For most travelers, it goes largely unnoticed every time we look to book a flight or a hotel. We do a search on, say, Kayak, and the first listing shows a Booking.com result and the second listing displays Expedia. It may be their sister companies shown on subsequent listings, but Expedia and Booking clearly dominate metasearch. It doesn't always work out for consumers because lower rates sometimes take a back seat. And the metasearch companies historically got big revenue from Booking and Expedia for placements on their sites.
As Executive Editor Dennis Schaal explains in his piece today, things aren't so great right now for metasearch, largely because of this dependence on just two companies. Depending on whom you speak to, the problems are just temporary for metasearch, or the beginning of a five-year death march. What's clear is that metasearch needs more advertising partners, beyond Booking and Expedia. Greater competition. That's not going to happen anytime soon, however, so be prepared to watch the online travel giants continue to determine the fate of metasearch.
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