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Travel search engines do not provide the hotel reservations or air ticket purchase services directly to their user. Instead, they only search among various online travel sites and find one that offer the lowest price to their users based on the criteria set by the user. Since the relationship with hotels or airlines are different among different online travel agencies, as well as different online travel agencies may offer promotions at different times, therefore, no one online travel agency can offer the lowest price forever. For example, agency A may offer the lowest room rates for hotel A, but for hotel B the lowest rates may be found in agency B. Moreover, when agency C offers a time limited promotion, the lowest rates for hotel A may be possible found in agency C instead of agency A, and so on.
Therefore, for savvy consumers, price comparison is very important when booking hotels or purchasing air tickets through online travel agencies. Thus, the travel search engine is definitely a very useful aids.
Travel search engines are well developed in Europe and USA. There are so many travel search engines setup in Europe and USA, the more popular sites include: Kayak.com, SideStep, Cheapflights.com, Dohop.com, Mobissimo, Momondo, Skyscanner etc.. In addition, some large travel community also has setup their own travel search engine, the most famous one is TripAdvisor.
Although the European and American travel search engines are well developed, however they are not always suitable in searching Asia Pacific hotels. The European and American travel search engines are mainly concentrate in the European and North American markets, their major partners are usually those online travel agencies that focus on the travel market of Europe and America, hence they provide less choice in the Asia Pacific hotels and airlines.
So, whether there are some good quality travel search engines that are more suitable use for search Asia Pacific hotels? The answer is: Yes. In this article I would like to introduce them for you. They are Wego.com and HotelsCombined.
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Wego.com is a Singapore based travel search engine that established in 2005. The predecessor of Wego.com is called Bezurk.com. In May 2008, the website’s name has been renamed as Wego.com to enable users to remember it more easily. Wego.com help its users to search lowest price among various online travel agencies in hotel booking, air ticket, car rental, travel packages, etc.. It also provides the latest information to its user in travel deals from different online travel agencies. Although there are many travel search engines around the world, however, most of them are setup and operated mainly in Europe or the United States. The travel search engines in Asia or Asia Pacific are rare. Wego.com is one of a few.
According to the introduction in Wego.com website, its team members are mainly came from some major travel agencies, hotel groups and airlines. Therefore, the website was operated by the sophisticated experts in the travel industry, that can well meet the needs of users. If you compare it with other similar websites, you will find the interface of Wego.com is quite user-friendly. Moreover, it also provides a number of additional useful functions other website does not provide.
Being an Asia based travel search engine, Wego.com is more concentrate on the Asia Pacific market. Its partner, in addition to those international major online travel agencies, also include the regional online travel agencies that mainly engage in the hotel reservation business in Asia-Pacific region. So, in Wego.com you can find more Asia Pacific hotels than other travel search engines.
Advantages
The following are some major advantages of Wego.com compared with other travel search engines:
1. More hotels
Although most travel search engines claim they can search hundreds of travel sites, however, from the search results, most of them may only search some few well-known travel sites but not all travel sites. Wego.com also claims it can search over 150 online travel sites (including room reservation, air tickets and car rental), but from the search results, I believe it really do that.
As mentioned before, being an Asia based travel search engine, Wego.com is more concentrate on the Asia Pacific market. Its partner, in addition to those international major online travel agencies (such as Hotels.com, Agoda, Booking.com, HotelClub, Easy Click Travel, OneTravel, CheapOair, CheapOstay, Hostelworld), also include the regional online travel agencies that mainly engage in the hotel reservation business in Asia-Pacific region (For instance, Priceline Hong Kong, Ctrip.com, sinohotel.com, Macau.com). So, in Wego.com you can find more Asia Pacific hotels than other travel search engines. In order to find out whether we can really find more hotels in Wego.com, I have conducted a test. (See Test 1 below for details)
2. More favorable room rates
Since Wego.com partnered with more online travel agencies than any other travel search engines, it usually can search out more favorable room rates than other similar sites. I have conducted another test to compare the lowest price searched by Wego.com with those searched by other similar sites and found that this is usually true. The lowest price searched by Wego.com is lower than the price searched by other travel search engines in many cases. In addition, I also found for some online travel sites, even under the same conditions, Wego.com get the lower price than other travel search engines. (See Test 2 below for details)
3. More transparent search result
Many travel search engines will only show the lowest price after the completion of the search. The other second choice price does not appear in the search result. So it is doubtful whether it really completely search all travel sites. On the contrary, Wego.com is quite well done in this aspect.
In the search result page, in addition to display the lowest price and the travel agency who offer this price, Wego.com will also display all price and the travel agencies that offering the booking for the hotel being searched. If the user prefers an online travel agency, he can compare the price offer by this agency with the lowest price and decide whether to book the hotel in this agency or the agency that offers the lowest price. This transparent approach not only convenient the user, but also increase the confidence of users in the website.
Although HotelsCombined and Kayak.com have the similar function, but the second choice price information is only displayed in another page when the user clicks on some link but not directly contained in the search results page. In addition, room rates displayed in the search results page of Wego.com is all inclusive, when other similar sites always display the before taxes and fees price in the search results page.
