Rate this Site!: Travelocity makes travel easy and cheap

by Kelly McKnight | May 10, 2000 7:00:00 AM

Tags: Kelly McKnight

Takeaway: With low fares and no hassles, Travelocity's Web site is the place to go for business travel. Kelly McKnight reviews their site, and we give you a chance to rate it for yourself.

Enterprises are launching "corporate portals," gateway sites that act as an entryway to both a company's Web presence and its intranet. In this column, Web consultant Kelly McKnight gives his opinion on a corporate portal, highlighting strengths and weaknesses that may translate to your company's Web presence. The following index provides an objective look at the site’s features.
Kelly’s thoughts on the Travelocity Web site
When I want to travel, my first priority is to secure the lowest priced airline ticket. Then I begin looking for hotel and car reservations. This scenario is especially true for business travel.
This is part three in a three-part series, “Around The World,” in which we will review travel-booking sites, including Expedia and Priceline. Fasten your seatbelts folks, and let’s take off.
When it comes to business travel, I think Travelocity.com is in a class by itself for a lot of reasons. It’s easy to use. Tell them where you want to go and when your want to return, and, boom, you have your flights laid out in order of cheapest and up. No “Buy this” deals to cut fares. No muss or fuss. Here’s the flight and here’s the freight. I like it.

Sure, when I’m taking the old family to the shore, I’ll look at deal after deal. But when it’s business, I want to cut to the chase.

I own my own company, so I try to shop for prices as hard as I can because every nickel saved goes back in my pocket. Travelocity represents 700 airlines, 50 car companies, and 40,000 hotels. That’s why it’s used by over 40,000 travel agents in 104 companies.

In another life, I handled the advertising for a national hotel chain, and they used Sabre as the backbone of their booking network. Today, Sabre owns Travelocity. These people really know what they’re doing. I guess that’s the reason the site’s system works so well.

Kelly’s verdict
Like the other travel sites, you can hunt for bargains here, but they’re travel bargains. Travelocity isn’t the place to shop for a home loan or auto insurance. It’s also not the best place to discover a new Caribbean hideaway or the best place to slide down a mountain. But if you want to find the best fare to Boise, this is the place.

And to complete my search for the best fare for my upcoming trip: Travelocity’s best roundtrip fare to Ireland from Louisville was $648. Book it, Danno! I did.

Kelly McKnight is a principal of Via Internet Studio , a consulting firm that specializes in corporate Web site design, Internet marketing, and e-commerce.

Now it’s your turn to review the Travelocity Web site. Just click on the Rate this Site! button, and you can help separate the good from the bad from the ugly. It only takes a minute or two to complete your rating, so don’t waste any more time—rate this site now! For Kelly's rating, scroll below.