Quote:
Originally posted by AvsTgp
I owned a mainstream travel company (we tracked flights and issued notifications to cellphoes and pagers for delays and cancellations , this was way before evryone was doing we were the first)
I met the guys from sidestep! their system sucks ass! they are like all toplists and sell themselves to teh highest bidder they have no interest in the consumer or giving the best prices...
heres the synopsis
we tried setting up a system like theirs but the real big boys wont let you query their system multiple times especially if your pitting them against their competition and risking making them look high priced, also they dont wnat to be queried 100 times for the possibility of one sale.
orbitz is the best for domestic flights
hotels.com is the best for hotels
vacations use travelocity or site59
international use a travel agent and make sure he uses sabre and not worldspan,
always look for the travel agent that specializes in that contry ..i,e if its russia call a russian travel agent
also do the research yourself it takes 5 minutes to check 5 sites its well worth it!
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Great advice mostly except Sidestep doesn't suck ass, it usually saves you both time and money. I too have worked in the travel industry. We used to do a sample weekly comparison for a particular fare checking out several competitiors. Usually about 9 times out of 10 sidestep would be cheapest.
Let me explain briefly what SIDESTEP is. It is a browser plugin that will search multiple travel sites for air, hotel or car. Or you can go to their site to search if you don't want to install anything. It is NOT spyware. It is smart enough that when installed, if you are searching for a fare on say Orbitz, it will popup a sidebar and say something to the effect of "Hey do you want me to check a bunch of different sites for that same fare for you?" It doesn't matter that the travel companies pay Sidestep to be included in their search results as its kinda like PPC, except the results are ordered by price not bid amount so whoever is cheapest will come up first.
Regarding NaughtyINC's post about the programs travel agents use, as AvsTGP mentioned they are referring to either SABRE or WORLDSPAN. These programs query the airlines fare inventories directly insted of going thru' a web interface so they are faster. They are available to travel agents only and it is not worth becoming a licensed travel agent just to do a faster search and having to learn the command line type query strings.
The big 4 for airfares are Orbitz, Travelocity, Expedia and Cheaptickets. I think all of them plus many others are covered on Sidestep except Cheaptickets.
What I usually do is search at cheaptickets. Then a sidestep search will run in parallel after I agree and then choose the cheapest based on price, times, stops, FF points etc. This is good as it includes all the web only specials. If you choose one of the sidestep results you will be taken to the airline or travel site's page to get details and actually buy it if you want to.
