PHOENIX å—FareChase, which provides a search engine for real-time comparison shopping, announced at the PhoCusWright Executive Conference that it is now searching 39 e-travel sites, including 21 sites for airfare, 14 sites for hotel reservations and four car rental sites.
This doubles the number of sites it searches and includes major airlines sites such as United, Northwest, TWA, America West and Continental, and such travel sites as Hotwire and Expedia.
New York-based FareChase says its model can help save consumers to save as much as 50 percent by simultaneously retrieving, evaluating and securing last-minute prices and options from all the major online travel services.
FareChase acts as an ASP, offering its technology to licensees. Its target partners are online travel agencies and Internet portals. It provides its partners with FareChase SDK (Software Development Kit), which allows partners to tailor the FareChase functionality according to their specific needs.
Smaller, less technically inclined partners may co-brand on the FareChase home site or may also opt to run a private copy of the FareChase engine on their web sites.
“By applying real-time data mining and analysis capabilities, we have the ability to shape our software for our e-travel industry clients’ specifications,” says Fare Chase CTO Ofer 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.”
As part of the advanced beta version, FareChase announced two additional proprietary features to FareChase. First, 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 also allows for multiple airfare searches, comparing prices for example, from New York to Los Angeles, and then New York to San Francisco on one or more alternate days.
A second search feature, which will be included in the FareChase SDK in December, is an all-in-one multiple simultaneous search. This will enable the search engine to putting together a comparison-priced travel package for air, hotel and auto reservations to a particular destination, according to the customer`s specifications. The components of the trip will come from many sites, using the “single sign on” for the booking capability.
“By adding new tools to our software development kit, 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,” says FareChase CEO Lior Delgo.
FareChase also announced here at the PhoCusWright Executive Conference that it is offering its clients a beta version including a 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 a cellular phone.
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