Does the world really need another search aggregation website? Well, we are about to find out.
FlightSearch.com has gone live (in beta) with an interesting approach to searching multiple travel sites.
Unlike some other players such as TripAdvisor's
bookingbuddy.com, TravelZoo's
SuperSearch, FlightSearch searches multiple sites
without opening window after window after window as each separate site is searched. Users are able to simply tab between results from Priceline, Orbitz, CheapTickets, Vayama, Kayak and others. (Does Kayak's inclusion make FlightSearch a meta of metas?) FlightSearch is a really nice take on an oft-copied model. And not a bad URL either.
FlightSearch is led by travel industry vet Ted Perlstein (full disclosure: Ted worked for me at Starwood as a summer intern once upon a time - he probably considers it a dark period in his career) who has also has been at Orbitz and, once upon a time, carried a business card with the title of "Head Sherpa" when he was at an earlier incarnation of lastminutetravel.com.
As we mentioned, FlightSearch is still in beta so there are a few things we'd still like to see improved, but we'll be watching to see when other OTAs (and metas?) join up. And how about a few suppliers? Where are you American and United, et al? Obviously, driving traffic in this hyper-competitive space will be a challenge but we like the approach Ted and team are taking.
These insights are excerpted with permission from Tom Botts' Hudson Crossing blog.
