By Marc Alexander

Imagine this. You like to select the best apple from a tree. To do this, you can either stand at a distance from the tree where you can choose only from the apples you can directly see from the side you are standing on, or you can go around the tree and search for the best apple of all.

The first seems easier but you are actually presented with limited choices, only those viewed at one angle. The second method requires some additional effort on your part but you get the satisfaction of actually seeing everything and deciding which apple to pick.

Which one do you choose?

Online travel booking is just like picking the best apple from a tree.

When you go to travel agency sites, you have the impression that you are getting the best deals that are available on the market. You are bombarded with all sorts of packages that are really enticing, lots of savings and all that. But you see, travel agents can actually only provide you choices for the products and services that are available to them. Just like choosing an apple only from one side of the tree.

Then there is Kayak.com which is actually an online travel search engine. It draws on its capability to gather information from hundreds of available web sources related to travel like flights, hotels, car rentals and yes, even tour and vacation packages. Well, unlike travel agents who design the packages with their partners, Kayak.com gives packages that are prepared and provided by the establishments themselves.

By presenting this information, Kayak.com allows you to view more available options on the web, just like bringing you around the tree and presenting all the apples where you can make your selection.

The process is fairly simple. Kayak.com organizes and displays the information collected from online travel agencies, airlines, consolidators, etc., lets you choose from the selection and then directs you to the actual sight where you can do the booking yourself.

If you go to www.kayak.com, and you try to book a flight for example, you get presented with a window where you input your travel details. A calendar then appears on the right side of the main page that shows the best fare results made by other Kayak.com users in the past two days. This is some sort of a shortcut but you are asked to check this out as this best deal offered before may no longer be available. You can either choose a result from this calendar to proceed or you continue with your own search.

Once you make your flight selection on the next window, you leave Kayak.com and you are sent to the booking window of the actual airline website where they automatically search for the flight you initially indicated at Kayak.com. Your flight booking then continues and is finalized directly with the airline itself.

If they do not have direct link with the airline, Kayak.com still provides a link to the airline website but this directs you to the airline home page where you will have to redefine your flight requirements again.

Kayak.com earns through the pay-per-click system when you try to access sites by means of the method previously described or when you click the advertisements displayed on their windows. These are sponsored links that appear on the window once you use some keywords on your inputs. For example, when you supply Paris as your place of destination, advertisements on travel to Paris will come out on the window.

Kayak.com does not earn from commissions like the travel agents do online. Because of this, Kayak.com is able to avoid having any bias as to the way they display their information. In fact, the more links they give, the better. This way, you tend to click more number of sites when you see the other options available.

So in the end, you are confident that you have chosen the best apple from the entire tree.

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