Friday, 24 February 2017

Travel metasearch engines: empowering tourism customers and challenging tourism companies, but what’s next?


Today, Meta search engines, like Tripadvisor, Trivago, flight center, are an amazing tool for travellers. The consumer have a huge panel of choices to find a hotel, airline ticket, activities, and with all this, having the most attractive price with the best service. Comparing to online booking website, meta search engine don’t sell anything, the consumer is redirected to the booking website when he find its best solution for his trip.
            Companies need to treat with metasearch engine. Indeed, it can help hotels take on the OTA’s. According to pebbledesign, “meta-search is maturing and has a huge impact on how consumers purchase travel today”. This new trend need to be used as a marketing channel by travel companies. The consumer are able to have real time room availability and pricing feed.

Booking websites are flourishing on the web, diversifying the offers swamping customers with too much choice. Obtaining the best fare and the best deal is often synonymous with comparing several websites for hours. The solution? Metasearch engines provide it, they compare for us and give us a comprehensive view of search results.
Meta search engines has become a very competitive market. Many online comparators are available and are not always giving the same prices for the same trips. Big companies such as Expedia and Booking.com search engines, bought those meta search in order to get better visibility in the researches, sometimes distorting the results.
That’s why people nowadays have to compare comparators… Eventually the original problem is not yet solved. How could a meta search engine get out while the good is good?

-> What’s next?

Some possible evolutions for meta search engines according to this article and our thoughts: http://www.webintravel.com/metasearch-needs-evolution-innovation/

-   Become more than a price comparator: add some filters so that people can compare hotels according to comfort or be able to see if the hotels are adapted to romantic trips…
-  Become more personal and analyse consumer behaviour in order to propose individual solutions for people according to their habits and what they like.
-   Become machine learning and implanting an artificial intelligence dimension: the comparator could learn from all the researches and be as precise as it can be while giving the results, even if the request type is long and composed of several requirements it could be able to propose the perfect match.

Travel metasearch engines are not over there are just at the beginning of what they can offer as a service, people will still need it as offers are keeping growing and diversifying.

Sources :




Lena BENOIST
Sarah ALTMAYER

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