Spanning the Atlantic

A Cross-Border Examination of 20 Travel Web Sites in the U.S. and Europe

Abstract

Online travel bookings are a worldwide phenomenon, and travel companies on every continent have turned to the Web to sell airline seats and other travel products. This rapid growth of the online travel marketplace prompted Consumer Reports WebWatch to team up with London-based Consumers International and six other European consumer organizations to conduct real-time testing of international airfares on routes from the United States to Europe, as well as flights within Europe.

Among the report's most significant findings:

• Despite language and currency issues, several European travel sites could be viable alternatives for American consumers.
  
  
• Several European sites proved extremely adept at providing lowest fares and posted some of the best performances ever recorded by Consumer Reports WebWatch. Overall, the highest percentage of lowest fares (49%) was provided for this testing project by Belgian site Travelprice.
  
  
• "Fare-jumping" — in which inaccurately displayed prices suddenly increase or become unavailable during the shopping process — continues to be a credibility problem among all three major U.S. travel sites: Expedia, Orbitz and Travelocity.
  
  
• The flight and fare data provided by sister travel sites — such as the Expedia, Travelocity and Opodo brands — varied widely from country to country, completely dispelling any notions that these sites are identical except for home pages and translations. In fact, each sister site clearly obtained its own inventory of airfares.