A squee is good for creativity and innovation
Added: (Tue Oct 13 2009)
Pressbox (Press Release) -
A new travel start-up is challenging the likes of Kayak, SideStep, Travelzoo and Momondo, by relying exclusively on travellers’ information to identify and display the true cost of travel.
Madrid (Spain), 10 October 2009 – Great things can emerge from a recession or depression. Articles abound on what companies were founded in tough times, from Microsoft to HP, and how, to steal a quote from a recent report on entrepreneurship in the Economist, “economic growth occurs whenever people take resources and rearrange them in ways that are more valuable”. It might be harder to foster that innovation when it comes to the Internet – after all, it’s a living thing, and almost defines itself by being in continual state of renewal. But two young innovators claim to have a found a niche that will re-write the rules for travel search.
While suppliers’ web sites and online travel agencies used to be the norm to start any planning, a new breed of web sites, known as ‘travel search engines’, have recently become increasingly popular with travellers. By screening suppliers’ web sites and online travel agencies and aggregating their best deals into a single web page, travel meta-search engines have reduced significantly the travel planning process and help travellers determine price levels. The numbers speak for themselves: while major airline web sites and online travel agencies have seen US traffic to their site grow by single digit percentage, kayak.com and travelzoo.com have experienced growth of respectively 48% and 45% (source: compete.com).
cost4travel, a new travel start-up, claims that travel meta-search engines, while very useful in the travel booking process, do not offer a complete picture of the travel costs to be expected from upcoming trips. Because they rely on suppliers’ data, cover only the flight, accommodation and car rental components of travel, and do not offer qualitative reviews, cost4travel saw an opportunity in developing a ‘social’ travel search engine, where price information will come from the travellers themselves, not the suppliers. It would also cover an extensive range of travel-related products, from flights to accommodation, taxis, ferries as well as related services like restaurants, sports & activities.
Based in Madrid, Spain, the company’s two founders aspire to make cost4travel the online reference for travel-related costs, by facilitating sharing of such information between travellers worldwide. It wouldn’t just end with consumers - travel suppliers are likely to keep a keen eye on this too.
cost4travel has developed and launched a site - www.cost4travel.com – where travellers can calculate, manage and evaluate the costs of their travel, using their PC and in a second phase, their smartphones and PDAs.
Starting at the beginning, cost4travel is about getting travellers to share the prices paid for the services they used while travelling – flights, hotels and other accommodation, car hire, taxis, ferries, scooter rental, scuba dive and more. Once that information is uploaded, all other travellers will be able to search this information to evaluate potential spend for their next trip.
Just imagine a travel calculator. The technology will store, organise and compute the pricing data inputted. The search feature will, using a number of parameters and business rules, show average, or highest or lowest price for particular travel services. The information you want will be generated in currencies of your choice, and offer bar charts and graphs for clear reference to help you budget.
cost4travel is also making it easier for us to manage our own travel costs. Using ‘My Trips’, we can create virtual trips and assign the travel costs we feed in to these and obtain a complete picture of the costs of our latest trips. In the future, travellers will be able to also create travel budgets, using cost4travel’s search engine, and contrast them with the real costs of your travel.
This at least is what cost4travel will do - but I better add a quick note here to bring us back to earth. For this initial launch, the site relies on content first and foremost. Phase 1 is to feed in the data. The complete search modules can only be released when there is enough critical mass. Until then, the site still offers travellers the means to view specific trip and travel reports as data is initially inputted.
It is true that everything hinges on the site reaching its full potential – but will it? Here are some reasons why cost4travel founder Stéphane Pingaud believes it will.
1. Travel sites today are an essential part of travel planning and statistics prove it. According to a recent report in Travel Daily News, sixty-six percent (66%) of leisure travellers now use the Internet to plan some aspect of their travel (versus 35% in 2000). The key, says Pingaud, is that none of these travel sites focus exclusively on cost.
2. Travel is still big business: “A new itinerary” highlighted by the Economist back in 2008 showed how international arrivals reached 900 million in 2007 a 6% increase against 2006. Certainly figures are not so rosy today as travel is hit but the trend is set to continue when the economic situation is back on its feet. And, ultimately, we will always want to watch our costs as we travel.
3. Transparency is a key topic for the travel industry. The gold-rush for ancillary revenues that now makes airlines unbundle their offers only to add fees for almost everything else above and beyond the seat price, is actually confusing travellers and not helping travel vendors. A recent article in The Wall Street Journal by Scott McCartney* highlights this realisation by travel companies who are attempting to roll out tools for agencies and online vendors to “…lay bare hidden fees”. Good for them. And for us, cost4travel is offering that transparency to consumers directly.
4. Help bring down prices? cost4travel data will show certain traveller trends: what’s in and what’s out, always with the angle on cost. We may inadvertently be encouraging suppliers to offer better services. Pingaud continues, “…it may just be that our data will motivate travel operators to re-evaluate their costs and service…” Bringing down prices is an exaggeration but getting costs and offers that are more in line with our expectations would be a start.
5. Corporate travel management. Corporate travel managers or corporate-focused agencies will also have a way to really cross reference costs-paid against costs-quoted and ensure corporate customers stay in budget and are offered full and transparent cost data.
6. What’s in for me? Firstly, travellers’ contributions bring immediate rewards for themselves as much as for all other users of the site. From the outset, we are able to be smarter about our costs and budgeting before, during and after travel. Secondly, the mutual and community aspect of the site will drive data in the best interests of everybody with the added benefit of almost certainly influencing suppliers’ prices or offers.
I like it. I would use it. We will always travel and yet this site might add something more to the travel industry – and that is a spot of transparency and reality during these changing times.
* The Wall Street Journal, February 09, “Airfare Quotes That Lay Bare Hidden Fees” by Scott McCartney