Travel industry researchers estimate that demand for
independently booked travel is set to rise by 80% in the next
five years. Both Yahoo! and AOL recently announced that
they were improving their travel offerings and setting up as
online travel agents. Both companies are developing
specialised travel search engines (due to go live in early
2005) that will allow users to compare prices from a range of
different travel agents, airlines, hotel groups, resorts and
hire car companies. The difference between these offerings
and sites such as Lastminute.com or Travelocity is that the
Yahoo and AOL travel site will include fares offered by
budget airlines. At the moment, other companies do not
include listings of many of the budget airlines as most
refuse to pay a commission to list their services.