Travel Search Engines

All in all, connect with several vendors, summarize all the results and present the best results.... Mm-hmm. The big issue is, how do they make it? It earns from the amount of traffic it transfers from its website to its affiliate website, and also a portion of the income comes from the real bookings that take place through its website recommendations.

Regulatory authority to investigate travel search engine fees

UK competitive guard dog to study how travel search engines work in finance mechanism. According to the CMA, the investigation will address some of the so-called'concerns raised about DCTs' (digital reference tools) in a general overview of locations in a number of industries, covering travel.

It will try to find out whether the consumer "would profit from being better informed about how a DCT earns money," says the CMA, asking whether this, in turn, will have an effect on the service then available. The second issue will be whether'agreements between a DCT and the supplier selling through it could reduce competition'.

Andrea Coscelli, acting CEO of CMA, says consumer "DCTs have made it easy for customers to get involved in many markets," but warns: Let us see why this is the case and whether more can be done to make sure that they are more beneficial to consumer and business. Skyscanner and Cheapflights, two of the UK's top travel search engines, have embraced the study.

Andrew Shelton, CEO of Checkflights, says the Momondo Group wants to know the extent of the survey, but any research that will help "build confidence between brand names and product lines like ours and our users" is a good step. Skyscanner recently launched a rating toolset for tariff providers that enables customers to better appreciate pricing precision and ticket providers' support services.

A number of travel search engines have also been talking in private recently about airline concern about "cumbersome tactics" against re-distribution constraints; trying to restrict how many providers of a tariff can be shown in search results.