Articles tagged “metasearch”

Dohop is carefully picking its spots: Going all in on the B2B side of the business, targeting the Middle East, and working with low cost carriers on in-app flight bookings. All of that focus and contrarian thinking could work in its favor, although competing against much larger competitors could be as difficult as scaling an Icelandic glacier.

Expedia Inc. is following the TripAdvisor playbook on Trivago, which could go the spinoff/IPO route one day. The Priceline Group, meanwhile, is focusing on Booking.com and new-prize OpenTable as priorities while being measured about Kayak's international expansion.

Even large online travel agencies like Expedia need marketing partners, and that is where the metasearch sites come in. In Expedia's view, its own subsidiary Trivago is helping Expedia compensate for the traffic it is losing, and will continue to lose, from TripAdvisor.

TripAdvisor is injecting a healty dose of competition into hotel metasearch, and is finding a way to give hotels more power in a way that competitors aren't doing. Funny how things change: TripAdvisor, hotels' best friend.

Skyscanner launched in the Americas about a year ago, and it seems as though things are going slowly for now. But, the search site has plenty of patience, believing these are just the early days of online travel.

Will the immediacy of Orbitz Worldwide's loyalty program redemption be a difference-maker in helping to build its global hotel business? CEO Barney Harford is counting on it.

The growth rate of people using TripAdvisor's hotel metasearch product, Hotel Shopper, has been decelerating. Perhaps TripAdvisor's next TV ad campaign will provide more of a direct tie-in to Hotel Shopper rather than its current generic bent, "Visit TripAdvisor New York" etc.

A metasearch-like advertisement on an online travel agency site isn't going to get anywhere near the the sort of clout that sites such as TripAdvisor, Google and Kayak can wield, but it enables OTA sites to get into metasearch in a modest way to appease consumers' inclination to comparison-shop without taking a lot of the risk.

This acquisition makes total sense for China, which now has a home-grown company to build its China footprint.

Trivago's new shared-room search reflects the born-again trendiness of hostels -- which are no longer called youth hostels -- and apartment shares. Booking.com and Kayak already have it, and others will add it.