A travel website is a website on the world wide web that is dedicated to
travel. The site may be focused on travel reviews, trip fares, or a
combination of both. Approximately seventy million consumers researched
travel plans online in July 2006. Travel bookings are the single largest
component of e-commerce, according to Forrester Research.
Travelogues Many travel websites are online
travelogues or travel journals, usually created by individual travelers and
hosted by companies that generally provide their information to consumers
for free. These companies generate revenue through advertising or by
providing services to other businesses. This medium produces a wide variety of
styles, often incorporating graphics, photography, maps, and other unique
content. Some examples of websites that use a combination of travel reviews and
the booking of travel are TripAdvisor, Virtualtourist, GLOBOsapiens, IgoUgo,
and Cruise Critic. Service providers
Individual airlines, hotels, bed and breakfasts, cruise lines, automobile
rental companies, and other travel-related service providers often
maintain their own web sites providing retail sales. Many with complex
offerings include some sort of search engine technology to look for bookings
within a certain timeframe, service class, geographic location, or price
range. Online travel agencies
An online travel agency specializes in offering planning sources and booking
capabilities. Major OTAs include: Voyages-sncf.com - revenue €2.23 billion
Expedia, Inc., including Expedia.com, Hotels.com, Hotwire.com, Travelocity and
others - revenue US$2.937 billion Sabre Holdings, including lastminute.com
and others - revenue US$2.9 billion Opodo - revenue €1.3 billion
Priceline.com - revenue US$1.9 billion Orbitz Worldwide, Inc., including
Orbitz, CheapTickets, ebookers, and others - revenue US$870 million
Travelgenio - revenue €344 million Wotif.com - revenue A$145 million
Webjet - revenue A$59.3 million Fare aggregators and metasearch engines
The average consumer visits 3.6 sites when shopping for an airline ticket
online, according to PhoCusWright, a Sherman, CT-based travel technology
firm. Yahoo claims 76% of all online travel purchases are preceded by some
sort of search function, according to Malcolmson, director of product
development for Yahoo Travel. The 2004 Travel Consumer Survey published Jupiter
Research noted that "nearly two in five online travel consumers say they believe
that no one site has the lowest rates or fares." Thus a niche was created for
aggregate travel search which seek to find the lowest rates from multiple
travel sites, obviating the need for consumers to cross-shop from site to
site. Metasearch engines are so named conduct
searches across multiple independent search engines. Metasearch engines often
make use of "screen scraping" to get live availability of flights. Screen
scraping is a way of crawling through the airline websites, getting content
from those sites by extracting data from the same human-readable HTML feed.
Metasearch engines usually process incoming data to eliminate duplicate
entries, but may not expose "advanced search" options in the underlying
databases. Fare aggregators redirect the users to
an airline, cruise, hotel, or car rental site or Online Travel Agent for the
final purchase of a ticket. Aggregators' business models include getting feeds
from major OTAs, then displaying to the users all of the results on one screen.
The OTA then fulfills the ticket. Aggregators generate revenues through
advertising and charging OTAs for referring clients. Examples of aggregate
sites are Bravofly, Cheapflights, Priceline, Expedia, Kayak.com, Momondo,
LowEndTicket and CheapOair. Kayak.com is unusual in linking to online travel
agencies and hotel web sites alike, allowing the customer to choose whether
to book directly on the hotel web site or through an online travel agency.
Google Hotel Finder is an experiment that allows to find hotel prices with
Google, however it does not offer to book hotels, merely to compare rates.
The difference between a "fare aggregator" and "metasearch engine" is
unclear, though different terms may imply different levels of cooperation
between the companies involved. In 2008, Ryanair threatened to cancel
all bookings made on Ryanair flights made through metasearch engines, but
later allowed the sites to operate as long as they did not resell tickets or
overload Ryanair's servers. In 2015, Lufthansa Group announced
adding surcharge for flights booked on other sites.
Bargain sites Travel bargain websites collect and
publish bargain rates by advising consumers where to find them online.
Rather than providing detailed search tools, these sites generally focus on
offering advertised specials, such as last-minute sales from travel suppliers
eager to deplete unused inventory; therefore, these sites often work best
for consumers who are flexible about destinations and other key itinerary
components. Travel and tourism guides
Many websites take the form of a digital version of a traditional guide book,
aiming to provide advice on which destinations, attractions,
accommodations, and so on, are worth a visit and providing information on how
to access them. Most states, provinces and countries
have their own convention and visitor bureaus, which usually sponsor a website
dedicated to promoting tourism in their respective regions. Cities that rely on
tourism also operate websites promoting their destinations, such as VEGAS.com
for Las Vegas, Nevada. Student travel agencies
Some travel websites cater specifically to the college student audience and list
exclusive airfare deals and travel products.
StudentUniverse offers exclusive airfare for college student and faculty, as well
as 18- to 25-year-old youth travelers. Members must verify that they are
enrolled or are faculty at an accredited college or university.
STA Travel offers student and youth airfare deals as well.
Social travel website A social travel website is a type of
travel website that will look at where the user is going and pair them with
other places they want to go based on where other people have gone. This can
help the traveler gain insight of the destination, people, culture before
travel and become aware of the places the user is willing to visit.
See also Internet booking engine
Travel advisory Travel technology
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