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Cheapflights in Australia – but its not open territory
A report on The Boot in the UK says that while UK flight meta-search leader Cheapflights has announced and launched a holding site for an Australian version of the business, claiming the site is beta, as there is no booking engine it yet in place it is clear there is still a lot of work to do if they are to meet the planned end of year launch date.
Cheapflights is the first of the global players to announce a meta-search launch in Australia, with Kayak and Sidestep making European moves but also so far silent on Asia.
Bezurk is the only local player targeting Australia, with Sprice having an Asian business launched but have lost out on the chance for the Australia URL, which is currently owned by an Australian based Asian grocery store.
That does not mean they have a first mover advantage or guaranteed meta-search product lead in Australia, because by the very nature of the Australian market all of the major online air players – Webjet, Travel.com.au, Flight Centre, Expedia and Bestflights have built Aussie domestic and trans-Tasman air businesses around meta-search principles.
As neither Virgin-Blue or Jetstar participate to any meaningful degree in the GDS’, the only way for the local full service agents to access their inventory through screen scraping and API based aggregation technologies that result in the booking actually being made directly with the carrier.
In many respects the whole of the domestic online intemediary air business is already a version of meta-search.
Welcome to the party Cheapflights!
Report by The Mole
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