Travel website
Encyclopedia
A travel website is a website
on the world wide web
, that is dedicated to travel
. The site may be focused on travel review
s, the booking of travel, or a combination of both. Approximately seventy million consumers researched travel plans online in July 2006. Travel bookings are the single largest component of e-commerce, according to Forrester Research
.
or travel journal
s, usually created by individual traveller
s and hosted
by companies that generally provide their information to consumers for free. These companies generate revenue through advertising
or by providing services to other businesses. This medium
produces a wide variety of styles, often incorporating graphics
, photography
, map
s, and other unique content. Some examples of websites that use a combination of travel reviews and the booking of travel are TripAdvisor
, Virtualtourist
, GLOBOsapiens
, IgoUgo
, and Cruise Critic
. TripAdvisor allows travelers to view, contribute to, and edit the online travel "guide book
s", containing over 25 million travel reviews on more than 33,000 destinations worldwide, as of July 2009. IgoUgo offers a place to store and share trip stories, pictures, opinions, tips, and experiences. Similarly, Cruise Critic is an interactive virtual community
of avid and first-time cruiser
s who plan, research, and share their experiences online.
s, hotel
s, bed and breakfast
s, cruise line
s, automobile rental companies, and other travel-related service providers often maintain their own web sites providing retail sales. Many with complex offerings include some sort of search engine
technology to look for bookings within a certain timeframe, service class, geographic location, or price range.
travel agency
(OTA) specializes in offering planning sources and booking capabilities. Major OTAs include:
-based travel technology firm. Yahoo claims 76% of all online travel purchases are preceded by some sort of search function, according to Malcolmson, director of product development for Yahoo Travel. The 2004 Travel Consumer Survey published Jupiter Research noted that "nearly two in five online travel consumers say they believe that no one site has the lowest rates or fares." Thus a niche was created for aggregate travel search which seek to find the lowest rates from multiple travel sites, obviating the need for consumers to cross-shop from site to site.
Metasearch engine
s are so named conduct searches across multiple independent search engine
s. Metasearch engines often make use of "screen scraping" to get live availability of flights. Screen scraping is a way of crawling through the airline websites, getting content from those sites by extracting data from the same human-readable HTML feed (rather than a Semantic Web
or database feed designed to be machine-readable). Metasearch engines usually process incoming data to eliminate duplicate entries, but may not expose "advanced search" options in the underlying databases (because not all databases support the same options).
Fare aggregators redirect the users to an airline, cruise, hotel, or car rental site or Online Travel Agent for the final purchase of a ticket. Aggregators' business models include getting feeds from major OTAs, then displaying to the users all of the results on one screen. The OTA then fulfills the ticket. Aggregators generate revenues through advertising and charging OTAs for referring clients. Examples of aggregate sites are Cheapflights
, Dohop
, Kayak.com
, Mobissimo
, Momondo
, CheapOair
, Ixigo.com
, SideStep
, and Skyscanner
.
The difference between a "fare aggregator" and "metasearch engine" is unclear, though different terms may imply different levels of cooperation between the companies involved.
In 2008, Ryanair
threatened to cancel all bookings made on Ryanair flights made through metasearch engines, but later allowed the sites to operate as long as they did not resell tickets or overload Ryanair's servers.
, aiming to provide advice on which destinations, attractions, accommodations, and so on, are worth a visit and providing information on how to access them.
Most states, provinces and countries have their own convention and visitor bureaus, which usually sponsor a website dedicated to promoting tourism
in their respective regions. Cities that rely on tourism also operate websites promoting their destinations, such as VEGAS.com
for Las Vegas
, Nevada
.
StudentUniverse
offers exclusive airfare for college student and faculty, as well as 18-25 year-old youth travelers. Members must verify that they are enrolled or are faculty at an accredited college or university.
STA Travel
offers student and youth airfare deals as well.
Website
A website, also written as Web site, web site, or simply site, is a collection of related web pages containing images, videos or other digital assets. A website is hosted on at least one web server, accessible via a network such as the Internet or a private local area network through an Internet...
on the world wide web
World Wide Web
The World Wide Web is a system of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet...
, that is dedicated to travel
Travel
Travel is the movement of people or objects between relatively distant geographical locations. 'Travel' can also include relatively short stays between successive movements.-Etymology:...
