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| Top 7 Travel Websites |
April 25, 2008 |
 Selloffvacations.com:
best package holiday site
Travelocity.ca:
best site for travel to the U.S.
Expedia.ca:
best open-ended site
itravel2000.com:
most effective landing page
KiwiCollection.com:
best high-end niche site
Flightcentre.ca:
best site for inter-Canadian flights
Aeroplan.com:
best CRM site
By Andrew Rideout
As the average consumer has become more confident with the ins and outs of making online purchases, it is now standard fare to use the Web to make travel plans. But while actually booking a trip is straightforward, getting the best information and price can be a bit of a quest. For example, you can pay $800 for a flight at one site and then find another that has the same seat for $425.
All of the travel sites sell the same flights, cruises, rentals cars and hotel rooms, so they must work to differentiate themselves and attract customers. That means you can play off the strengths of each site as you shop around. Certain travel sites are excellent places to purchase flights, yet have a limited or overpriced selection of hotels. Some sites offer myriad destinations, but everything must be booked separately. Still others specialize in vacations that start next Thursday, as opposed to four months down the line. And cultivating niche markets has become more important than ever. There are sites specializing in eco-friendly travel, exotic destinations or booze-fuelled weekends for university students.
One example of this is Kiwicollection.com (reviewed here), which focuses on high-end destinations and packages. “When we launched the company five years ago, we simply saw that there was a need for it,” said company president Philippe Kjellgren. “We want our clients to know that they will be completely taken care of.”
To help locate the travel site that’s just right for you, we’ve taken a look at a few of the Web’s most popular travel destinations.
Selloffvacations.com:
best package holiday site
SelloffVacations knows what its customers want. A quick browse of the site indicates this isn’t the place to book your eco-friendly trip to Machu Picchu or a quaint getaway at a New England bed and breakfast. But if you’re looking for sun, sand and an open bar, you’ve found the right URL.
Selloffvacations is the standout selection for booking package holidays or cruises. Great deals are available on packages to popular destinations. The site lets you select parameters such as destination, length of trip and star level, and you can fine-tune your results with other options like golf course proximity, kitchenettes and beachfront locations. The site then scans its database of pre-existing package holidays from a variety of different companies. If you wake up one morning craving an immediate escape from the snow and frigid temperatures, its last-minute section offers deals on trips that begin within a few days or hours. The actual selection and confirmation processes are completely painless, and the site always loads quickly.
In terms of drawbacks, the site doesn’t boast the lengthy list of destinations you would find at, say, Expedia. However, Selloffvacations is well aware of its place in the world and it delivers a solid price on an all-inclusive vacation.
Travelocity.ca:
best site for travel to the U.S.
While some might debate the effectiveness of Travelocity’s advertising campaign (I don’t take advice from lawn gnomes and neither should you), there’s no doubt Travelocity.ca has a lot to offer. The Canadian version of the popular American travel site, it boasts an extremely wide range of hotels, flights, car rentals, packages and pretty much everything else you might need on your trip.
The site provides a deep review section that is well laid out, but some of the user reviews contain a lot of HTML gibberish, indicating there may be a few coding issues with the site’s back end. Another drawback is the site takes longer than many others to return search results. This can definitely add up if you conduct several dozen searches.
One feature that makes Travelocity stand out is its consistently low fares on flights from Canada to the United States. Additionally, after searching for flights, you get results from 10 or so different airlines displayed in one place with the prices all lined up next to each other. The flights are organized by number of stops and price. Compared to many of the other sites out there, you get more results and more options. The search process itself is easier than others as the site doesn’t prompt you to make any add-ons to your purchase, so if you’re just looking for a flight, it doesn’t try to sell you car rentals or flight insurance.
Expedia.ca:
 best open-ended site
Expedia.ca is the 500-pound gorilla of Canada’s online travel Web sites. While it can sometimes be a little cumbersome thanks to all of the different features, you will always be able to find what you’re looking for and even a few things you’re probably not. The prices are usually in line with other sites.
Expedia.ca is a vast, expansive site, and it is easy to consider it the benchmark in terms of options and trip customization. Locations all over the world are available, from four-star hot springs in Iceland to the finest safaris in Mombasa, and you can also book an economy-class seat from Calgary to Winnipeg if you’re feeling (dramatically) less adventurous.
