Archive for the ‘Orbitz’ Category:
What Google’s Flight Search Is Missing
People are accusing Google of using it’s vast coverage and near universal brand to take unfair advantage of the “search and sell” industrial complex. When people type in; “San Diego to Charlotte Flights”, Google instantly provides the cheapest flights for that search criteria.
Google also provides a handy link for “more Google results…” After that, lesser aggregators such as Expedia and Kayak appear lower on the page. Of course, the vanquished can pay Google a fee for the benefits that any advertiser would gain…
Who is anti-competitive against whom?
So is Google engaging in anti-competitive behavior, after all, they are both the judge and the jury on who shows up where on your screens? Well, maybe not, all they are doing is “intercepting” general search inquiries with their own products. It’s awkward, but not necessarily illegal or anti-competitive since Google provides links directly to the airline site and does not book the seats on their own site like Expedia or Orbitz.
On the other hand, airlines pay travel sites 11 dollars for a booking that would otherwise cost them only 1 dollar through their own site – they prefer the Google hit over the travel site hit. Furthermore, travel booking sites rely on Google for 20% of their business so any slide in ranking means real money is sliding down with it – so they hate it. The airlines love it because it gets the traveler off the third party sites where stickiness is a rumor at best. All of this friction is worth 17 billion dollars per year – friction removed from a system is obviously in the best interest of the consumer, Right?
Ref Google’s Flight Search Sparks Antitrust Fears |.
The thing that everyone is missing is that none of the current players in online travel agency businesses are aware of a significant opportunity within the private aviation space. The Google quotations are made on a dollar ranking not a “Time/Service” metric. It remains extremely easy for an airline to game the ranking by hiding fees outside the fare quotation. It is also easy for the airline to underprice a few seats to pull the customer on to their site where they block out the better seats.
So, what is the opportunity are we talking about in private aviation at Social Flights?
- Aggregating open seats available on more than 15,000 private aircraft flying everywhere
- Making these seats available and transparent to the public for purchase as an alternative to the broken and anti-social commercial air service
- Enabling fliers to self aggregate and for direct flights from communities with no service to destinations they have in common
- Lowering the cost of private aviation by selling unused or under utilized assets, open seats