BELLEVUE, Wash. -- With the launch of a new flight-pricing service,
Expedia.com
claims to be first on two counts.
First, it claims to be the first on-line travel agency to
deliver its own pricing engine; second, it claims the new service
is the first commercially used flight-pricing engine on the Windows
platform.
From the customer's viewpoint, Expedia.com enhanced its Build
Your Own Trip option for fare searches so that customers can
quickly piece together individual trip legs to come up with choices
that meet both their time and budget needs.
Richard Barton, Expedia.com's president and chief executive
officer, said, "As a traveler, how many times have you asked, 'I
wonder how much this flight would cost if I leave at 5 o'clock
instead of 3 o'clock?' This service lets customers answer that
question in a matter of seconds by searching the billions of
possible route and fare combinations and displaying the results in
an easy-to-read format."
To use the service, Expedia.com customers choose the Build Your
Own Trip By Flight option with the Roundtrip Search section.
Through the process the customer can view total roundtrip fares
while choosing each leg of the trip, so that they can piece the
legs together as they see fit.
Previously, customers who wanted to control the times for
individual legs of their flight had to choose both legs in order to
see the price and then guess which combinations would yield the
cheapest flight, Expedia.com said.
"Additionally, customers are able to choose from up to 1,200
itineraries in two screens vs. the traditional 10 to 15 itinerary
options given in other industry providers' fare searches,"
Expedia.com said.
The enhancement is the first implementation of Expedia's Best
Fare Search (BFS) technology, a flight-pricing engine developed in
conjunction with Worldspan.