. The site may be focused on travel review
Review
A review is an evaluation of a publication, a product or a service, such as a movie , video game, musical composition , book ; a piece of hardware like a car, home appliance, or computer; or an event or performance, such as a live music concert, a play, musical theater show or dance show...
s, the booking of travel, or a combination of both. Approximately seventy million consumers researched travel plans online in July 2006. Travel bookings are the single largest component of e-commerce, according to Forrester Research
Forrester Research
Forrester Research is an independent technology and market research company that provides its clients with advice about technology's impact on business and consumers. Forrester Research has five research centers in the US: Cambridge, Massachusetts; New York, New York; San Francisco, California;...
.
Travelogues
Many travel websites are online traveloguesTravel literature
Travel literature is travel writing of literary value. Travel literature typically records the experiences of an author touring a place for the pleasure of travel. An individual work is sometimes called a travelogue or itinerary. Travel literature may be cross-cultural or transnational in focus, or...
or travel journal
Travel journal
A travel journal, also called road journal or travelogue, is a record made by a voyager. Generally in diary form, a travel journal contains descriptions of the traveler's experiences, is normally written during the course of the journey, intended on updating friends or family on the journey...
s, usually created by individual traveller
Tourism
Tourism is travel for recreational, leisure or business purposes. The World Tourism Organization defines tourists as people "traveling to and staying in places outside their usual environment for not more than one consecutive year for leisure, business and other purposes".Tourism has become a...
s and hosted
Internet hosting service
An Internet hosting service is a service that runs Internet servers, allowing organizations and individuals to serve content to the Internet. There are various levels of service and various kinds of services offered....
by companies that generally provide their information to consumers for free. These companies generate revenue through advertising
Advertising
Advertising is a form of communication used to persuade an audience to take some action with respect to products, ideas, or services. Most commonly, the desired result is to drive consumer behavior with respect to a commercial offering, although political and ideological advertising is also common...
or by providing services to other businesses. This medium
Media (communication)
In communications, media are the storage and transmission channels or tools used to store and deliver information or data...
produces a wide variety of styles, often incorporating graphics
Graphics
Graphics are visual presentations on some surface, such as a wall, canvas, computer screen, paper, or stone to brand, inform, illustrate, or entertain. Examples are photographs, drawings, Line Art, graphs, diagrams, typography, numbers, symbols, geometric designs, maps, engineering drawings,or...
, photography
Photography
Photography is the art, science and practice of creating durable images by recording light or other electromagnetic radiation, either electronically by means of an image sensor or chemically by means of a light-sensitive material such as photographic film...
, map
Map
A map is a visual representation of an area—a symbolic depiction highlighting relationships between elements of that space such as objects, regions, and themes....
s, and other unique content. Some examples of websites that use a combination of travel reviews and the booking of travel are TripAdvisor
TripAdvisor
TripAdvisor.com is a travel website that assists customers in gathering travel information, posting reviews and opinions of travel-related content and engaging in interactive travel forums. It is part of the TripAdvisor Media Group, operated by Expedia, Inc. TripAdvisor is a pioneer of...
, Virtualtourist
Virtualtourist
VirtualTourist is a free, travel-oriented community website featuring user-contributed travel guides for locations worldwide. VirtualTourist is one of a number of travel websites on the Web, which include websites like Tripadvisor and Cruise Critic...
, GLOBOsapiens
Globosapiens
GLOBOsapiens is a cooperation head-quartered in Munich, Germany, providing Internet services worldwide. The company is perhaps best known for its multicultural oriented Worldwide Internet Travel Community, GLOBOsapiens.net, and a classified service named findix. GLOBOsapiens was founded out of a...
, IgoUgo
IgoUgo
IgoUgo is an online travel community and travel-planning resource. Winner of the 2004 Webby Award for “Best Travel Site in the U.S.,” IgoUgo rewards its contributing writers and photographers with "GO Points", which can be redeemed for gift cards to online retailers, frequent flyer miles and other...
, and Cruise Critic
Cruise Critic
Cruise Critic is a cruise review community website which also has information for cruisers written by editors, news on cruising and a forum. They offer over 225 reviews written by editors and members of the site, and information on cruise ships and over 135 ports of call and includes information...
. TripAdvisor allows travelers to view, contribute to, and edit the online travel "guide book
Guide book
A guide book is a book for tourists or travelers that provides details about a geographic location, tourist destination, or itinerary. It is the written equivalent of a tour guide...
s", containing over 25 million travel reviews on more than 33,000 destinations worldwide, as of July 2009. IgoUgo offers a place to store and share trip stories, pictures, opinions, tips, and experiences. Similarly, Cruise Critic is an interactive virtual community
Virtual community
A virtual community is a social network of individuals who interact through specific media, potentially crossing geographical and political boundaries in order to pursue mutual interests or goals...
of avid and first-time cruiser
Cruise ship
A cruise ship or cruise liner is a passenger ship used for pleasure voyages, where the voyage itself and the ship's amenities are part of the experience, as well as the different destinations along the way...
s who plan, research, and share their experiences online.
