Search Party has unveiled the beta version of its new hotel price search engine www.searchparty.com, an offering “with several new comparison features not currently found through any other single travel site”.

Published: 05 Apr 2006

Search Party has unveiled the beta version of its new hotel price search engine www.searchparty.com, an offering “with several new comparison features not currently found through any other single travel site”.

The new online travel company allows consumers to shop and compare the total cost of a hotel stay online. The company shared that Search Party allows consumers to easily search and compare nightly room rates, taxes and booking fees, and cancellation policies for more than 40,000 US hotels, across most major hotel brands and leading online travel sites, including Orbitz, Lodging.com, One Travel, Reserve Travel, LastMinuteTravel.com and many others.

People who think prices don’t vary much online need to shop for hotels on Search Party, says Eric Christensen, founder and president of Search Party.

“Search Party helps prevent consumers from overpaying for hotels. We understand the cost of a hotel stay is significantly more than just the average nightly rate and we’ve created Search Party to provide a complete view that helps our users compare the total `real’ cost of the stay to find the best all-around value that saves time and money,” said Christensen.

In addition to its Web site, Search Party has introduced a proprietary desktop tool -- Search Party Desktop -- that can be downloaded free of charge and enables online travel shoppers to compare hotel prices while they are also shopping on Expedia and Travelocity, even though these companies do not actively participate in Search Party or other travel search engines.

Search Party has already been in development for more than 18 months. The company says it vastly simplifies hotel comparison shopping for consumers while also helping hoteliers and distribution companies sell more rooms without straining reservations systems or compromising important revenue and yield management practices.

Some of the unique comparison features and services Search Party offers can help consumers identify variances in total costs that can range between 25 to 30 percent, or an average $50 per booking. These features include the ability to:

· Compare More Rates from More Sites -- Search Party searches and compares prices side-by-side for up to eight different sources versus the one to three sites compared through other travel search sites like SideStep or Kayak.

· Compare Taxes and Booking Fees -- Search Party is the first site to calculate and compare taxes and booking fees. Taxes and booking fees can vary considerably from site to site and can add up to 20 percent to the cost of a hotel room, yet are excluded from most online price guarantees. Search Party’s unique side-by-side comparison grid can save shoppers significant time by eliminating the need to click through to the hotel or agency site to conduct the comparisons manually.

· Compare Cancellation Policies -- Search Party is also the first website to comprehensively compare cancellation policies and fees across participating sites. As penalties have been become more stringent and costly, Search Party helps its customers find less restrictive policies that can help save an average of $25 per booking or what could even be the forfeiture of the full cost of one-night’s lodging or, in some
· cases, the entire stay.

· Compare Specific Room Types -- Going beyond just nightly hotel rate comparisons, Search Party compares prices for specific types of rooms to provide travel shoppers a true “apples to apples” comparison so they don’t waste time comparing the price of a no-view, double room with a full-view, king room.