In class recently, we discussed how the travel industry will continue to see start ups primarily due to the complex nature of arranging travel. I just finished planning a very complex trip involving a safari in Africa and a side trip to Paris and felt the need, although I’m not quite sure what it is, for continued innovation. In planning flights, I used Kayak and Orbitz’s “multi-city” functionality to try to find the best prices for airfare. Not only did I quickly discover that they would continue to show me the same prices unless I cleared my cookies or actually clicked through to the purchase page, I also found that they didn’t always find me the best prices and routes! By adding or subtracting a stop, or changing the routing of my trip manually, I was able to find better prices. And once you start down that path, the possibilities of combinations become endless. I was dying for a product that would truly let me see what my options were. A travel agent was no help, either. They marked up flights with a commission, making anything that they found more expensive than what I found. In the midst of my flight planning, Orbitz redesigned it site and its glitches made it nearly impossible to find the flights I had previously found. These search engines, it seems, still have a long way to go in continuing to improve their functionality as people start to increase the frequency of planning complex travel online.
My frustration didn’t end there. Trying to figure out how to find a good, reputable safari company was mind-boggling. Googling “Africa safaris” creates an endless list of a mix of travel agents and tour operators, many of which look like they are run out of someone’s living room. Not to mention, you have to dig through every site to see if a tour actually departs during your travel time. And for the first time, I actually found the “sponsored” ads on Google to be more helpful than the organic search. But above all, I found word-of-mouth recommendations to be the most helpful. I could imagine a search engine that would allow you to search for tours, based on where you would like to go and the dates and duration of your travel. Similarly, a site like this could overlay reviews or mapping functionality, allowing you to compare and contrast trip options.
In the end, I used Orbitz to book my flights (post-getting the glitches worked out), went to STA travel who booked me a tour through a tour operator in South Africa, and booked my hotel in Paris through TabletHotels.com. It was exhausting and took over two weeks to nail down. Needless to say, I wholeheartedly agree that this industry still has a lot of growth to realize via the Internet and I would be thrilled to pay for the services it could provide.
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