An alternative to travelocity, orbitz, expedia - I'd love some feedback

I'm working on a service which facilitates communication between
travelers and travel agents. The goal is to help people get the best
possible expertise and fares possible. It's an alternative to the
online "big boys." Please look at it and send some feedback. I want
to make the best service possible. It's free of course. I've been
working on software for travel agents for years, now I'd like to let
people benefit from the collective expertise of 40,000+ travel
agencies. I've used it myself twice with great success, but it can
still be better with good feedback and ideas

Please check it out at www.metatravel.com

"dbk" wrote in message
om...
I'm working on a service which facilitates communication between
travelers and travel agents. The goal is to help people get the best
possible expertise and fares possible. It's an alternative to the
online "big boys." Please look at it and send some feedback. I want
to make the best service possible. It's free of course. I've been
working on software for travel agents for years, now I'd like to let
people benefit from the collective expertise of 40,000+ travel
agencies. I've used it myself twice with great success, but it can
still be better with good feedback and ideas

easy peesy.

If I have to register to try it out, I go somewhere else.

I *know* that I am not alone in this.

tim


Please check it out at www.metatravel.com

tim wrote:
"dbk" wrote:
I'm working on a service which facilitates communication between
travelers and travel agents. The goal is to help people get the best
possible expertise and fares possible. It's an alternative to the
online "big boys." Please look at it and send some feedback. I want
to make the best service possible. It's free of course. I've been
working on software for travel agents for years, now I'd like to let
people benefit from the collective expertise of 40,000+ travel
agencies. I've used it myself twice with great success, but it can
still be better with good feedback and ideas

easy peesy.

If I have to register to try it out, I go somewhere else.

I *know* that I am not alone in this.

You are not - it kept me from going past the first click too.

Professionals who run web sites have learned that they have to offer
additional added value in order to coax registrations (e.g., Amazon with its
recommendations, Travelocity with its FareWatcher, etc.). Requiring
registration before presenting any value at all is one of the surest ways to
turn the majority of visitors away before they even see what you have to
offer (up there with moronic things like "your browser is not the same one
that I, the developer, use, so go download another one before you can visit
here, and why not change your monitor resolution while you're at it?").

miguel
--
Hit The Road! Photos and tales from around the world: http://travel.u.nu

Or you could simply register with fake information, they don't confirm any
of it.

I *know* that I am not the only one who figured that out.

It's amazing that when you put a name or an e-mail question on a form
everybody believes you have to fill it in with real information.








If I have to register to try it out, I go somewhere else.

I *know* that I am not alone in this.

tim


Please check it out at www.metatravel.com

Miguel Cruz wrote:

Professionals who run web sites have learned that they have to offer
additional added value in order to coax registrations

It was a good thing for the people that handle aa.com to eventually get
this and permit checking the price for a booking before requiring you to
login.

"Mike Cordelli" wrote in message
...
Or you could simply register with fake information, they don't confirm any
of it.

It is not the giving of the information that I have a problem with.

It is the inconvenience of doing it (when there is no real reason).

(Bear in mind that if you like the site and want to make a booking
later you will regret lying.)

I *know* that I am not the only one who figured that out.

I once got rejected from a site because too many people
had claimed the address

It's amazing that when you put a name or an e-mail question on a form
everybody believes you have to fill it in with real information.

But some types of site require 'real' information to be usable in other
ways

tim









If I have to register to try it out, I go somewhere else.

I *know* that I am not alone in this.

tim


Please check it out at www.metatravel.com

Miguel Cruz wrote:

tim wrote:

"dbk" wrote:

I'm working on a service which facilitates communication between
travelers and travel agents. The goal is to help people get the best
possible expertise and fares possible. It's an alternative to the
online "big boys." Please look at it and send some feedback. I want
to make the best service possible. It's free of course. I've been
working on software for travel agents for years, now I'd like to let
people benefit from the collective expertise of 40,000+ travel
agencies. I've used it myself twice with great success, but it can
still be better with good feedback and ideas

easy peesy.

If I have to register to try it out, I go somewhere else.

I *know* that I am not alone in this.


You are not - it kept me from going past the first click too.

Professionals who run web sites have learned that they have to offer
additional added value in order to coax registrations (e.g., Amazon with its
recommendations, Travelocity with its FareWatcher, etc.). Requiring
registration before presenting any value at all is one of the surest ways to
turn the majority of visitors away before they even see what you have to
offer (up there with moronic things like "your browser is not the same one
that I, the developer, use, so go download another one before you can visit
here, and why not change your monitor resolution while you're at it?").

miguel

Hear! Hear! Well said, Miguel. Most of those holier than thou sites are
not worth the time for a download.

