ZOLV is a web development and software design company based in Leeds, UK, specialising in the travel and consumer arenas. None of its work is outsourced and it always delivers its projects on time and to budget, according to Olly Wenn, managing director at Zolv.
“Travel is becoming increasingly commoditised. You can find the same hotel room, with the same seat, on the same flight, on the same date, from an increasing number of online travel sites,” he said - and from multiple sources.
“The better aggregators and search sites are finding new ways to steal the march on the competition (after better Google rankings and Pay Per Click campaigns, of course!) They are doing this by providing better tools to slice and dice the 1000’s of holidays in their databases and deliver not only the exact product the customer is looking for, but relevant variations thereof that offer price reductions for later flights, “free” extras with alternative suppliers and so on.
“Aggregators and search sites can also add value to the online transaction in other ways. Teletext Holidays for example, claims to be the only travel comparison site that checks and vets all of its suppliers thus providing an additional layer of security to its customers.”
He continued to say that elsewhere, the search experience varied widely, but a number of sites were starting to offer the more tech-savvy web user a tool based approach.
“Sites such as Sky scanner, Kayak and the recently launched Travel.co.uk don’t mess around with branding and inspirational imagery, but what they do offer is quality search and filtering tools to sift through hundreds of similar products quickly and qualitatively,” said Wenn.
“Sky scanner’s tools make it easy to find who flies from where to where - not a trivial piece of research, as anyone who has tried to work out how to fly from Yorkshire to London, will know! Travel.co.uk promises a number of innovative tools for grouping, comparing and ranking product - and even choosing which agent to ultimately purchase from,” he concluded.