How Difficult is It to Create a Travel Search Engine Like Google Flights or Expedia?

Given my experience with Google Travel, I can offer some valuable insights into the challenges of creating a travel search engine similar to Google Flights or Expedia.

Low-Quality Travel Search Engine

Creating a basic travel search engine is relatively straightforward. Many travel providers, such as airlines, online travel agencies, and hotel sites, offer APIs that allow you to query their prices and availability. By using these APIs, you can compare different options and direct users to a provider for booking. This type of system is often referred to as a meta-search engine.

Challenges and Limitations

While a basic travel search engine can be implemented relatively easily, there are several significant challenges:

Incomplete Results

Your search results may be incomplete because not all providers offer an API, especially some low-cost carriers. To expand your coverage, you need to deal with more providers directly, but this requires a substantial amount of effort. Some large players may not cooperate unless you have sufficient size, and others may impose significant contractual restrictions in exchange for providing their prices.

Performance Issues

Your system will likely be slow due to the slowness of the APIs themselves and the additional processing required. To speed up results, you might consider caching previously fetched data, but this can lead to inaccurate information. If you pre-fetch many results, providers may cut you off due to an unsatisfactory look-to-book ratio. Additionally, saving results may violate your providers' terms of service.

Poor User Interface

Delivering a seamless user experience is challenging. If you wait for all providers to return results, your UI will be slow. If you update results dynamically, you may confuse users or cause technical difficulties if not implemented correctly. Users will inevitably compare your results with those of other providers, and any discrepancies will be immediately noticed.

Useless Information Without Effort

Your search results will be less useful if you don't put in significant effort. For example, showing the absolute cheapest results may result in inconvenient routings, while showing the fastest options may lead to excessively high prices. In many cases, there may be hundreds of possible results, and many of these may not make sense to display to users. You need to carefully curate your results to make them useful.

Handling High Traffic

Maintaining a high level of traffic is another challenge. Most visitors won't make a purchase on their first visit, so you need to show numerous options before achieving a sale. Managing this traffic effectively requires a sophisticated system to handle numerous requests and provide relevant information.

Inaccurate Pricing

Your pricing data may be inaccurate, as providers often return prices that are not actually bookable. This can lead to user frustration when they attempt to book a flight at a price you displayed but find it unavailable or at a higher rate. Ensuring accurate pricing requires a robust system for updating and verifying information from multiple providers.

Complex Cases and Rules

Handling complex cases, such as multiple cities, multiple passengers, and custom booking fees, can be extremely challenging. Providers may have complicated rules and inconsistent systems that can change without notice. Keeping up with these changes requires significant effort and can be particularly challenging when dealing with various providers.

Long-Term User Retention

Engaging and retaining users is another significant challenge. Most people only travel once or twice a year, so you need to find ways to keep users coming back to your site. Business travelers often have professional assistance and won't use your website, meaning you need to target a different demographic with more frequent travel needs. Additionally, making a significant amount of money will require a sophisticated system for cross-selling and up-sell services, as simply selling flights is not particularly lucrative.

Conclusion

Creating a travel search engine similar to Google Flights or Expedia is possible, but it is a demanding task. Major players like Microsoft/Bing and Amazon have attempted this but withdrew after significant investments due to a lack of success. Understanding the challenges and investing time into solving these issues is crucial for any potential competitors.