Dohop.com - the flight search engine that not only displays search results from multiple vendors, but actually combines flights in a gadzillion ways to come up with the best and the cheapes option for you - released a major update a couple of days back.
It’s now possible to pick airports from an interactive map, plus results seem to have more fare info, with booking options from both travel agencies and airline websites.
I think by now it’s safe to assume that the rumours about Google buying Expedia, were indeed not true.
Big surprise. Not.
Drive & stay vacations are grossly overlooked within the travel industry.
It can’t be because the industry is too small or that there’s no money in it (because it’s huge and still has decent margins left even for aggregators) . It can’t be because there are no technological challenges or potential for building neat sites (it’s probably right up there with the average fly&stay holiday in terms of booking complexity and online proliferation).
No, my $0.02 is the reason drive&stay keeps flying below radar is the growth vector doesn’t look like that of an OTA, where you can just aggregate commoditized stuff and grab traffic from everywhere. This is in stark contrast to the drive&stay market, where inventory is completely fragmented, and aggregators need to go out and get inventory face to face with camp-sites, vacation facilities, mom-n-pop type operations.
Now the key aggregators already hoarding prime inventory like fierce dragons are mostly kind of old-school, but not stupid, so they’re adapting step by step to online operations, a ballpark estimate is about 50-50 online/call-center.
More importantly, my guess is the drive & stay market is going to be hit like everything else by the economic down-turn, but will gain market share on the shrinking market, as self-drive holidays can be easily adjusted to fit budget, and although gas for the car might be more expensive, cost of flying is being hit even harder.
Dohop.com has released a new version of their flight search engine - or flight planner as they call it. Graphic makeovers include an innovative map search and more information about each search result and booking options.
But the cool thing about www.dohop.com is the search engine will combine results from hundreds of sources and create unique itineraries, specifically tailored for your trip. If you are flying London-Berlin, this won’t mean much, but if you’re intent on going from one less frequently served airport to another, really far away - dohop will potentially amaze you.
Not only do they come up with alternative routes and combine one way tickets from different carriers, they also find and include low-cost carrier flights in the equation. This is where savings on fares can be really interesting.
We all know that anything (really *anything*) posted online has the chance or risk of spreading like wildfire, once it gains momentum.
Some companies like ComCast and Southwest Airlines are now actively monitoring and responding to posts about them in blogs and sites like Twitter and YouTube. It sounds like thinking outside the box and embracing the brave new world, but it’s really something that should be included, if not given top priority in any business intelligence setup.
Thousands of companies are paying agencies to learn about what’s written about them in print, while simultaneously turning a blind eye to a mass media where things can get ugly really fast. That just doesn’t make sense.
My prediction - the rise of a new breed of social network consultants managing company-consumer relations in social networks.
It’s (probably) happening right now. The airline industry is shapeshifting with carrier shutdowns and bankruptcies in the US acting as the canary. Jared Blank even wrote this Obituary at onlinetravelreview.com that put things in a pretty dramatic perspective.
So, what happens next? In his blog, Jared picks up on some of the possible new business/technology solutions that could help turn things around. Of these, I think the notion of link-ups between carriers in manageable, flexible and, above all, cost-efficient connections between long-haul and regional carriers will be crucial.
This could be an inflection point where airlines must form new alliances and give up on the Our-Airline-Is-An-Island idea of the independent operation where the business plan promised that an ever growing route map and direct online sales would lead to profitability and, in some cases, world dominance.
My $0.02 is that if you’re an airline and want to optimise your cabin factor to reach profitability, it’s time to find dancing partners, and it’s time to start looking at combining footprints to actually meet customer demand.
Here’s a great example: Living in Scandinavia, it’s impossible to miss Sterling’s ads for regional hops to London, Berlin, etc. If I want to kick back in Nice, I know where to book. But, the problem is, I’d never even consider combining, say, a Sterling itinerary from Copenhagen to London, with a Virgin Atlantic itinerary from London to New York. I’m sure there are plenty of excellent flights to match that would give me a great combined itinerary, and would give Sterling AND Virgin another ass in their seats, but then they have to help me along - it might be as easy as to simply suggest the idea, thereby letting me know they thought about it and at least they themselves think it’s a good idea.
