First let me state clearly which site I describe as Travel Meta-Search, Kayak or Mobissimo. Those site are great to find bargains, I mostly use them for airplane tickets. It would be more precise to say I try to use them for airplane tickets.
First reason I hate them after spending many minutes trying to find a great deal for my tickets, I click on the link to the airline booking site. The airline booking site is responding with a wonderful error saying the WebLogic server is having problem. Yes I’m talking about United here.
Second, when the site is responding the price has just magically changed. Sometimes you see why, like the taxes where not included in the first price, but also sometimes it just has changed. It gets old very fast to search again.
Third, They try to do everything, but they don’t excel at trip planning. They are very good at sending you away and opening a myriad of windows to allow you to book your trip all over the web. Once your trip is booked, they don’t have a trace of what you bought where.
Fourth, it is just too long and I need to check too many different sites. On top of all the sites for the different bookings, I have to go to many other sites to plan my trip.
- Tripadvisor for the reviews.
- Google Maps for the location and the itineraries.
- YouTube and flickr for some user videos and pictures. They are often more telling than reviews.
- The Weather Channel to find the condition when I’ll take my trip. Also dig to find what will be the weather in march in Rome, because that is when I’ll go…
- Not listing the what to do, what to see sites here, it will be endless
We are not there yet with our site, but we are working on all this and that seems to be more than what most of these online travel agent seem to be doing.