KAYAK vs Expedia - Travel Search Engine vs Online Booking Agents

“KAYAK, Expedia… they all do the same thing.” At that instant my jaw dropped. My jaw dropped so hard to the point where it nearly smashed against the ground. My father’s statement put me in such a “shock and awe”. After that brief and short conversation I decided to ask my friends. “What do you think of FareCompare?” Their response, “Oh, I just like using Travelocity”. The response was nearly the same with all of my friends, Travelocity, Booking.com, Expedia. I realized at this point that people do not know the difference between KAYAK and Expedia; Farecompare and Travelocity; Trivago and Hotels.com. You are probably scratching your head and trying to figure out yourself what the difference is.

 

How many of you out there know what a booking agent is? I am sure that is a straight forward concept to understand. But if I was to ask, how many of you know what an aggregator is, probably not as many people would know what I was asking. Well, right here, that is the difference between some travel websites like KAYAK and Expedia and we will go over the difference between a booking agent and an aggregator. And we will even go into depth about a third kind of way to find travel deals.

Booking websites

You remember before computers, (maybe you do and maybe you don’t), a person had to rely on a travel agent to book a trip? Well, a person could do it all themselves, but it wouldn’t get you the best prices, great perks and it could take a lot of time. A booking agent would get a list of all the deals from airline companies and hotels. They would pick and choose from the list of those deals and offer them to their customers based on the need of their customer. Sometimes hotels, airlines, rental agencies would offer specific deals discounts and deals to specific travel agents if they would recommend their service to the agent’s customers.
Well, now with the invention of computers and the internet, the travel agents are slowly going away, being replaced my digital travel agents, also known as booking agent websites. They work the exact same way as a travel agent did back in the day. They show all the deals that are offered by to the agent by an airline, hotel, rental agency. Sometimes getting deals to offer their customers to try out a different service. The biggest difference though is that a travel agent can customize and tailor a trip for a person based on the information provided to them. A booking agency website cannot listen to back story and cannot customize a trip to tailor to the customer’s needs. The good thing is that it shows all the prices up front for the customer to pick and choose based on price (and reviews).
How do travel agencies and booking agencies make their money? Well, they get a commission of sales. Some travel services may offer bigger commissions and other may offer lower commissions. Those commissions are what decide what they want to offer a customer and what they don’t want to offer a customer up front. Also the travel agencies negotiate prices before hand with travel services try to get the best deals for their customer and in return mark up or down the price as they seem fit to make their margin. Another way they make money is charging a transaction fee, this keeps the pricing low and they get money from he transaction process itself.
Here are a listing of some online booking agencies to help some understanding:

• Expedia Inc. which includes Expedia.com, Hotels.com, Hotwire.com
• Booking.com
• Travelocity and sister site Lastminute.com
• Orbitz its sister sites Cheaptickets.com and ebookers.com
• Priceline
• Travelzoo
• MakeMyTrip (Indian Travel Agency)
• Agoda (Asian Hotel/Stay Agency)
• Vayama (International Flights)
• Hostelworld (Hostels/Boutique Hotels)

Metasearch/Aggregators

With all these booking agents like Priceline, Orbitz and Travelocity, how do you know which one is offering the best deal? Wouldn’t it be great to have a website that searched through all the booking agents and even the travel services? Well, enter KAYAK and other aggregators and metasearch engines. Aggregators and metasearch engines help you find the best deal by searching through booking websites for you. They gather all information from each booking website, and even some of the travel services and list them based on your search criteria.
In order for these websites to work it needs to “scrape” the information from those booking websites. To do that, it needs to look at those websites. How it does this is that it asks you to open searches in a different window. This makes it annoying but that is how these metasearches get its information. The more people who do searches, and allow more popup window searches, the more accurate it becomes at giving you the best prices. That is why the more popular websites, like KAYAK.com are more accurate at giving the best prices because more people use it.

A metasearch website is much more efficient than just visiting a booking agent’s website due to the fact you can get a broader spread of prices. Here are a list of some common metasearches/aggregators:

• KAYAK
• Skyscanner
• FareCompare
• CheapOair
• Momondo
• Ixigo
• Cheapflights
• HipMunk (With a great visual time comparison layout)
• Trivago (Hotels)

How do these websites make money? They usually make money through advertising or sometimes they get commission from the booking websites. We give tips on how to book at the right time using these search sites in an older article.

Bargain/Travel Deal Websites

Now that we know what a metasearch or aggregator is, let us talk about a third kind of website to get travel deals. You see sometimes travel services and booking agents try get a certain type of market and to do this they offer a major deal. Perhaps they want to get more business travelers to visit NYC, so they offer one way flights for $89 and send the deal out through their mailer only marketed towards business travelers. But the legal issue is that they have to offer this deal to anyone who requests it. How do you find out about these deals? Well, that is where the third kind of website comes in play. They are Travel Deal websites. They collect all the special deals and just put them on a website and allow a customer to see them. These are great websites for someone with an open schedule who have no clue where they want to go, but they want to go somewhere for a good price. They are not for those who are looking to go to a specific spot. Here are some examples of travel deal websites:

• Airfarewatchdog
• TheFlightDeal
• FareCompare
• HotelTonight (Phone App Only)
• JetSetter

I find that bargain and deal websites are great for Freelance travel writers/bloggers and people who just nomadic.
How do these sites make money? They make their money usually through commission from booking agents and travel services. They also make money through advertising or sometimes transaction fees.
With all these different websites out there I hope now there is a better understanding between a booking website, a metasearch and a bargain site. I hope this helps narrow down finding the best deal for anyone wanting to take a vacation.
What do you think? Did I leave any important websites out? Tell us what you think. Leave a comment below, send me a tweet on twitter, or post on my Facebook. Heck even send us a message. Let me know so I can help. Subscribe to our newsletter to gain even more tips. Happy travels