Travelocity, Orbitz, Expedia and Cheaptickets.com.

¶ … Travelocity, Orbitz, Expedia and Cheaptickets.com. What I liked about Expedia was that it had a clean layout, was easy to follow, presented all of my options on one page and was the only one that did not give me a pop-up ad. I liked that it did not use extra pages to try to sell ancillary products/services, which some of the other sites did. I found little to dislike about Expedia. With Travelocity, I initially liked the price they offered me but when I tried to proceed I was informed that the seats were not available. This smacks of a bait and switch. Furthermore, the layout was very busy and hard to navigate. It was more difficult to figure out their pricing structure as well. What I liked about Travelocity was the ability to compare airlines and number of connections in one simple bar.

A found the CheapTickets.com site cluttered with ads. It also presented what I would consider to be too much information on the stopovers for a customer just browsing. Orbitz has a similar layout to CheapTickets but with slightly less clutter. It seemed to have the best range of good prices as well. In all, I found the Expedia site the easiest to navigate. Orbitz and CheapTickets were around the same, both good to navigate but a little bit cluttered. Travelocity added too many needless steps and was therefore the most difficult to navigate.

The site that did the best job of promoting itself was Orbitz. The logo stood out the most, and it made adding ancillary products and services easy without the application being distracting or cluttering up the screen. CheapTickets.com had an obscure logo, which hindered its brand effectiveness. Travelocity I thought was too overt in marketing hotel packages on my flight. Expedia's site does a decent job of promotion due to its cleanliness, but the Orbitz logo is more prevalent, giving it the edge.

There are two ethical considerations. One is the bait and switch aspect. To me, Travelocity failed this test, while the others passed. Orbitz and CheapTickets, for example, explicitly state when there are only a couple of tickets left on a flight. The other is the protection of consumer information.

A found that all four of these sites did a good job of protecting my information. They all appear to have strong software and have built in steps to ensure confidentiality. I did not see any reason to feel that the confidentiality of my information was threatened. I would make payments on all four sites.