The user-generated reviews are one of the best aspects of the site. Most of the hotels and destinations have some kind of written review in addition to a 0/5 scale in several different categories. Reviews can be really helpful for tips such as requesting a room on the west side in order to face away from a highway or a crowded entertainment district.
If you know you want to take a trip but haven’t thought about the finer details or even the destination, you can easily spend an entire afternoon on Expedia.ca.
itravel2000.com:
most effective landing page
This is an excellent site if you’re not looking to break the bank, as it deals in discounts and marked-down vacations. On the landing page, you’ll see categories including “exclusive offers,” “deals,” “today’s hottest deals” and “last-minute selloffs.” Amusingly, the site declares “100 Agents waiting! CALL NOW”, conjuring up the image of 100 agents sitting in some call centre waiting to take your order at the same time. A banner for a cross-promotion with a popular yogurt company was equally baffling.
However, you cannot deny that itravel2000.com has a quality selection of cheap vacations and an outstanding (if somewhat idiosyncratic) landing page. The site gets across more information and more pricing details on one page than any other site reviewed here. The actual trip selection process is well thought-out and straightforward. The site lacks the detail and lengthy customer review sections available elsewhere, but the extremely reasonable pricing will leave your Visa balance relatively unscathed.
KiwiCollection.com:
best high-end niche site
This site is oriented toward high-end vacations that seem to combine a walk on the wild side with 500-thread-count sheets. Coming from somebody who looks at more Web sites than you could imagine, this is a very well-constructed site and the presentation, coupled with the imagery, is breathtaking. A lot of care has gone into this site and it doesn’t function in a similar manner to many of the others, where you are immediately faced with a starting point, a destination and a whack of dollar signs.
The layout is image-heavy and seems to deal exclusively in stunning vistas. Company president Kjellgren said, “many Web sites are trying to minimize images in favour of faster loading times and we’ve taken the opposite approach.” The site still works as quickly as many others, but the quality of the images makes a significant difference.
Have you ever stared at a dessert buffet and didn’t know where to start because everything looked so appealing? You’ll get a similar sensation here.
KiwiCollection uses keywords to add depth to the selection process, so travel experiences are grouped by terms like “gastronomy,” “diving,” “relaxing,” “family,” and “romance.” The confirmation process works differently than some of the other sites as you can check all of the information, pricing and availability online, but the confirmation and booking process itself is conducted with a live person. This type of customer service denotes a personal touch that KiwiCollection’s upscale clientele would demand.
Flightcentre.ca:
best site for inter-Canadian flights
Flightcentre is truly the best place for a Canadian to pit the Air Canada/WestJet duopoly against each other. Many of us are familiar with the British-owned company’s myriad retail locations, but the online offering is an excellent place to compare flights, and the fares within Canada are some of the best you will find. The search process is extremely straightforward and the results page makes this site a standout. At the top of the results page, Flightcentre shows a brief rundown of the two airlines, the number of transfers and the price. You can then view the details below.
It’s a very effective way to get a lot of information across quickly.
Upon entering identical flight selections on Flightcentre.ca and AirCanada.ca, the price after taxes was virtually identical. If you’ve got somewhere to go domestically and don’t have a lot of time to compare flight times, Flightcentre is a solid selection. While the site certainly offers the usual smattering of info, prices and a relatively pleasant booking process, it deserves applause for its embrace of online video and its blog. This is a key element in getting somebody excited for a trip and it definitely shows that Flightcentre is serious about its online offering.
Aeroplan.com:
best CRM site
A lot of people have well-documented love/hate relationships with Air Miles and Aeroplan, as the seemingly endless amount of fine print can drive even a career accountant to madness. For better or worse though, Aeroplan cleans Air Miles’ clock in terms of overall Web site quality. You can’t really compare Aeroplan to general travel sites, but with so many online airfares booked using points, it would be a mistake to leave Aeroplan on the sidelines.
While you are definitely not going to get the informational depth of Expedia or the hot deals at itravel2000, Aeroplan gets the job done, although it is not a seamless experience. Aeroplan is the online equivalent of simultaneously going through customs while making a payment at the bank. You will fill out a bunch of different little forms, read way more fine print than a human being should have to, all the while hoping the process is as painless and light on fees as possible. For the actual process of selecting and booking flights with your points, Aeroplan’s use of the “refine your search” section is a big help, especially since searches can return a lot more results than you might think. Comparing multiple destinations is also a useful tool and can save you a lot of time, especially in the early stages of planning a trip when you are trying to figure out how much trip you can get for your money...well, points.
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