No plans to sell airline tickets directly to consumers: Google
Saturday 3, July 2010
Google has stated that it won’t be setting airfare prices and has no plans to sell airline tickets to consumers as the company chose to acquire ITA Software.
The company highlighted that though 49 percent of travellers purchase travel online, it is still time consuming and slow to search for travel options online.
“Today, almost half of all airline tickets are sold online. But for many people, finding the right flight at the best price is a frustrating experience; pricing and availability change constantly, and even a simple two city itinerary involves literally thousands of different options. We’d like to make that search much easier,” Marissa Mayer, vice president, search products & user experience, said in a posting on Google’s blog.
For airlines and online travel agencies, better flight search means more sales.
“We believe that giving users better ways to search for flights online will encourage more users to make their flight purchases online, which will create more overall online sales for airlines and travel agencies,” according to Google. Also, this would result in more traffic to airline websites. Google’s goal is to build a tool that drives more traffic to airline and online travel agency sites where customers can purchase tickets.
The company mentioned that Google and ITA Software are not horizontal competitors. Google does not offer a data feed for flight search information and ITA Software does not market a consumer oriented flight search site. Because Google doesn’t currently compete against ITA Software, the deal will not change existing market shares.
(Source: Eyefortravel.com)
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