Major Travel Sites Face Credibility Crunch

Hospitality Net : "Major Travel Sites Face Credibility Crunch An Examination of Booking First-Class Tickets Online :: By William J. McGee, Consultant, Consumer Reports WebWatch" (USA stats and figures)

Article charts rise of confidence in booking travel online noting 10% growth of first class airline tickets 2003 to 2004 in particular.

"Consumer Reports WebWatch tested a variety of domestic routes among six sites: Expedia, Orbitz, Travelocity, and the Web sites of American Airlines, Continental Airlines, and Delta Airlines."

They found that: "buying first-class tickets online can be much more difficult than buying economy-class tickets"

Main findings:

"Fare-jumping," when a rate for a ticket suddenly increases or decreases during the booking process, sometimes without notification to the user, continues to occur on Expedia, Orbitz and Travelocity.

The single-largest incident of fare-jumping occurred testing Expedia, totaling $748.00

Although testers queried sites only for first-class fares, sites continually returned itineraries with business and even economy-class flights.

Testers found problems on Expedia, Travelocity and Orbitz with missing or incorrect labeling information for the airlines’ classes of service.

Expedia led all six sites, returning the lowest first-class fare four of 10 times. Travelocity returned the highest percentage of nonstop first-class flights. Orbitz recorded the highest savings for a single itinerary, returning a first-class fare $1,348.70, or 242 percent, less than the lowest fare offered by its closest rival.

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