Social Media and Marketing

IN-DEPTH: Kayak comes up with a new packaged version, a new site in hipmunk emerges, zugu flights meta search brand strengthens its offering by including hotels price comparison, the list goes on...

Published: 26 Aug 2010

IN-DEPTH: Kayak comes up with a new packaged version, a new site in hipmunk emerges, zugu flights meta search brand strengthens its offering by including hotels price comparison, the list goes on...

By Ritesh Gupta

Flight search will continue to be a strong category for meta-search because the price-comparison orientation of these sites is well suited to the commodity nature of air travel.

This year, quite a few changes and interesting developments have emerged in the flight search site sector.

Among the most discussed developments, the one that has obviously hogged the limelight features Google’s agreement to acquire ITA Software, a Cambridge, Massachusetts flight information software company, for $700 million, subject to adjustments. According to the search giant’s chairman and CEO Eric Schmidt, ITA’s technology opens new possibilities for the company to “create new ways for users to more easily find flight information online”. Google believes that it can make more significant innovations and bigger breakthroughs in online flight search by combining its engineering expertise with ITA Software’s than it would by simply licensing ITA Software's data service.

Earlier this year, in an interview with EyeforTravel’s Ritesh Gupta, Don Birch, managing partner, China Opportunities Partners Ltd, said, “Meta Search will have a bumper year. Through a combination of improved technologies, better presentation and more price competition between the travel suppliers, meta search will do well. Travellers are increasingly better informed and they will use meta search to valid their value choices.”

On another positive note, recently it emerged that the total number of UK consumer searches for flights in June were up 28% on May levels, according to the latest quarterly independent research from Greenlight, a specialist search and social marketing consulting and technology firm. According to the report, ‘Flights Report June 2010’, there were 38 million searches performed online in June by consumers compared to 29 million in May.

Changes

This week Kayak has also unveiled its new look.

On its blog, the company says, “...if you’re familiar with the tools on our site today, you’ll be pleased that none of it has changed. It really is a new package with the same great KAYAK taste, but now with Shiny.” It added, “...you’ll probably notice that we’ve given the Kayak ‘flippy’ a prominent feature on our home page. Yes, we love ‘flippy’ mostly because we think it looks cool but also because we’ve had it for six years as a little animation collecting data from hundreds of travel sites.”

Kayak’s advertising agency, Goodby, Silverstein & Partners worked with the site’s U/I team on the new design.

For its part, Kayak also acquired Munich-based flight and hotel search site swoodoo this year.

When hipmunk, a new flight search site, was recently unveiled, the company stated that most flight search sites haven’t changed in years. They have an intimidating search page and endless pages of flight results, it added.

This month, in addition to the launch of hipmunk, a site that promises its users to visualise how their flights compare in time and duration, WhichBudget, the budget airline search engine, too, unveiled its newly streamlined and interactive, website.

WhichBudget’s new interactive website is aimed at those who know where they want to fly to or where they want to fly from, but don’t know which budget airline flies there.

Martino Matijevic, CEO and founder at WhichBudget.com, pointed out: “With so many airlines offering competitive flight prices operating in the world, it is difficult and time consuming for consumers to trawl through them all in order to find out who flies where. Instead, WhichBudget does the job for them.”

Social shopping

Social shopping for travel is definitely being marketed as the next big thing. Unbiased meta-search and user generated content make a potent combination. The industry has already witnessed significant moves. The focus seems to be on delivering sophisticated collaborative filtering and recommendation engines that depend on individual tastes as well as recommendations.

For its part, the WhichBudget team will provide top tips on travelling with budget airlines and what to do when you get there. Users will also be able to share their own budget travelling knowledge with the WhichBudget community on Facebook and Twitter; swapping ideas on what to see, where to stay and where to eat when they get there.

Functionalities

In terms of functionalities, WhichBudget says the addition of a map function to pinpoint airport location and proximity to towns and cities allows users to find out exactly where they are flying to in relation to their chosen destination. Future development will include the inclusion of flight price information and a survey widget, encouraging fans and followers to have their say on a whole range of budget travel topics.

Recently, Cheapflights Media announced the expansion of the zugu flights meta search brand to include hotels price comparison. Launched earlier this year in beta as a flights search offering in the UK and then in Germany, zugu is now also available in the U.S. Cheapflights Media will be rolling out both hotels search and car hire on zugu.co.uk, and hotel search on zugu.de and zugu.com starting immediately.

The company emphasised that the new offering simplifies price comparison, scans the widest selection of airlines and displays the results in a clean and concise format. In addition to simplified price comparison, the company also highlighted following features:

• Zugu is the only meta site to feature handy sliders that show how prices change depending on the specific hour. The site makes it easy to choose between convenience (when you want to fly) and price (how much it will cost you to fly at a certain hour compared to cheaper options).
• Since travel is often a shared experience, Zugu also makes it easy to see the total price for multiple passengers in a single view. Not only does it display the price for all passengers, but it also allows quick cost comparison for adults, children and infants.

Preference

Interestingly, a study in May this year indicated that despite the use of travel websites for search and information, consumers ultimately purchase tickets on commercial airlines’ websites.

According to a report released by Frost & Sullivan, featuring 1,000 U.S. air-traveling consumers travelled at least once within the six months in the run-up to the study, most air travellers start their commercial airline ticket purchase process on travel websites or commercial airline websites. Even though travel websites are a good source of information, the largest proportion of air travellers actually switches purchase channels and purchases directly from commercial airline websites.

The statistics showed that 47 percent of respondents book flights using commercial airline websites, compared to 36 percent of individuals that use a travel website. That’s despite 60 percent of bookers doing their research on travel websites, slightly more than the 57 percent that researched using commercial airline websites.

Interestingly, the top purchase drivers are the same among those who purchase using a travel website versus those using a commercial airline website.

Tonya Fowler, Global Director with Frost & Sullivan’s Customer Research Team, said, “Thus, I think deeper investigation in a follow-up study may reveal more emotional aspects (i.e., trust, loyalty, etc.) that lead more airline travelers to purchase via commercial airline websites versus travel websites.”

“Low-cost airline airfares are not always the lowest airfare when compared to those of legacy carriers and travel websites,” said Nathan K. Smith, Industry Analyst with Frost & Sullivan’s Aerospace & Defense Team. “Strong advertising and branding have lead to the myth of `look no further’.”

Travel Distribution Summit North America 2010

EyeforTravel is scheduled to conduct a session about the current state of the search landscape as part of its forthcoming Travel Distribution Summit North America 2010 event, to be held in Chicago (13-14 October). Rob Torres, Managing Director of Travel Vertical, Google Inc, and Krista Pappas, Global Director & Head of Business Development, Bing Travel at Microsoft are among the speakers scheduled to take part in this session.

For more information, click here