Skift Take
If online travel agencies are heading toward becoming a hybrid of transactions and metasearch advertising, it is ironic that Kayak, Room 77 and Hipmunk have already become hybrids, having begun to take direct booking themselves in recent years.
Now that Priceline and Expedia acquired their respective travel metasearch playthings, U.S.-based Kayak and Germany's Trivago, when are these online travel agencies going to take the seeming logical next steps?
In other words, when are the transaction-focused online travel agencies, Priceline and Expedia, going to integrate cost-per-click-based Kayak and Trivago into the OTAs' respective flight or hotel search results?
There is a strong argument to be made that such a hybridization of the booking sites, turning them into a blend of transactions and metasearch advertising, makes a lot of sense financially and from the perspective of providing a much better and more comprehensive customer experience than is the norm today.
As one advertising wonk puts it, this could be the ultimate loyalty play in online/mobile travel.
Here's Why:
Expedia and Priceline are already fairly comprehensive, but price-conscious travelers are fickle in their bargain-hunting and they'll wander off to tons of other travel websites, looking for a lower fare or rate, more often than not.
Some online travel agencies, such as Travelocity, for example, have long supplemented their own search results with a "compare" advertisement, earning perhaps $0.20 to $0.50 per click when users check one of the boxes and continue their hotel search as separate windows op