Will Google take the plunge and become the world’s largest meta search site, too? It’s already a price-comparion service through Google Product Search, but will it go after more specialised areas such as Travel Search Engines?
For some time time, I’ve argued that Google is ideally positioned to do just this; to execute and launch travel search similiar to kayak.com, dohop.com, et al.
Indeed, they’ve meddled with a special search interface for quite some time.
Just try googling “London To Berlin” and watch the enhanced travel search interface appear, together with selected Online Travel Agencies to finalize the search at.
This is not meta search, in fact it’s very very basic stuff. But I’m pretty sure there is substantial data mining going on in the Googleplex in order to evaluate future steps. There are companies out there to buy (kayak.com if you want the industry leader, dohop.com if you want the coolest technology) that would kick-start a Google travel search engine, or Google could just decide to steal with pride and polish to perfection.
A caveat: Considering the fact that the TSEs of the world are pretty big SEM spenders today, a Google TSE would result in an industry massacre and reduced AdWords revenues for Google. Live and let live, or control more of the value chain directly?
The answer might be to do a little bit of both. After all, there are hundreds if not thousands of travel search sites out there scraping and reading feeds, working hard to keep as many traffic sources as possible alive and showing in search results. All of these search engines have duplicate data, but it’s locked in. For every market entry by a new TSE, the duplication and traffic inefficiency gets worse. OTAs get more requests from ever increasing numbers of TSEs, so they in turn have to query their GDSs. Even airlines have some elements of cost involved when searching their own data.
Now, wouldn’t it be great if all of this could happen much faster, centrally and the data could be shared effectively and still support a healthy, competitive market?
So - what if an industry leader took the role of
A) Outlining and enforcing an implementation standard of results
B) Worked with whoever wanted to be included to ensure that centralised data mining happened (compare this to setting up your sitemap in Webmaster tools, spending countless hours managing your AdWords account - if it’s Google it’s usually worth it, so you do it, even if you’re e.g. Expedia).
C) Offered it to clients (just like Google offers AdSense to website owners)
If I was running a large affiliate network, like CJ, Zanox or TradeDoubler, I would seriously consider moving in and cornering this position - before Google does. Because they should. And then I’ll say I told you they would.
Rumours emerging about Google moving in to swallow Expedia all seem to miss one thing - Google’s AdWords revenue to a large extent comes from travel.
Now, Google owning Expedia would alienate just about every OTA out there.
1) Their money spent with Google would support the activities of Expedia, which is already kind of the Boogeyman for smaller companies.
2) Although Google claims to respect privacy and integrity of information - using Google Analytics and AdWords conversion tracking would seem like a pretty exposed setup. Knowing Google/Expedia has the funds to out-price just about everyone they want to, for as long as they like - who would want to risk showing on the radar?
I can name a bunch of them that would actively start looking for other traffic sources to spend their money on, rather than paid search in Google.
This is all healthy paranoia - sure, profitable traffic today and tomorrow would still look like a good idea to an OTA, but they would know they were also nurturing a beast that might decide to go after them.
Here’s some advice for you, Google, if you guys are to buy one single travel industry player, it should be kayak.com - hands down.
Oh, and if I’m wrong and you actually go ahead and buy Expedia, it BETTER be because you plan to finally build a space elevator, and need Expedia to administrate the tickets for it. Actually, I’d be kind of cool with that.
It’s no big secret that Travel Search Engines like kayak, dohop, sidestep (now also kayak…), mobissimo, skyscanner, farechase, farecast, momondo, et al, all want to get paid from the airlines and OTAs in their search results.
The overall prediction is that the willingness to pay for TSE traffic seen from Online Travel Agencies in later years, will be matched by airlines in the near future, as airlines continue to come to terms with, and start executing on, their own Supplier Direct strategies.
But how will these guys pay?
For now, we’ll set aside the notion of radically new or innovative payment setups, as well as the unsuitable common ones like fixed fees (…although that might actually work) and CPM.
This leaves us with Cost Per Click, or Cost Per Order.
So far, the general stance, more or less, from the TSEs have been to try to be strict about CPC, and OTAs (and airlines) have been trying to get CPO deals.
Both sides can argue their case.
Or is it? I believe there are strong arguments supporting the CPC model also from the point of view of an OTA/airline: