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

Henry wrote:

Miguel Cruz wrote:


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

yes

(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...).


When I encounter this malarkey, I ask myself how interested I really am
in the site. Did I go there for some purpose, or was I incidentally
carried there by the surf? If the former, i.e., if I care at all, I will
usually try to send the webmaster a note, quoting the following:

"Anyone who slaps a 'this page is best viewed with Browser X' label on a
Web page appears to be yearning for the bad old days, before the Web,
when you had very little chance of reading a document written on another
computer, another word processor, or another network."

-Tim Berners-Lee in Technology Review, July 1996

cheers,

Henry

And others who want to use and may need features that are not supported
by antiques.

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

Thank you all for your insights so far. I've made several changes
because of them. First of all, you don't need to register to start
using metatravel anymore, second, if you register, you don't need to
enter your email address if you don't want to (you'll have fewer tools
at your disposal - like a mass email to a targeted list of agents for
example, and you'll have to check the responses to your requests
online, you won't get them via email also). The service has been
working quite well so far. The responses that agents have been giving
to consumers have been excellent. information that you simply cannot
get from any of the computerized websites (expedia, orbits, travelocity
etc.) Also, travel agents have far more choices when deciding what to
look for for a customer than the database of available flights,
cruises, cars and tours that the big online travel shops offer. Of the
50 or so consumers I've called to check in with to see what they
thought so far, about 80% booked with an agent that respond with very
good information to their travel request. It is true that the value of
metatravel is not simply getting plane tickets (although it excels at
that also because agents often can find better fares than the online
companies). The true value of metatravel is for the customer who is
looking for information about a destination or wants to do something
more in depth than flying somewhere and back. I feel that many
travelers miss out on opportunities that they never knew about because
they never looked beyond the tiny amount of information found in the
orbitz travelocities etc. Anyway, more feedback will be great. Those
of you who haven't tried www.metatravel.com, try it and let me know
what you think.

I'm a little unclear about this site. It tells me "Metatravel is a
powerful, no cost program which will send your specific travel requests
and requirements to thousands of expert travel agents across the country
and around the world" - but I don't see any way to make a specific
travel request, only a way to search for an agency's specialty.

Eileen

dbk wrote:
Thank you all for your insights so far. I've made several changes
because of them. First of all, you don't need to register to start
using metatravel anymore, second, if you register, you don't need to
enter your email address if you don't want to (you'll have fewer tools
at your disposal - like a mass email to a targeted list of agents for
example, and you'll have to check the responses to your requests
online, you won't get them via email also). The service has been
working quite well so far. The responses that agents have been giving
to consumers have been excellent. information that you simply cannot
get from any of the computerized websites (expedia, orbits, travelocity
etc.) Also, travel agents have far more choices when deciding what to
look for for a customer than the database of available flights,
cruises, cars and tours that the big online travel shops offer. Of the
50 or so consumers I've called to check in with to see what they
thought so far, about 80% booked with an agent that respond with very
good information to their travel request. It is true that the value of
metatravel is not simply getting plane tickets (although it excels at
that also because agents often can find better fares than the online
companies). The true value of metatravel is for the customer who is
looking for information about a destination or wants to do something
more in depth than flying somewhere and back. I feel that many
travelers miss out on opportunities that they never knew about because
they never looked beyond the tiny amount of information found in the
orbitz travelocities etc. Anyway, more feedback will be great. Those
of you who haven't tried www.metatravel.com, try it and let me know
what you think.

Good Question Eileen,

I've made the agent search available to people who are not registered
and haven't signed in because I've gotten some feedback from people
who don't want to have to register to "evaluate" a site. However,
once you have registered, you get more tools. One of them is the
travel request area. Try it out and tell me what you think. I'm
trying very hard to incorporate people's ideas.

Eileen Garland wrote in message ...
I'm a little unclear about this site. It tells me "Metatravel is a
powerful, no cost program which will send your specific travel requests
and requirements to thousands of expert travel agents across the country
and around the world" - but I don't see any way to make a specific
travel request, only a way to search for an agency's specialty.

Eileen

dbk wrote:
Thank you all for your insights so far. I've made several changes
because of them. First of all, you don't need to register to start
using metatravel anymore, second, if you register, you don't need to
enter your email address if you don't want to (you'll have fewer tools
at your disposal - like a mass email to a targeted list of agents for
example, and you'll have to check the responses to your requests
online, you won't get them via email also). The service has been
working quite well so far. The responses that agents have been giving
to consumers have been excellent. information that you simply cannot
get from any of the computerized websites (expedia, orbits, travelocity
etc.) Also, travel agents have far more choices when deciding what to
look for for a customer than the database of available flights,
cruises, cars and tours that the big online travel shops offer. Of the
50 or so consumers I've called to check in with to see what they
thought so far, about 80% booked with an agent that respond with very
good information to their travel request. It is true that the value of
metatravel is not simply getting plane tickets (although it excels at
that also because agents often can find better fares than the online
companies). The true value of metatravel is for the customer who is
looking for information about a destination or wants to do something
more in depth than flying somewhere and back. I feel that many
travelers miss out on opportunities that they never knew about because
they never looked beyond the tiny amount of information found in the
orbitz travelocities etc. Anyway, more feedback will be great. Those
of you who haven't tried www.metatravel.com, try it and let me know
what you think.