4. Complete guest rating
Although Wego.com do not collect the hotel rating directly from guests, it take considerable effort to collect, analyze and organize the guest rating on each hotel from some major online travel sites, and integrate these useful information into its hotel database. Users can easily find out the guest rating and comments from the search results. In addition, rating and comments is further categorized into overall, price, rooms, location, service and facilities.
5. More user-friendly
Wego.com even mindful of the interface and minor aspect of the web design. One of them is the way of currency display. The system by default displays the room rates in the local currency based on the hotel location. For example, the room rates for Japan hotel is showed in Japanese yen, and New Taiwan dollar for Taiwan hotels, etc., and of course the user can manually switch to another currency. This approach different from other sites, that most sites are displayed by a fixed currency (for example: U.S. dollars, of course, the user can manually switch to other currencies too). From the user's point of view, local currency may be more suitable when comparing prices.
Shortcoming
Wego.com has its shortcomings too. The problem mainly exist in its computer system, such as:
1. System instability
After many trials I found that there are some problems exist in the system stability of Wego.com. The search results can’t maintain a stable quality. For example, sometime the system can not search the information on some travel sites. Being the trial, I have mention that the system do not display any room rates from Agoda in the search result. I don’t know is that the problem of the system of Wego.com itself or the problem of linking with Agoda. In addition, sometime an error occurred when connect from Wego.com to the travel sites to process the room booking.
2. Incomplete hotel information in some countries
For some north-east Asia countries (China, Japan, South Korea), the hotel details is not complete. Fore example, no enough room photos and no hotel location map information is maintained in the hotel details.
Although there are still some shortcomings, it does not destruct its advantages. As long as the problem in system stability is improved, I believe Wego.com definitely can be the users’ favourite travel search engine.
Test 1: Comparison of the number of hotels
The purpose of this test is to find out whether the number of hotels searched out by Wego.com is really more than other travel search engines. The travel search engines used to compare include HotelsCombined, Kayak.com and TripAdvisor. In this test, five cities is selected as the test samples, including: Osaka, Bangkok, Shanghai, Sydney and London.
First, we do the hotel search without setting any criteria, so we can find out the total number of hotels contain in the database of each travel search engine. Search results are as follows:
| Osaka | Bangkok | Shanghai | Sydney | London | |
| Wego.com | 384 | 948 | 1,584 | 814 | 2,308 |
| HotelsCombined | 137 | 562 | 673 | 335 | 1,316 |
| Kayak.com | 158 | 510 | 746 | 301 | 1,478 |
| TripAdvisor | 257 | 605 | 2,228 | 235 | 1,054 |
Then, we set the search criteria as: check-in at 18th February 2011, check-out at 19th February 2011, one room with two adults, and the test time is done in the evening of 11th January 2011. Search results are as follows:
| Osaka | Bangkok | Shanghai | Sydney | London | |
| Wego.com | 140 | 565 | 857 | 291 | 864 |
| HotelsCombined | 137 | 562 | 673 | 335 | 1,316 |
| Kayak.com | 139 | 418 | 455 | 210 | 1106 |
| TripAdvisor | 103 | 305 | 390 | 108 | 626 |
Note: since HotelsCombined display all hotels instead of the room available hotels, therefore the number of hotels on the table is not accurate.
From the results of this test we find out in terms of number of hotels, Wego.com not only has an absolute advantage in the Asia Pacific region, even in Europe is also better than other travel search engines.
Test 2: Comparison of the room rates
The purpose of the second test is to find out whether the lowest price searched out by Wego.com may lower than other travel search engines because of it partner with more online travel agencies than other travel search engines. The results of the test reflect the above assumption is usually true when the system is stable. That means when the system of Wego.com is under a stable situation and is able to search all of its partners’ database, the room rates searched out by Wego.com is probably lower than other search engines. However, if the system of Wego.com is under a instable situation and unable to search all of its partners’ database, the result will be incomplete.
During the test, I also found an interesting phenomenon, that is, even in the same conditions (ie same hotel, same check-in and check-out date), the room rates offered by Agoda in the search result of Wego.com is lower than the rates it provide to other travel search engines. I don’t know the actual reason for this phenomenon. Maybe it is because of the good relationship between Wego.com and Agoda, thus the user of Wego.com can enjoy a special discount rates.
In conclusion, I think the system instability may occur not only in Wego.com, other travel search engines may have the same problem. Therefore, it is recommended not to use only one travel search engine. You should try two or more travel search engines to search the best rates and also try at different time. This approach can help you avoid the problem of system instability and increase the chance of getting a more favorable price.
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HotelsCombined established in 2005, is a budding travel search engine, but it only offers the lowest price hotel search service. Although only established a few years, HotelsCombined is well known in Europe and America, and attract a lot of reports on it. Recently (January 2011) reports that, HotelsCombined has signed a cooperation agreement with China's second-largest online travel agencies eLong, to provides HotelsCombined access to the hotel database in eLong, this believe will greatly increase the number of China hotels in HotelsCombined.
The major partners of HotelsCombined include: Accorhotels, Agoda, Booking.com, Easy Click Travel, Expedia, HotelClub, Hotels.com, InterContinental Hotels Group, Lastminute.com, OctopusTravel, Otel.com, Travelocity etc..
Although the major partners of HotelsCombined and Wego.com are basically the same, but some are different. So it is recommended to search in both of them to increase the chance of finding a lower price.
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