Phoenix, Ariz. - FareChase (www. farechase.com), the first search engine for real-time comparison shopping in the e-travel industry, announced today that it is now searching 39 e-travel sites, including 21 sites for airplane flights, 14 sites for hotel reservations and four auto rental sites. The announcement was made by Lior Delgo, FareChase’s CEO, at the PhoCusWright Executive Conference on E-Travel here in Phoenix, one of the nation’s leading Internet travel forums.
By doubling the number of sites being searched - including sites for such airlines as United, Northwest, TWA, America West and Continental, and such travel sites as Hotwire and Expedia—FareChase, the only comparison shopping technology for all air tickets, hotels and auto rentals with booking capabilities, is further enhancing its industry-leading technology for large-scale real-time comparison shopping.
FareChase also announced that its e-travel clients will be offered an advanced beta version including the e-travel industry’s first wireless comparison shopping solution, which will allow customers to get updates on comparison searches for extended periods of time before finalizing their selection. If a customer is not satisfied with results of a search, the FareChase technology will continue searching and notify the customer of any lower-fare results either by e-mail or by wireless connection to one’s cellular phone.
“By improving our proprietary software,” Delgo said, “we are establishing ‘Powered by FareChase’ as the only technology to empower e-travel comparison shopping. By adding new tools to our Software Development Kit (SDK), we are offering our clients and partners a flexible way to customize the search engine to their business model and the ability to use the search engine while retaining full control of the search’s scope and functionality.”
As part of the advanced beta version, Ofer Shaked, FareChase’s CTO, also announced two additional proprietary breakthroughs:
á Customers can make multiple simultaneous searches for different categories, conducting a search for airfare, hotel reservation as well as an auto rental. FareChase’s new technology even allows for multiple airefare searches, comparing prices for example, from New York to Los Angeles, and then New York to San Francisco on one or more alternate days.
á The second unprecedented search feature that will be ready in December to be included in the FareChase SDK for industry clients, is an all-in-one multiple simultaneous search, whereby the search engine will do the work for the customer, putting together a comparison-priced travel package for air, hotel and auto reservations to a particular destination, per the customer’s specifications from many sites, using the “single sign on” for the actual booking capability.
“By applying real-time data mining and analysis capabilities, we have the ability to shape our software for our e-travel industry clients’ specifications,” explained Shaked. “Comparison shopping is not about integrating to several web sites; our technology normalizes the data which allows users to compare ‘apples to apples’ in a single row. Our software can do comparison shopping on an ever- broadening scale and magnitude due to the nature of our technology, which can handle the complex business logic of the travel domain.”
FareChase’s business model calls for agreements with strategic partners ready to license or utilize the search engine. The objective is to license FareChase’s technology to empower other e-travel industry sites. The core of the FareChase business strategy is to offer its search engine to the major Internet portals so that their users do not have to switch portals to conduct extensive travel-related searches.
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