Comments on: Rob Solomon Books a Trip on SideStep

By: dkatime

dkatime — Thu, 23 Nov 2006 11:01:52 +0000

Guillaume,

I do not agree with you. There are some comparison engine in many places in Europe with significant traffic. Please check this one:

http://www.trabber.com

By: David Dawson

David Dawson — Fri, 09 Jun 2006 16:17:11 +0000

Mr Gunesh,

I have just had a look at fare.net after reading your comments, and as a user of travel search and being a fan of Kayak……….I can not understand why you would design such an ugly looking website…..which lacks any real functionality…..it would have to be the worst looking site around. Gunesh you must be a geek and not a graphic designer……I recommend that you scrap fare.net and start again as fare.net sucks

By: Stella

Stella — Tue, 18 Apr 2006 16:58:46 +0000

Guillaume, I don’t think the European market is insignificant. There are several players doing decent travel comparison in the UK, primarily:

http://www.travelsupermarket.com
http://www.foundem.com
http://www.allcheckin.com

Interestingly, 2 of these 3 aren’t exclusively travel.

By: Gunesh Raj

Gunesh Raj — Tue, 04 Apr 2006 20:56:49 +0000

First Off, Congratulations to Rob Solomon. Wishing much success to SideSteps future.

Im the CTO for Fare.Net & Im very keen to understand users expectations on Meta Search websites.

I am a strong believer of simplicity & summarized information, this is where Information saperates itself from Data. I would like to know your views on how do you want the information (or what type of information) shown in the result pages.

You may reply to me personally at gunesh.raj@gmail.com

Thanks in Advance.

By: Marc Parisi

Marc Parisi — Thu, 30 Mar 2006 00:18:17 +0000

When will we get a comparison or selection engine that enables the selection of flights, destination, hotels, cars, or packages based on a combination of all the criteria we take into account when we travel? For example, when I select a flight I take into account the number of hops, the departure time, the seat location (Aisle, Window or center), the class (1st, business, economy)… I want the comparison engine to compare the various options based on my specific tradeoffs “du jour”.

By: Guillaume Thevenot

Guillaume Thevenot — Tue, 21 Feb 2006 11:58:33 +0000

Forbes recently listed its 12 Essential online travel sites for 2006…4 out of 12 were meta search engines (Kayak, Mobissimo, SideStep and Yahoo Travel with Kelkoo). I have this feeling the number of players in this category is increasing every month with Travelsupermarket, Travelzoo, Fare.net and so on…but why in Europe this market is so unsignificant apart from Kelkoo?

By: Stuart MacDonald

Stuart MacDonald — Thu, 26 Jan 2006 02:50:09 +0000

You guys are all sorta missing the point. The Big Three are scared silly of meta, and they should be. As former CMO of Expedia, I oughta know…

By: mark

mark — Wed, 18 Jan 2006 06:14:51 +0000

You hit the nail on the head with Internet advertising for engines like SideStep – their margin’s are just not high enough to handle the bidding wars. That is also probably a big factor on the Business Development side (and the lack of deals) – not that much revenue per transaction to slice up.

By: RemyA

RemyA — Tue, 17 Jan 2006 13:29:26 +0000

What about travel comparison engines in other parts of the world ? Europe, for instance. How do they compare to sidestep ?

By: CA_SCOT

CA_SCOT — Tue, 17 Jan 2006 05:12:34 +0000

Congrats to Rob on an exciting new gig, but we’re going to miss working with you at Y! Shopping !!!

Scot