John Bermont
--
------------------------------------------------------
* * * Mastering Independent Budget Travel * * *
http://www.enjoy-europe.com/
------------------------------------------------------

Personally, I'd never use a site like this. I like to browse, get pricing
and if I see something I like I buy it. Giving personal information and then
waiting for a response tends to make me feel like there would be sales
tactics or pressure when I did get a response. Instant online pricing like
expedia, travelocity, smartcruiser, etc are the things that everyone I know
uses because it's instant and anonymous. I can look at the details for
hundreds of vacations before deciding about anything. Most of the time I'm
not sure where I want to go until something looks attractive. If the pricing
is right then I may book it online or go to my travel agent.

Mark



"dbk" wrote in message
om...
I'm working on a service which facilitates communication between
travelers and travel agents. The goal is to help people get the best
possible expertise and fares possible. It's an alternative to the
online "big boys." Please look at it and send some feedback. I want
to make the best service possible. It's free of course. I've been
working on software for travel agents for years, now I'd like to let
people benefit from the collective expertise of 40,000+ travel
agencies. I've used it myself twice with great success, but it can
still be better with good feedback and ideas

Please check it out at www.metatravel.com

That's an interesting point. Instant gratification is worth alot. I
suppose Interesting point,

you could find something first on Orbitz etc, then ask for it on
metatravel.com. You should be able to find it cheaper. The problem I
have with the big online companies is that you are quite limited by
their options. A computer can't free associate and has a limited
inventory of options. The problem I have with working with a single
travel agency is that you're limited by the scope of thier knowlege,
expertise ans savvy regarding the type of travel that you are
interested in. Being able to search for travel agents who specialize
in what you're looking for and sending out a broadcast to only those
agents in addition to publishing a request to the 40K agencies we've
got (We been writing software for the B2B portion of the travel
industry for 7 years) I've found gets much better results than the big
online sites, but I do understand exactly what you're talking about
and it's giving me a couple of ideas. Perhaps I can parse a request
to metatravel and spider orbitz, travelocity etc and see what they
would do as a comparison and send that along to the agents as a number
to beat...


Thanks for the feedback

"Mark" wrote in message ...
Personally, I'd never use a site like this. I like to browse, get pricing
and if I see something I like I buy it. Giving personal information and then
waiting for a response tends to make me feel like there would be sales
tactics or pressure when I did get a response. Instant online pricing like
expedia, travelocity, smartcruiser, etc are the things that everyone I know
uses because it's instant and anonymous. I can look at the details for
hundreds of vacations before deciding about anything. Most of the time I'm
not sure where I want to go until something looks attractive. If the pricing
is right then I may book it online or go to my travel agent.

Mark



"dbk" wrote in message
om...
I'm working on a service which facilitates communication between
travelers and travel agents. The goal is to help people get the best
possible expertise and fares possible. It's an alternative to the
online "big boys." Please look at it and send some feedback. I want
to make the best service possible. It's free of course. I've been
working on software for travel agents for years, now I'd like to let
people benefit from the collective expertise of 40,000+ travel
agencies. I've used it myself twice with great success, but it can
still be better with good feedback and ideas

Please check it out at www.metatravel.com

dbk wrote:
you could find something first on Orbitz etc, then ask for it on
metatravel.com. You should be able to find it cheaper. The problem I
have with the big online companies is that you are quite limited by their
options. A computer can't free associate and has a limited inventory of
options. The problem I have with working with a single travel agency is
that you're limited by the scope of thier knowlege, expertise ans savvy
regarding the type of travel that you are interested in. Being able to
search for travel agents who specialize in what you're looking for and
sending out a broadcast to only those agents in addition to publishing a
request to the 40K agencies we've got (We been writing software for the
B2B portion of the travel industry for 7 years) I've found gets much
better results than the big online sites, but I do understand exactly what
you're talking about and it's giving me a couple of ideas. Perhaps I can
parse a request to metatravel and spider orbitz, travelocity etc and see
what they would do as a comparison and send that along to the agents as a
number to beat...

I don't get how this is supposed to work.

The reason it's cost-effective to run these large automated ticket engines
like Travelocity is because they are able to spread out the (fairly small)
cost of reservation database queries among all their users. Even if 90%
of queries don't turn into a sale they can still make it up on the few that
do.

However, having live travel agents look into a fare costs many orders of
magnitude more money. And their answers can't be cached like reservation
database query results can. Either they get paid a reasonable amount for
each and every little research project, or sooner or later, they stop doing
it.

So unless your results are so good that you're selling about 100 times as
many tickets per request (which strikes me as highly unlikely) then this
seems like it will quickly implode on its costs, or on agent churn.

miguel
--
Hit The Road! Photos and tales from around the world: http://travel.u.nu