Travel website

A travel website is a website on the world wide web, that is dedicated to travel. The site may be focused on travel reviews, 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.^{[citation needed]}

Travelogues

Many travel websites are online travelogues or travel journals, usually created by individual travellers 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, maps, and other unique content. Some examples of websites that use a combination of travel reviews and the booking of travel are TripAdvisor, IgoUgo, and Cruise Critic. TripAdvisor allows travelers to view, contribute to, and edit the online travel "guide books", 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 cruisers who plan, research, and share their experiences online.

Service providers

Individual airlines, hotels, bed and breakfasts, cruise lines, 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.

Online travel agencies

An online travel agency (OTA) specializes in offering planning sources and booking capabilities. Major OTAs include:

• Voyages-sncf.com - revenue €2.23 billion (2008)
• Expedia, Inc., including Expedia.com, Hotels.com, Hotwire.com, and others - revenue US$2.937 billion (2008)
• Sabre Holdings, including Travelocity, lastminute.com, and others - revenue US$2.9 billion (2008)
• Opodo - revenue €1.3 billion (2008)
• Priceline.com - revenue US$1.9 billion (2008)
• Orbitz Worldwide, Inc., including Orbitz.com, CheapTickets, ebookers, and others - revenue US$870 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, CT-based travel technology firm.^{[citation needed]} 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.^{[citation needed]} 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 engines are so named conduct searches across multiple independent search engines. 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).^{[citation needed]}

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.^{[citation needed]} Examples of aggregate sites are Cheapflights, Dohop, Kayak.com, Mobissimo, Momondo, 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.

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 book, 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.

Student Travel Agencies

Some travel websites cater specifically to the college student audience and list exclusive airfare deals and travel products.

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. Membership is free.

STA Travel offers student and youth airfare deals as well. Members must purchase an International Student Identity Card for $22.

See also

• Internet booking engine
• Travel advisory
• Travel technology