How two Web sites’ search tools stack up

Two of the major players in the world of online travel, Travelocity and Orbitz, have recently introduced features designed to help travelers find deals, one of the compelling reasons to use the Web. I took them out for a test drive to see whether they would live up to their promises. Here’s what I found:

Travelocity’s TotalTrip

The claims: Travelocity’s TotalTrip technology, a shopping engine introduced in June, allows consumers to book airfare and hotels together at what a spokesman called “significant discounts” from booking airline tickets and hotel rooms in separate transactions.

The test drive: I put TotalTrip through its paces by planning a trip for two to New York. (You can access TotalTrip by clicking the “flight and hotel -- book together and save” option.)

I selected the third hotel that came up in the search results, the Westin New York Times Square, partly for its central location.

TotalTrip was easy to navigate and reasonably straightforward. But it doesn’t break down the flight and hotel costs; you get one price for the package.

“Part of the game of getting these discounts is that you’ve got airlines and hotels that are willing to give significant discounts,” said Jeff Glueck, vice president of packaging for Travelocity. “But they don’t want consumers to know where they are getting the discounts.”

Fair enough, but it makes comparison shopping difficult. (The other Web sites that offer such vacation packages generally do not break out their costs either.)

The bottom line: I did not find what I would call significant discounts. In fact, AAA members could have booked a flight and the same hotel separately on Travelocity and saved more than they would have using TotalTrip. Non-AAA members would have spent $28 more to book the flight and hotel separately on Travelocity not using TotalTrip.

I shopped for the same trip on other sites, and Expedia offered a better price (see chart).

“We never said that it wouldn’t be smart to shop around, but we want consumers to learn that TotalTrip is a smart and necessary stop in planning every trip,” Glueck said.

Compared with other sites, TotalTrip offers consumers more control over their hotel room choices, airline seats, access to consumer and AAA reviews and the order in which a traveler reserves the trip, Glueck said.

These functions may be useful, but I was more focused on Travelocity’s claims of savings.

I might use TotalTrip to see whether I could achieve a savings after I had explored other options. It seems a stretch to say it provided a “significant discount,” especially given the lower price on Expedia, but a penny saved is a penny earned.

Orbitz’s Flex Search

The claims: According to a news release, Orbitz’s Flex Search is aimed at the millions of consumers who have flexibility in their travel dates and who want to save money by flying when fares are lowest.

“With Flex Search, Orbitz does the heavy lifting so consumers don’t have to do endless searching,” said Mike Sands, chief marketing officer for Orbitz.

This function, available since March, offers three types of searches: weekends, flexible stays and bonus days.

If you are considering a weekend trip, the weekend search function allows you to select a month and see the best fares for every weekend of that month. By Orbitz’s calculations, a weekend includes Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays on the outbound flight and Sundays, Mondays and Tuesdays for the return, for a total of nine possible combinations around each weekend.

If you know the number of days you want to travel -- for example, four to six days -- and can bend a little on dates, the flexible search allows you to look at up to 94 date combinations in a 30-day time period with just one click.

If you have the flexibility of traveling one, two or three days earlier or later, the bonus days search provides you with up to 49 date combinations to find the lowest available fare.

The test drive: I needed to book a flight to Virginia Beach, Va., from Los Angeles. I started with the “weekend” option, chose September and found a $277 fare on United. It was the lowest of dozens of choices that appeared quickly in an easy-to-use chart. It functioned well, and the fare was almost $100 less than the lowest fare I found searching United.com for the same dates.

Next I tried a “bonus days” search, adding the maximum three days before and after on both legs of the flight. Again, an easy-to-read matrix popped up with fares ranging from the $277 I’d already found to $383, depending on the dates I selected. Although I did not save any money in this example (I had already been given similar options in the previous search), it was easy to see how one might.

The “flexible stays” search was my least favorite. I searched for a four- to six-day trip and was presented with 78 combinations of dates and fares, but not in any order I could grasp easily. Again, my $277 fare was the lowest listed.

The bottom line: I was impressed by the utility, ease of use and savings potential of Flex Search. On my first attempt, it provided me with the lowest fare I could find. I have a new tool in my search for low fares on the Web.

Travelocity’s site also offers flexibility in searching different dates for better fares with its “search all dates” option. You type in a departure city and destination, and a list of the lowest fares comes up with the qualifying dates. Click on an airline and you go to a screen with calendars. Available dates for that fare are in green.

A note of caution: Travelocity’s fares are not posted in real time (Orbitz’s fares are). You may find a great fare on Travelocity only to learn during the booking process that it is not available.

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TotalTrip comparison

Trip to New York City for Aug. 1-7 for two people. Includes airfare from Los Angeles International Airport to New York’s Kennedy airport and six nights at the Westin New York Times Square.

*--* Comparison with Air Hotel Total TotalTrip Expedia vacation packages $1,780 -$199 Travelocity (not using TotalTrip) $693 $1,190 $1,883 -$99* TotalTrip $1,979 Travelocity (not using TotalTrip) $693 $1,314 $2,007 +$28** Orbitz Vacations $2,038 +$59 AA.com, Starwood.com $743 $1,324 $2,067 +$88 United.com $743 $1,373 $2,116 +$137

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*including AAA discount

**excluding AAA discount

On the Web

Among sites used to research this story:

www.aa.com

www.expedia.com

www.starwood.com

www.travelocity.com

www.orbitz.com

www.united.com

James Gilden writes the Internet Traveler twice monthly. He can be contacted through his Web site, www.theinternettraveler.com.