Backchannel:
Over the past several years, the conventional wisdom has been that cruising the net would yield the best prices in the travel, hotel, and car rental spaces. There’s been a tidal shift in the travel industry, to a point where most of us use aggregators to book our trips.
Over time, however, the convention has flipped. And as the business models that on which these aggregators rely are getting tighter, the deals are getting worse. How can you be certain you’re getting the lowest quote? The short answer is, you can’t.
I haven’t had to travel for a while but, when I did, I used aggregator sites heavily. But I always checked with the individual airline before I made the sale just in case. Looks like that’s even more true now.
I always thought this would happen sooner for these companies (Priceline, Travelocity, Hotwire, Orbitz) than it did, because the industry had to adapt to the new technology. Never thought it would take ~20 years for the industry to learn to game the new system.
People like to fixate on the lowest price for things, any-things. Sometimes the cheapest deal isn’t the best deal. For me, value isn’t determined just by the price tag. I also factor in the value of the experience, the quality of the service, how comfortable it is. And these are difficult to quantify.
What really sucks, though, is this industry-wide race-to-the-bottom mentality, because everyone is so fixated on the price tag. Even if I pay for first class, it isn’t a first-class experience. The food isn’t any better, the seats are only marginally better. The people around me aren’t any better, that smell from coach still makes its way to my nose, and maybe I don’t get service-with-a-sneer.
Maybe the industry needs another disruption to ‘correct’ itself, but I also think its us, the riders, that need to make a value adjustment. Businesses will offer us what we want, so long as we are willing to pay for it.
Disruption?
Don’t hold your breath for (self-)flying cars.
Same thing with Amazon. They spent years actually selling good products at lower prices than brick-and-mortar stores. And lower than their online competition. (Remember buy.com?) All just to build mindshare.
Now, the first e-tailer many of us go to is Amazon. And some of us don’t even check prices at the competition. The net result is that Amazon no longer needs to have the best prices. They’ve won. And I think many well-known travel e-tailers are following the same mindshare-then-profits strategy.
I stopped trusting Amazon a few years ago.
First peek at a product it was one price, 5 mins later it was more expensive.
its all cookies and tracking. The sellers that have flat fees will prevail.
db
I use a combination of online aggregators as well as a travel agent. Oftentimes the travel agent still finds a better deal.
I booked a hotel room 3 years ago. After using aggregators to find the place (hey, thanks!), it turned out the hotel’s own website was cheaper. We’ve flown a few times since then, and again, direct was cheaper. Airlines like Southwest don’t work with aggregators, so there’s no choice. For me, aggregators are travel search engines, nothing else.
Except HotelTonight. That app/service handles a very specific niche (extreme last-minute booking), and it’s pretty cool.
I tried a number of those travel sites. After ten minutes or so the amount of information was overwhelming, the pricing confusing and simple things like looking at the details of a room were hard to achieve.
So I did the old fashioned thing and rang up the hotel that caught my eye. The kind man who answered offered me a deal that surprisingly was $100s cheaper than any of the sites. I was shocked and asked him why. His response was simple.
“I have no idea. So do want the room?”
After a seconds thought I exclaimed yes!
Sometimes it just pays to speak to someone.