List of Travel Meta-search Engines

Below is the list of travel meta-search players in India. Feel free to add to the list in case I have missed on any names:

Meta-search Engine	Products
	Air	Hotel	Car	Bus	Rail	Cruise
iXiGo	√	√		√	√
Sprice	√	√
Redifff Faresearch	√			√	√
Yahoo Faresearch	√	√	√
Ghoomo (at your price)	√	√
Mobissimo	√	√	√
Kayak	√	√	√			√
Zoomtra	√	√

iXiGo.com generated INR 3 Billion revenues for domesetic airline industry

One of the most prominent travel meta-search player iXiGo generated direct airline sales of INR 300 crores and helped airlines to save distribution costs up to INR 15 crores. In addition to this, as bookings were made on airline's own website, iXiGo has also enabled airline partners generate ancillary revenues of almost INR 5 crores.

According to Mr. Aloke Bajpai, Founder and CEO of iXiGo.com, "Distribution costs form the third biggest expense item on the P&Ls of airlines in India after fuel & personnel expenses. The data points we have aggregated suggest that the meta-search model's growth in India is reducing distribution costs through efficient online customer acquisition, at a fraction of existing distribution channels, and is helping accelerate ancillary revenue generation"

iXiGo provides unbiased results for the search query and enables the user to compare the results. It also saves commission and booking fees for travelers as they remove middleman from the channel by routing the bookings directly to the airline website.

With entry of more meta-search players, distribution space in the online travel industry has become more competitive.

Source: Business Wire India (http://www.businesswireindia.com/PressRelease.asp?b2mid=19574)

Travel meta-search players spreading their wings

While OTAs dominate the online travel industry in India, relatively new but promising element in the travel distribution channel - meta-search engine - is getting more attention from travelers than ever.

Meta-search engines aggregate search results from multiple search engines and present them as a single output to the user. Meta-search engines do not have their own database or repository of travel products, they route user's query through multiple websites of OTAs and suppliers and present the search findings in the form of list to the user.

In a way, travel meta search engines enable the user/traveler to view and compare offers/quotes from multiple OTAs and suppliers on their web page. Unlike some OTAs, meta-search engine provide complete details about the fare including taxes and surcharges hence present unbiased report.

Travel meta-search players do not have their own booking engine and have different revenue model from OTAs. Meta-search engines follow 'pay per click' or 'pay for lead/action' model e.g. whenever a user clicks on any of the search results displayed on the website, meta-search engine directs the user to a website of an OTA or airline. Meta-search engine charge OTA or airline on per click basis. Charge rates generally vary with products i.e. hotel. airline, car rental. etc. OTAs also earn advertising revenues.

Travel meta-search engine market is quite matured in western countries such as US, UK and some European nations; however, it is relatively new in the Indian context. Over the past few years, Indian market has witnessed emergence of few travel meta search engine players such as IXiGo, Mobissimo, Kayak and Zoomtra. Despite being in the industry for more than 2 years, meta-search engines struggled to gain substantial share in the online travel market pie during early days, primarily due to inadequate support from airlines. However, nowadays, companies like IXiGo have moved from traditional airline-only model to air+hotel model. It has recently added bus and rail to its portfolio. The company has also launched its mobile platform in order to target India's 60 million GPRS enabled phone users.

Increasing popularity of meta-search engines amongst travelers has grabbed attention of VC investors when Singapore based investment fund BAF Spectrum invested in IXiGo.

With gradually increasing competition in the market, meta-search engines need to upgrade their features such as innovative search or display options, fare forecasting, auction based pricing, etc.