TravelSupermarket has pledged to have ‘live pricing’ on all its package holiday search results by the start of the 2006 summer season, in what it claims will be a first for the travel search sector. The guarantee has been put in place following moves by the Office of Fair Trading to urge tour operators to…
TravelSupermarket promises live pricing
TravelSupermarket has pledged to have ‘live pricing’ on all its package holiday search results by the start of the 2006 summer season, in what it claims will be a first for the travel search sector.
The guarantee has been put in place following moves by the Office of Fair Trading to urge tour operators to adopt transparent pricing policies across their portfolio of products.
The switch will effectively eradicate the “Prices from…” currently associated with many tour operator products featured on external sites.
TravelSupermarket said the major operators, including First Choice, MyTravel, Virgin Holidays and Thomas Cook, would all be feeding live prices into the meta search engine.
Thomson is also expected to be on the roster of operators by the middle of 2007, TravelSupermarket managing director Chris Nixon told Travolution, bringing the company closer to its target of around 30 operator partnerships during 2007.
“We are working with all the operators to provide feeds to us,” Nixon said. “This, we believe, will be something that will change the market.
“Consumers want to see that the price they see is the price they pay,” he added.
Nixon said the remaining channels on TravelSupermarket, including car hire, flights and hotels, all currently have live pricing.
TravelSupermarket doubled its traffic levels for January on the same period in 2006, Nixon said.
The company also signed a “seven-figure” sponsorship package this week with Channel 4 for its primetime programme, A Place In The Sun: Home and Away.
The deal, covering the new series of the programme on Channel 4 and More4, is believed to be worth in the region of £2.5 million.
