. One click on the aeroplane icon presents a detailed travel itinerary, which allows users to click through and book on the transport providers’ websites.
The search and book platform is powered by Google’s own meta-search technology, Google Flights and Google Hotels.
There are many types of meta-search sites from which to choose. The original engines, such as Cheapflights, Skyscanner and Kayak, used to focus on flights only, but have now branched into hotels and car hire.
Others, such as tfthostels.com and, for business travel, Amadeus Meta Pricer, target niche customers and markets, while Trivago and hotels.com specialise in hotels only.
However, the lines are blurring and many meta-search engines are looking to extend their reach by offering a minimum of flight, hotel, car hire and other ancillary services.
While the main advantage of meta-search is aggregating a wide array of prices in one place, they are also more likely to guarantee the lowest rates because the figures come straight from the airlines and hotels.
Conversely, OTAs have their own pricing, which will not necessarily return the cheapest seat or room. A small fee, for example, may be added on to the price.
Still, even the meta-search community acknowledges that OTAs do some things well. Momondo chief executive Hugo Burge admits they do a great job of selling.
“They take your credit card details and are responsible for taking your booking,” he says. “We do not do this. OTAs often have special discounted deals, which can be great for consumers. However, our mission is to let you know about the best prices, who has them, and offer a comprehensive range of options, quickly and simply.”
Jon Pickles, director of information management for Travcorp Management Services, and a veteran of the travel technology business, says: “A meta-search provides the consumer with an easier way of comparing prices, which could only be achieved by visiting each airline and hotel individually. One search, many suppliers.”
Bob Atkinson, travel expert at Travelsupermarket, explains that OTAs only include products they are licensed to display on their engines. “On the other hand, we can show products such as low-cost and charter airlines, smaller hotel chains and individual hotels or rates bought through bed banks, small car rental companies and car brokers,” he says.
It didn’t take long for the major OTAs to recognise the value their meta opponents were bringing to consumers, and they wanted a piece of the action. Priceline bought Kayak for US$1.8 billion in November 2012. A month later, Expedia spent US$632 million on a majority stake in German-based hotel-only firm Trivago.
Even travel review site Tripadvisor jumped on the bandwagon when it introduced hotel price comparison capabilities. Company spokesman James Kay told Business Traveller the decision to introduce meta-search was a “no-brainer”.
While meta-search has, in some ways, revolutionised how people buy flights and holidays, it is unclear whether it has had the same level of success among business travellers. Antoine Boatwright is chief technology officer of Hillgate Travel, a company that manages travel arrangements for employees of its corporate customers. Like Goeuro and Rome2Rio, Hillgate provides travellers with a door-to-door service.
According to Boatwright, having a meta-search framework in place is crucial. “We have to find the best-value fares and are penalised if we fail. Our meta framework also has to accommodate an organisation’s travel policy and preferred suppliers.”
However, companies like Hillgate tend only to be employed by large firms who spend a lot of money. Richard Visick, operations director of a small UK-based tour operator called Ski-Wise, only makes about a dozen business trips a year, usually to destinations in and around the Alps. Price and departure time are what sways his purchasing decisions.
He says: “There is little advantage in booking through a third party, so I never use OTAs. I book direct on the airline’s website on the routes and services I use most often, but meta-search sites such as Skyscanner are useful when I’m looking for flights to destinations I don’t regularly visit.”
Most analysts agree that both OTAs and meta-search sites will coexist for some time to come. The data collated from transacting directly with customers means OTAs will have the upper hand when it comes to tailoring offers.
But the one-stop-shop, door-to-door meta-search sites are sure to grow in popularity.
Still, there is, of course, one threat feared by every player in the online travel business. Filip Filipov, Skyscanner head of business-to-business, says: “Outside of travel, many meta-search engines are being dropped in favour of Google, and it is now well and truly positioning itself in the travel market meta-search arena.”
New functionality launched last month, for instance, sees the Google Maps app syncing with every mode of public transport (buses, coaches, trams, trains, metros and ferries) available in Great Britain to enable users to see which is the quickest option to take when travelling from A to B.
With almost 17,000 routes accounted for, Google says: “You’ll now know when the next trip is departing, how many stops and how far your walk is between each station.”
The dangers for metas, therefore, is if internet users believe they can get the same, if not better, results from the world’s biggest search engine.
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