Better deals using search sites?

When does a tool designed to make shopping online easier actually make it more complex? When one-stop shopping becomes “one-more-stop” shopping.

Online travel search engines, or aggregators, have been around since the early days of shopping for travel online. They scour some, though not all, travel websites for the best deals on airfares, hotels and car rentals.

“It’s about getting the information to make good decisions,” said Lorraine Sileo, an analyst at PhoCusWright, a Connecticut-based travel research firm. “It’s just not the one-stop shopping you might think it is.”

Here’s how aggregators work: They search other websites -- provider websites and third-party sites. They don’t book a flight or a hotel directly but instead send the customer to a supplier’s site. Supplier sites can be a direct connection to an individual airline or hotel chain website, for example, or, frequently, a third-party agency site such as Orbitz or Hotels.com.

The more sites an aggregator gets information from, the better the picture for consumers.

As the technology has matured, more aggregators have hung out their e-shingles. Among the best known are SideStep, Qixo, FareChase, Cheapflights, Mobissimo and newcomer Kayak.

“It remains to be seen whether the new search engines provide anything [consumers] can’t already get from the online travel agencies” such as Expedia, Orbitz and Travelocity, said Jared Blank, an industry analyst for Online Travel Review. “Most of the travel agencies out there right now will find you the lowest fare most of the time.”

Just as the technology for aggregators has evolved, so has the business model of many of the traditional online travel agencies. Aggregators depend on being able to scour as many websites as possible, but some sites are having second thoughts.

“We are in the process of reevaluating our relationship with Sidestep and Kayak and all other travel search engines,” said Orbitz spokeswoman Kendra Thornton.

Expedia is also reexamining its relationship with these sites.

“It’s not clear what these things are, if they are marketing vehicles or competitors,” said Expedia President Steven McArthur. Expedia’s content, including its specially negotiated hotel rates, is not available on aggregator sites (except for the hotel search function on TripAdvisor, which is owned by InterActiveCorp, parent of Expedia).

McArthur sees the emergence of aggregators as a further move toward travel’s becoming a commodity in which price, not quality, is the only difference.

“You have a world-class car rental company presented in search results next to Rent-a-Wreck,” he said.

So are consumers driven solely by price? Is travel merely a commodity like so many tons of soybeans, one bean like the next, one hotel like the next?

“What [online agencies] are concerned about is you’re comparing them only by prices, not by amenities or features,” said Sileo of PhoCusWright. For example, a hotel “might be $10 more but the room has a view of the ocean.”

Aggregators contend that travel search engines do not pose a threat to traditional online agencies but can complement their businesses.

Kayak’s hotel search, for example, shows prices like any other aggregator but also includes links to content providers that have reviews and other information about the hotels.

Aggregators simply “provide greater price transparency to consumers,” said Steve Hafner, president of Kayak.

I compared Orbitz, SideStep’s pop-up application (it now has a Web-based search capability that does not need to be downloaded) and Kayak for a mid-February weekend in New York. I looked for an LAX-JFK flight, with morning departures, about two months hence.

Orbitz returned the best fare for my criteria, although SideStep offered me a lower fare to airports I hadn’t requested.

Though Kayak said it searched United’s website, it returned United results from Orbitz. (It’s usually better to go directly with the supplier site; unlike the online travel agencies, supplier sites usually don’t charge service fees for booking.)

Winner: Orbitz. Runner-up: SideStep for its ease of use and simple-to-understand results.

Hotels were a different matter. After a bit of juggling with distance and star ratings on all three sites, I settled on the Warwick Hotel, a midrange lodging in Midtown Manhattan. The price was $224 a night on all three sites. The two aggregators took me to third-party sites for fulfillment (Kayak directed me back to Orbitz; SideStep to Hotels.com), which require full payment in advance and carry cancellation penalties. The reviews on Kayak were useful but are more comprehensive on such sites as TripAdvisor. SideStep’s narrow side-view window doesn’t allow for easy comparison. At most you are limited to viewing one or two hotels at a time, making any sort of comparison difficult.

Winner: none. For me the promise of an aggregator is that it searches many websites, including direct-to-the-supplier sites that often have the best rates and less restrictive cancellation policies. When I went directly to the Warwick website I found a $220-a-night rate that could be canceled until 4 p.m. the day before arrival.

The introduction of more travel search websites has not made searching for travel online any easier. Despite advances in search technology, the sites need to get more suppliers on board to fulfill their potential.

“They would say once their technology is fully backed it will bring back more and better results,” analyst Blank said. “I’m not sure consumers need more results.

“Consumers want to find a combination of lowest fares with fewest stops. Finding out you can save $20 by making three stops appeals to a very small percentage of consumers.”

Here’s the strategy I recommend: First visit one of the big three, then use SideStep or another aggregator to see if it comes up with anything better, and finally visit the website of the prospective hotel or airline to see if you can find a better deal -- or at least one that has less restrictive cancellation policies or lower fees.

But don’t knock yourself out trying all these sites to find the best deal. You may end up right where you started.

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James Gilden writes the Internet Traveler. He can be reached at www.theinternettraveler.com.