Surfing on internet comfortably and cost effectively
Dinslaken - The guest of the future comes from the Internet. The trend of the conventional booking methods is fading away. However, despite all the advantages which booking on internet gives us, customers may still have difficulties to keep an overview due to the large number of available internet travel portals. A "Customer's wish is to find the best offer quickly", says Hans Jürgen Rüffert from the company revway. Here the Meta Search Engines help to fulfil this wish.
"Meta Search Engines are Search Engines, which work by sending your request to multiple portals" explains Rüffert. They search through certain portals and retrieve the results conveniently in one window for example information about hotel accommodation, flights, car rental or cruises. "Once you have chosen the best offer, you just have to go to the individual engine to complete your booking", says the expert.
A very good example of Meta Search Engines is www.trivago.com. "Here you can find the lowest prices taken from such European portals as e.g. hotel.de, HRS or expedia.com". The number of visitors of this website has increased within a year from 485.000 (May 2006) to 2,32 million (May 2007).
Meta Search Engines make money not through selling travel, they collect travel information but don't charge their customers anything. Instead, they make money from small referral fees paid by travel suppliers and advertisements on their websites. In this way everyone makes a profit. "It means, however, for the hotelier, that he still has to familiarise himself with the internet and all the possibilities it offers" advises Rüffert. "The hotelier has to be able to understand the market as much as the system and the suppliers in order to make right decisions."
Meta Search Engines and number of visitors in May 2007: