Don’t assume Travelsupermarket will find the lowest price
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How much time are you prepared to spend to find the cheapest deal for your flight, accommodation and car hire when you book online? In theory with price comparison sites, it should only take a few minutes. However today when researching for a review of a Swiss hotels website, I discovered that two out of the four hotels I’d chosen to highlight were between 5 - 10% cheaper on Travel-Swiss.co.uk than on Travelsupermarket.com, one of the leading travel price comparison sites in the UK. Travelsupermarket states, “We search the market so you don’t have to” but is this true?
I’m not sure exactly how Travelsupermarket decided which hotel booking sites to feature in its searches. I assume it would only be sites which pay commission to affiliates, so Travelsupermarket can make a commission from bookings made from its search results. Fair enough we all have to make a living.
In defence of Travelsupermarket they did find the cheapest flights from Manchester to Feurteventura for my pickage holiday in November, saving me around £28 on two return tickets from the price quoted by Onthebeach.com.
I suppose it depends on how much time you are prepared to spend trawling through various sites to find the very lowest price for your travel needs. Is it a worthwhile tradeoff to you to spend one hour on the internet to pay less? It’s not straightforward to answer this. You may quite enjoy messing around on the net as supposed to sitting watching a soap on TV. If it’s only a one night stay at a hotel and you can save £3 why bother? If you are booking flights flights and accommodation for a family of four for a one week holiday you could save a few hundred pounds.
What’s your strategy on this? Just be aware that a price comparison site won’t always find the lowest price. There’s no surefire, fast and easy way to find the lowest price except spending some time and effort doing your own research.
October 7th, 2007 at 11:31 pm
Don’t assume Travelsupermarket will find the lowest price…
There’s no substitute for some time and effort if you want to find the best travel deal as you cant’ assume travel price comparison sites will find the lowest price….
May 6th, 2008 at 11:04 pm
Very often lower price means lower quality. When you are looking for new 42” Phillips LCD you can use price comparsion sites and find the best deal. All LCDs with the same product number are the same. Maybe the the delivery could take more time. When you are planning holidays with family you are looking for good quality service. In the same hotel you can get one week for 500 or 700 pounds. Two offers could look the same. But when you are in the hotel you can realized that from your window you don’t see the ocean but market.
May 7th, 2008 at 10:21 am
That’s a good point, Tony, that accommodation in not standardised in the way that electronic goods are e.g. room in the same hotel can vary in size, view etc.
I’m not sure that lower price always means lower quality, it is possible to find the same rooms at a lower price with a different accommodation supplier. I booked hotels for our trip to Italy a few days ago and there was quite a variation in price, in most case the accommodation was cheaper booked through an third party supplier than directly with the establishment.