It’s a dog-eat-dog travel agent world out there

When almost 1/2 of website visitors to a travel site immediately switch to a competitor’s site, to comparison shop, according to Hitwise, webdesigners need to find ways to retain the surfer.

Competition is stiff between the heavyweights such as Expedia and Priceline, while newcomer “metasearch” travel sites like Kayak, Sidestep, Farechase, Farecast, Farecompare and Flyspy are gaining customers since they scour the web for the lowest-price travel packages.

When price no longer supports/builds brand loyalty, the pendulum, I predict, will begin to swing to those value-added, personal travel agencies like 1trip3.com. With growth of the “killer” metasearch travel sites, airlines and hotels should start to partner with these quality travel agent sites and not continue to alienate the travel agent.

This entry was posted on Monday 11 September 2006 at 12:00 am and is filed under Website/Event, BEFORE the visit. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.