Yahoo! (Nasdaq: YHOO) wants to help plan your vacation. Even though it already has a Yahoo! Travel section, it's revamping its conventional search to yield enhanced travel-related query results. It's a great idea, but can Yahoo! take on the entrenched competition?
Yahoo! has jazzed up searches conducted on its normal search site for travel, culling search results, maps, and user reviews that can all help prospective travelers find exactly what they want for the best price. For example, the site should help people find cheap airfares, scouring both its own Farechase system as well as other sites, and allow them to check out hotels using maps and satellite views of the surrounding environs. Pretty nifty.
Furthermore -- no surprise here -- Yahoo! is leveraging the strength of its user base by having customer reviews available to help prospective travelers make their decisions. It's no secret that user-generated content and reviews have been a big boon for many of the big players on the Internet, and Yahoo! has so many users that it's certainly a quick and easy way to make its services more helpful by scouring the collective experiences of the community.
It's a great idea -- and it's an idea that Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) hasn't hatched yet, other than the fact that one can obviously run travel searches on its site. (Chances are, though, it will.) However, when it comes to travel, it's not like Yahoo! doesn't face plenty of competitors that many consumers think of first when they think of researching their travel plans online.
Not least of which is Expedia (Nasdaq: EXPE), Sabre's (NYSE: TSG) Travelocity, and Motley Fool Stock Advisor selection Priceline.com (Nasdaq: PCLN). Amazon.com (Nasdaq: AMZN), another Stock Advisor pick, has teamed up with a company called SideStep for an online travel store as well. And that's an interesting team, considering SideStep takes it all a step further by scouring different portals and direct travel sites for a cross-section of prices.
I played around with the travel-related search functions on Yahoo! and found them pretty useful. However, when most people think travel, do their fingers automatically key in, say, Expedia or Travelocity? Maybe Internet users are ready for the obvious benefits of search innovation from portals and search giants to find the best travel deals. If that's the case, Yahoo!'s onto something here.
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Alyce Lomax does not own shares of any of the companies mentioned.
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