Service providers
Individual airlineAirline
An airline provides air transport services for traveling passengers and freight. Airlines lease or own their aircraft with which to supply these services and may form partnerships or alliances with other airlines for mutual benefit...
s, hotel
Hotel
A hotel is an establishment that provides paid lodging on a short-term basis. The provision of basic accommodation, in times past, consisting only of a room with a bed, a cupboard, a small table and a washstand has largely been replaced by rooms with modern facilities, including en-suite bathrooms...
s, bed and breakfast
Bed and breakfast
A bed and breakfast is a small lodging establishment that offers overnight accommodation and breakfast, but usually does not offer other meals. Since the 1980s, the meaning of the term has also extended to include accommodations that are also known as "self-catering" establishments...
s, cruise line
Cruise line
A cruise line is a company that operates cruise ships. Cruise lines have a dual character; they are partly in the transportation business, and partly in the leisure entertainment business, a duality that carries down into the ships themselves, which have both a crew headed by the ship's captain,...
s, automobile rental companies, and other travel-related service providers often maintain their own web sites providing retail sales. Many with complex offerings include some sort of search engine
Search engine
A search engine is an information retrieval system designed to help find information stored on a computer system. The search results are usually presented in a list and are commonly called hits. Search engines help to minimize the time required to find information and the amount of information...
technology to look for bookings within a certain timeframe, service class, geographic location, or price range.
Online travel agencies
An onlineONLINE
ONLINE is a magazine for information systems first published in 1977. The publisher Online, Inc. was founded the year before. In May 2002, Information Today, Inc. acquired the assets of Online Inc....
travel agency
Travel agency
A travel agency is a retail business that sells travel related products and services to customers on behalf of suppliers such as airlines, car rentals, cruise lines, hotels, railways, sightseeing tours and package holidays that combine several products...
(OTA) specializes in offering planning sources and booking capabilities. Major OTAs include:
- Voyages-sncf.comVoyages-sncf.comVoyages-sncf.com, founded in June 2000, is an Internet travel agency website, subsidiary of the French SNCF and Expedia. It is the first French Electronic commerce website in volume...
- revenue billion (2008) - Expedia, Inc.Expedia, Inc.Expedia, Inc. is an American company headquartered in Bellevue, Washington that operates several travel brands including Expedia.com, Hotels.com, Hotwire.com, Egencia , TripAdvisor, Expedia Local Expert, Classic Vacations and eLong. Expedia, Inc.’s companies operate more than 90 branded points of...
, including Expedia.comExpediaExpedia is an Internet-based travel website based in the US with localised sites for 21 countries...
, Hotels.comHotels.comHotels.com is an operating company of Expedia, Inc. that provides reservation services for hotel rooms and other places to stay.The company was founded in Dallas, TX in 1991 as Hotel Reservations Network by Dave Litman and Bob Diener as a toll-free telephone service, offering consumers a one-stop...
, Hotwire.comHotwire.comHotwire is a discount travel website that offers low prices on airfare, hotel, rental cars, and vacation packages by selling off unsold travel inventory at discounted prices....
, and others - revenue billion (2008) - Sabre HoldingsSabre HoldingsSabre Holdings or Sabre, Inc. is an American privately held travel technology company, encompassing several brands in three global distribution system channels: travel agency, airline, and direct to consumer. These areas are serviced by TSG's three main business groups...
, including TravelocityTravelocityTravelocity is an online travel agency and wholly owned subsidiary of Sabre Holdings Corporation, which was a publicly traded company until taken private by Silver Lake Partners and Texas Pacific Group in March 2007...
, lastminute.comLastminute.comlastminute.com is an online travel and leisure retailer. The company was founded by Martha Lane Fox and Brent Hoberman in 1998 and became an icon of the UK internet boom of the late 1990s, floating at the peak of the dot com bubble and trading on the London Stock Exchange under the symbol...
, and others - revenue billion (2008) - OpodoOpodoOpodo is an Internet travel agency website. It is a pan-European enterprise, founded by a consortium of European airlines, including British Airways, Air France, Alitalia, Iberia, KLM, Lufthansa, Aer Lingus, Austrian Airlines and Finnair. The travel technology provider Amadeus now owns 99.4% of...
- revenue billion (2008) - Priceline.comPriceline.comPriceline.com is a company and a commercial website that helps users obtain discount rates for travel-related purchases such as airline tickets and hotel stays. The company is not a direct supplier of these services; instead it facilitates the provision of travel services by its suppliers to its...
