Skift Take
We have the technology, as they used to say on TV's "The Six Million Dollar Man." We have the capability to make booking flights on mobile better than it was before. Better... stronger... faster. But short-sighted airline business strategies seem to be holding back the hot price-comparison companies of the hour -- Momondo, Kayak, and Skyscanner -- from offering direct, or instant, bookings of flights.
Airfare comparison websites are hot, given Tuesday's news that the Priceline Group will buy UK and Denmark-based metasearch site Momondo Group for $550 million and November's news that Ctrip will acquire Edinburgh-based Skyscanner for $1.74 billion. Even Hipmunk was snapped up by Concur in September.
Given deals and ample valuations, it's easy to buy into the cliche that technology companies innovate at supersonic speeds while airlines are slow to change.
But the opposite can seem true, at least if you are a consumer shopping for flights online.
Airlines are inventing products to sell (and upsell) along with leveling new fees and restrictions faster than Kayak, Skyscanner, Momondo, Dohop, iGola, Hipmunk, Viajala, WeGo, or TripAdvisor Flights can do the necessary technical and commercial work to display them clearly.
Many new airline products, such as seat selection fees and access to onboard Wi-Fi, can't be bought on the travel metasearch companies, which instead send users off to airline and travel agency booking sites and apps to complete the transactions.
Flight search is lagging hotel and vacation rental search on this score. TripAdvisor, Trivago, HomeAway, and other companies are rapidly making it possible to instantly book hotels and vacation rentals without having to leave their sites and apps.
INSTANT'S SLOW DEBUT
At first glance, the failure seems weird. Kayak, Skyscanner, Momondo, and the others get most of their business from making referrals to airlines. The better they get at persuading people to buy, the more money they make on commissions.
The average traveler is more likely to buy if they can purchase a plane ticket or related service while staying on the price-comparison sites, according to the companies' testing. Many travelers would rather not be sent off to an airline's or travel agency's site, especially when booking on tiny mobile screens.
Yet airlines don't seem to be in any rush to make it easier for metasearch companies to do their jobs.
A case in point: This month, Skyscanner began selling the airfares of Scoot, a budget carrier owned by Singapore Airlines, in a way that lets users in Australia, Singapore, the UK, and India complete their purchase without having to exit the Skyscanner site.
This capability comes from Skyscanner’s integration with the Navitaire reservation system, owned by Amadeus, and a payments API (application programming interface, or a method used for retrieving data) from B
