Does anyone really need another flight-search startup?
Skift Take
To paraphrase a certain baseball philospher, it's getting late very early for flight-search startups. For any chance of success, they'd better offer something unique, have a lot of funding, and figure out how to attract substantial revenue elsewhere.
Here's some unsolicited advice for entrepreneurs: If you want to launch a travel startup, avoid building a flight-search startup, and focus on hotels or something else.
OK, the hotel sector is over-crowded, too, but you'll have more of a chance of surviving than trying to subsist on flight commissions (they only exist for huge OTAs or mega travel agencies), flight-search referral fees, or flight-related advertising revenue.
This is hardly revolutionary advice, but consider all of the flight-related startups out there, including, Routehappy, Pintrips, GetGoing, Superfly, MileWise, Darjeelin, Flights With Friends, SocialFlights, Flightfox, and many more.
Actually, strike one flight-search startup, MileWise, from the list as the company, founded in 2010, announced today that Yahoo is acquiring the MileWise team and its service is shutting down.
Still, despite all the hurdles, there are probably more flight-search startups in stealth mode, and on the way.
To be sure, these flight-search startups have divergent business models, with some commercing in airline miles, data licensing, opaque offerings, subscription revenue from contests, and other tweaks, but virtually all have to contend with the low margins in flight search.
By one estimate, hotel referral fees and advertising can be five times more lucrative than flight-search revenue, and the only way to even subsist