- revenue billion (2008) - Orbitz Worldwide, Inc., including Orbitz.com, CheapTicketsCheapTicketsCheapTickets is an online travel services company focusing on the leisure market, offering airline tickets, hotel and Vacation rentals, rental cars, customized vacation packages, and cruises...
, ebookersEbookersEbookers.com is an online travel company based out of the UK and is a wholly owned subsidiary of Travelport, the former travel arm of Cendant which was bought in October 2006 by an affiliate of Blackstone Partners. Travelport split out itself into three companies...
, and others - revenue million (2008)
Fare aggregators and metasearch engines
The average consumer visits 3.6 sites when shopping for an airline ticket online, according to PhoCusWright, a Sherman, CTSherman, Connecticut
Sherman is the northernmost and least populous town of Fairfield County, Connecticut, United States. The population was 3,581 at the 2010 census. The town is named for New Haven's Founding Father, Roger Sherman....
-based travel technology firm. Yahoo claims 76% of all online travel purchases are preceded by some sort of search function, according to Malcolmson, director of product development for Yahoo Travel. The 2004 Travel Consumer Survey published Jupiter Research noted that "nearly two in five online travel consumers say they believe that no one site has the lowest rates or fares." Thus a niche was created for aggregate travel search which seek to find the lowest rates from multiple travel sites, obviating the need for consumers to cross-shop from site to site.
Metasearch engine
Metasearch engine
A metasearch engine is a search tool that sends user requests to several other search engines and/or databases and aggregates the results into a single list or displays them according to their source. Metasearch engines enable users to enter search criteria once and access several search engines...
s are so named conduct searches across multiple independent search engine
Search engine
A search engine is an information retrieval system designed to help find information stored on a computer system. The search results are usually presented in a list and are commonly called hits. Search engines help to minimize the time required to find information and the amount of information...
s. Metasearch engines often make use of "screen scraping" to get live availability of flights. Screen scraping is a way of crawling through the airline websites, getting content from those sites by extracting data from the same human-readable HTML feed (rather than a Semantic Web
Semantic Web
The Semantic Web is a collaborative movement led by the World Wide Web Consortium that promotes common formats for data on the World Wide Web. By encouraging the inclusion of semantic content in web pages, the Semantic Web aims at converting the current web of unstructured documents into a "web of...
or database feed designed to be machine-readable). Metasearch engines usually process incoming data to eliminate duplicate entries, but may not expose "advanced search" options in the underlying databases (because not all databases support the same options).
Fare aggregators redirect the users to an airline, cruise, hotel, or car rental site or Online Travel Agent for the final purchase of a ticket. Aggregators' business models include getting feeds from major OTAs, then displaying to the users all of the results on one screen. The OTA then fulfills the ticket. Aggregators generate revenues through advertising and charging OTAs for referring clients. Examples of aggregate sites are Cheapflights
Cheapflights
Cheapflights Media Ltd. is a private international online media company based in London and Boston that operates travel websites. Cheapflights Media's sites do not sell flights but publish deals online from hundreds of airlines, low cost airlines and travel operators that fly out of the US, the...
, Dohop
Dohop
Dohop is a travel search engine website based in Reykjavík, Iceland originally founded to aggregate and link low cost flight connections. In 2005 dohop launched the world's first flight planner for low-cost airlines and later expanded it to include all scheduled flights worldwide, amounting to 660...
, Kayak.com
Kayak.com
KAYAK is a technology company providing online travel tools through its global family of websites and mobile applications. Started by cofounders of Expedia, Orbitz, and Travelocity, KAYAK allows users to compare information from hundreds of other travel websites in one display when booking travel...
, Mobissimo
Mobissimo
Mobissimo is a travel search engine website based in San Francisco, California. It allows consumers to compare prices on flights, hotels, and car rentals. It aggregates the results from over 180 online travel agencies, consolidators, and ticket vendors to show a side-by-side comparison of the...
, Momondo
Momondo
Momondo.com is a Copenhagen-based travel search engine that allows consumers to compare prices on flights, hotels and car rental.The search engine aggregates results from more than 700 travel websites simultaneously to give an overview of the best offers found.Momondo does not sell tickets;...
, CheapOair
CheapOair
CheapOair is an online travel company established in September 2005. The company has created a branded budget travel site for US and Canadian travelers. This site offers airfares on all major and smaller airlines in North America, Central and South America, Europe, Asia, Pacific, Indian...
