yahoo travel-search beta launched today
September 8, 2004ok, i guess this move heralds new – in europe unknown – qualities of market transparency in the airline business: yahoo travel search – still in beta. (found on yahoo search blog)
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Interesting, though I think that there are / were travel search engines in Europe. Consider T-Online-Travel.
On the other hand, this service is still only for the US, though again, as always, this isnīt stated anywhere (except that fares are quoted in US$). I tried a ticket roundtrick Vienna VIE to Tokyo NRT (Wed 15-Sep to Wed 22-Sep), resulting in 1104 US$. The Yahoo travel search links to Expedia .. and then? Apart from payment, I think on important thing is missing – is the flight available at all?
Checking the same flight on the AirFrance site … with the exact same flight time .. lowest costs .. 905 EUR or 1096 US$ (or 772 EUR or 936 US$ plus taxes) .. I guess even cheaper.
So the search engine should include a link to the airline!
adalbert, i totally agree. i should have pointed out how exactly i meant it: now that one of the big shots (sorry to say, despite all the numbers i don’t consider t-online a big shot) gets their hands seriously dirty into travel search i expect the market to move. (another argument against t-online: they hardly do any features seriously – t-online is just an aggregation of me-too features.)
You are right Helge that the market will be moved.
Searching for hotel would be also very interesting, making queries such as: I want this hotel on this island in Greece, lets see which tour operator has it and who offers the cheapest price.
I donīt have any connection to T-Online (except that I worked there), but as I mentioned T-Online-Travel.com I check it again and it offers similar result as the Yahoo site: for the same flight as in my previous comments, it has different results though: Swiss 818 EUR (including tax), BA 1185 EUR incl. tax, AirFrance 1334 EUR incl tax and even an Aeroflot flight at 1474 EUR incl taxes.
Cross-checking it at swiss.com: the price here is EUR 742 excluding taxes, resulting in EUR 817.65 with taxes, which is the same price as at T-Online-Travel.
See? :-)
As you see, commentstrack would be really useful here! :-)
Well there are plenty of travel search engines in Europe. I guess this section has had a quite succesful growth since you last wrote here.
A few of the new sites could be
http://www.momondo.com
http://www.skyscanner.net
A momondo, we search prices and fares from more than 350 sites, mostly covering European low-budget airlines.
Enjoy !
Rasmus Velling
-Momondo Team