Summary of Success (in the Online Travel Industry)

Throughout the quarter, I have not only researched many different sites, but I have also had many great examples of successful (or not-so-successful) online travel sites from classmates and the comments that I’ve been lucky to receive directly on my blog. While my original intention was to research the entire online travel industry, this proved to be much too grand of a task, and I, without meaning to, ended up focusing mainly on integrated travel sites such as Expedia, Travelocity and a lot of smaller names, as well as the online airline industry. And in these categories, I did learn a lot.

To summarize some success stories, I’d like to hand it to the little guys. Perhaps it’s because they haven’t been around as long or don’t dominate the market quite like the “Big 3″, but the more unknown sites such as Kayak.com and BookingBuddy.com seem to be held in higher regards in many consumers’ minds. This may be because they have had less opportunities to “mess up” or have customers with negative experiences. But one reason I think these sites may actually be more successful is because they aren’t so generalized and have a unique selling proposition that adds value to their site. Sites such as Travelocity, Orbitz and Expedia are not very differentiated, and because they are so similar, most consumers don’t remain loyal to one, but feel free to move between them.

Success Story #1 for the Very Little Guy: Booking Buddy recognizes the vast amount of channels available, and tries to solve the problem of channel conflict by offering access and integrating them all on their site. I found this site very useful in finding cheap airline tickets to Italy for this summer. When you reach their homepage, they have a chart like most of the other sites in which you input information – departure location, date, arrival location, date, and certain preferences. But the next step is awesome, because they provide icons from 10 different travel sites, such as Expedia, Kayak, Hotwire, Priceline and more, as well as a drop down menu of sites that don’t have icons. When you click on a specific icon, it sends the site your information and you are given ticket options immediately. This is great – Booking Buddy essentially provides an easy way to reach every site by visiting only one and inputting your information only once, which is a huge convenience when we are looking to save both money and time. I wouldn’t say Booking Buddy is in direct competition with the larger sites because they basically provide a link between the consumer and the travel sites, but they do provide access to sites that people might not otherwise check if they only know of Expedia’s site, which ultimately provides more competition.

Success Story #2 for the Somewhat Little Guy: Kayak also provides a unique selling proposition that attracts people to their site over others. It functions much like Booking Buddy, in that it searches all of the other sites for the lowest prices, but it does this on its own without you choosing specific sites. But the most prominent feature is that Kayak.com recognizes the importance of dynamic pricing as I mentioned in my last blog, in the online travel industry, and how the rapidly changing prices can affect a consumers trip from minute to minute. Because of this, they provide a function that keeps track of the changes in price each day. Also, when searching for a particular flight, with the results comes a dynamic pricing chart that includes past price history for a particular flight, as well as a forecast for the change in price in the coming days or months. This can be extremely useful to people who travel often. It is hard shopping especially for flights, because we may find what we think is a good deal and we don’t want to miss out, when really the next day it might be cheaper. Having a chart with a past history of prices and a forecast can not only help us according to their predictions, but it can help us make our own predictions. Of course, with dynamic pricing, there is never a certain answer of where it is going to go, and we just have to hope for the best.

The online travel industry is somewhat dominated by these “one-stop shop” sites now-a-days, especially for the vacation traveler looking for the best deals. But, I still want to give props to the airlines who have opened channels online quite successfully. With these sites, the main concerns are most definitely security and customer service. We are often dropping hundreds of dollars on these sites, and would like to know that A. our information and money are secure, and B. we are going to receive as much help and guidance as we need along the way. By providing considerably clear security guidelines as well as promises of customer service, I think airlines’ sites such as JetBlue’s or American Airlines’ have definitely been successful, especially when concerned with loyal customers to those brands. (Success Story #1 for the Big Guys)

As a large portion of the travel industry moves online, there are many things that contribute to its success (or failure). I will take a look at these in my next post, the finale to this blog.