, Ixigo.com
Ixigo.com
iXiGO.com is a travel search engine based in Gurgaon, India. iXiGO is an infomediary that aggregates searches for flights, hotels and buses, by searching across 100 different websites to compare prices and information across multiple travel search criteria...
, SideStep
SideStep
- Description :SideStep is a metasearch engine for travel: it searches and consolidates results from more than 200 travel websites. The site searches more than 150,000 hotels and 600 airlines in the United States and worldwide...
, and Skyscanner
Skyscanner
Skyscanner is a flight search engine that allows users to browse for flights via price and location. Additional tools such as fare graphs, allow users to compare flight prices of any given route over a month period, or the price of weekend flights from any given city.The site is multilingual,...
.
The difference between a "fare aggregator" and "metasearch engine" is unclear, though different terms may imply different levels of cooperation between the companies involved.
In 2008, Ryanair
Ryanair
Ryanair is an Irish low-cost airline. Its head office is at Dublin Airport and its primary operational bases at Dublin Airport and London Stansted Airport....
threatened to cancel all bookings made on Ryanair flights made through metasearch engines, but later allowed the sites to operate as long as they did not resell tickets or overload Ryanair's servers.
Bargain sites
Travel bargain websites collect and publish bargain rates by advising consumers where to find them online (sometimes but not always through a direct link). Rather than providing detailed search tools, these sites generally focus on offering advertised specials, such as last-minute sales from travel suppliers eager to deplete unused inventory; therefore, these sites often work best for consumers who are flexible about destinations and other key itinerary components.Travel and tourism guides
Many websites take the form of a digital version of a traditional guide bookGuide book
A guide book is a book for tourists or travelers that provides details about a geographic location, tourist destination, or itinerary. It is the written equivalent of a tour guide...
, aiming to provide advice on which destinations, attractions, accommodations, and so on, are worth a visit and providing information on how to access them.
Most states, provinces and countries have their own convention and visitor bureaus, which usually sponsor a website dedicated to promoting tourism
Tourism
Tourism is travel for recreational, leisure or business purposes. The World Tourism Organization defines tourists as people "traveling to and staying in places outside their usual environment for not more than one consecutive year for leisure, business and other purposes".Tourism has become a...
in their respective regions. Cities that rely on tourism also operate websites promoting their destinations, such as VEGAS.com
VEGAS.com
VEGAS.com, LLC is a city specific travel website that focuses on information about Las Vegas, Nevada. The site is the 'largest online booker for entertainment, hotels, restaurants, tours, golf and other services' for Las Vegas...
for Las Vegas
Las Vegas, Nevada
Las Vegas is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Nevada and is also the county seat of Clark County, Nevada. Las Vegas is an internationally renowned major resort city for gambling, shopping, and fine dining. The city bills itself as The Entertainment Capital of the World, and is famous...
, Nevada
Nevada
Nevada is a state in the western, mountain west, and southwestern regions of the United States. With an area of and a population of about 2.7 million, it is the 7th-largest and 35th-most populous state. Over two-thirds of Nevada's people live in the Las Vegas metropolitan area, which contains its...
.
Student Travel Agencies
Some travel websites cater specifically to the college student audience and list exclusive airfare deals and travel products.StudentUniverse
Studentuniverse
StudentUniverse is a technology company that provides students with deals. It is one of the two largest discount student travel sellers in the world. It was founded in 2000, and is based in Waltham, Massachusetts...
offers exclusive airfare for college student and faculty, as well as 18-25 year-old youth travelers. Members must verify that they are enrolled or are faculty at an accredited college or university.
STA Travel
STA Travel
STA Travel is one of the two largest travel organizations for students and young people. It was founded in 1979 by acquiring assets from the bankruptcy of AUS Student Travel in Australia including their successful UK company ....
offers student and youth airfare deals as well.
See also
- Internet booking engineInternet booking engineAn Internet booking engine is an application which helps the travel and tourism industry support reservation through the Internet. It helps consumers to book flights, hotels, holiday packages, insurance and other services online...
- Travel advisoryTravel advisoryA travel advisory is a public notice issued by a government agency to provide information about the relative safety of travelling to or visiting one or more specific foreign destinations...
- Travel technologyTravel technologyTravel technology is a term used to describe applications of Information Technology , or Information and Communications Technology , in travel, tourism and hospitality industry...
- Voyage.tvVoyage.tvVoyage.tv is an online travel channel that produces and distributes travel video programming on the Internet, cable television and Video on Demand. Functioning as a tool for exploring destinations, sharing travel experiences and booking trips, Voyage.tv is a global platform for travelers to...