“I can’t see a search company like Google wanting to see travel consumers search elsewhere”

Surely Google already has 10 times the amount of travel searchers as all the businesses you talk about and their search stats in the UK are only rising? I’d imagine the stats for online travel bookers who havent used a search engine at some point in their buying process is miniscule.

There is a role for OTAs and aggregators in the market but I don’t think Google would look to purchase one of them when they could just leverage all their data with an intutive front end and a Google checkout process to build the much talked about ‘Troogle’.

kayak is my favorite site by far. for booking hotels i’ll often look to tripadvisor to see what is rated well in a city and compare that against kayak.

I use a wide range of methods for finding travel. Sometimes I get ideas from sites like this, as well as travel and food “communities” online, and I just contact recommended hotels or restaurants directly, rather than booking through an online service. I keep a running list of places that sound interesting, such as places profiled in Smithsonian or National Geographic, and then go directly to the travel sites the countries in question have (everyone has a tourism office). And I go to adventure travel shows and talk to people who travel to get ideas. Then I’ll often go directly to the flagship airline of a country I want to visit (most countries give tax breaks to the local airline), though I will often simply search for an airline where I have a mileage program, as this way, I normally accumulate at least one free trip per year. I will also check a lot of the “usual places,” from hotels.com to travelocity — just to make sure I’m doing at least as well as i could through them. All this takes more work than having one site, but it’s kind of ongoing, so there are always a few places I know I want to go next. And, of course, in a pinch, I’ll use a travel agent and even a tour company, if I’m going way off the beaten path (for example, crossing the Gobi in Mongolia or camping in the Sahara, I felt it was good to be with a small group and have a guide). So I’m all over the place.

That said, the mention of kayak has piqued my curiosity, so I’ll be checking that out, as well.

As for Google, AFAIK, they already have plans to create a portal that will be aggregating content from travel sites and offer advertising splace to advertisers.
They want us all to advertise with them and they want us all to care about the conversion of our businesses.

I personally always google and look for people’s comments about the places and properties before booking.

I normally arrange everything myself using skyscanner.net and a hostel booking site. Since we’ve recently started affiliate advertising on our site I’ve been using more traditional company’s online systems…at least to research and compare.

It’s interesting to see what’s out there, but apart from flights and the first night or two in a hostel, B&B or guesthouse I don’t book much online.