text: June 7, 2010 By Tim Hughes 12 Comments I am a sucker for a new way to do online travel search.
  Distribution: Getting the customers to visit the site. Marketing costs in online travel are out of control. The battle in search for buying clicks, on meta and research site for referrals and on established sites for customers is out of control. Zoombu is joining a ferocious take no prisoners battle for eyeballs. Armitage is also aware of this too – admitting that it is "very hard to build a brand on popular [search] terms such as 'cheap flights'". She says the Zoombu plan to target natural search in the long tail, betting on the increasing volume of search traffic around how to get from point A to point B. She is also planning to make a significant push into affiliate sales but via supporting the incredibly large number of independent properties across Europe that would benefit from a "how to get to us" link on their site. The affiliate push is now a common story among search innovators.
  In a recent post - Four types of non-destination based search and what it means for online travel – I thought I had captured the new ways to do search and discovery online.
  [Tnooz's first post on Zoombu]
  Filed Under: News Tagged With: door-to-door, kayak, metasearch, search, zoombu About Tim HughesTim Hughes is an online travel industry executive who has been blogging since June 2006 at the Business of Online Travel (the BOOT).
  Comments	Jim Kovarik says:	June 7, 2010 at 9:40 am
  We share a similar vision at C2G (cost 2 go) but our approach has been more lightweight. For Cost2Drive.com we display flight cost information via an RSS feed from Kayak, and we chose this path instead of executing a full meta search because of the issue around speed. Also, we don't ask for date information as our UI philosophy is 'maximum output with minimum input'. We realize this has shortcomings but we think the trade off in ease of use and speed negates that. I think the challenge here (outside of distribution) is always UI-related; how do you give your customers sufficient information but not overwhelm them, and how do you do in an extremely simple and expedient manner. Its a fine line you're always walking.
  Reply	Karl says:	June 7, 2010 at 10:09 am
  Reply	Nancy Dickinson says:	June 7, 2010 at 11:44 am
  Reply	Sean Collins says:	June 7, 2010 at 12:14 pm
  I have followed Zoombu progress for some time now and I believe it can and will overcome the obstacles mentioned in your article. If they acheive speed and accuracy then distribution will be straightforward given the uniqueness of the proposition. In the meantime whilst battling with speed it may help to set up 100 most common dummy trips so that someone can quickly understand the concept, see if they want to invest time in making it door to door.
  Reply	RobertKCole says:	June 7, 2010 at 3:41 pm
  Reply	Tim says:	June 7, 2010 at 4:38 pm
  Reply	Michael Grove says:	June 7, 2010 at 7:48 pm
  Tim, thanks for pointing us to Zoombu. First this is a great example of using search as a means for an application as opposed to a query result. The benefit is to save time at getting to the right choice. I agree with Robert Cole, what is missing is the ability to provide navigation and personalized responses. If I don't like trains, don't show me a train solution. If I hate to wait, don't show me long layover results. You might want to check out Exalead. Their search platform is set up to do search applications that include Zoombu-like results and also provide the navigation and personalization to further simplify the process.
  Reply	David Marcus says:	June 7, 2010 at 9:29 pm
  Reply	Jim Kovarik says:	June 8, 2010 at 11:14 am
  Tweets that mention Great way to search yet five big challenges for door-to-door site Zoombu | Tnooz -- Topsy.com says:	June 7, 2010 at 6:36 am	[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Amy Lauren, Turisdata and Tnooz HQ, Kevin May. Kevin May said: Great way to search yet five big challenges for door-to-door site Zoombu http://bit.ly/93S4TG [Tnooz via @timothychughes] [...]
  Reply	Great way to search yet five big challenges for door-to-door site Zoombu | New Biz Tips.com says:	June 8, 2010 at 9:20 am	[...] Great way to search yet five big challenges for door-to-door site Zoombu [...]
  Reply	The Week in Travel Tech - TripAdvisor LinkGate, iPhone 4, Social-Search Battle | Tnooz says:	June 12, 2010 at 11:53 am	[...] Great way to search yet five big challenges for door-to-door site Zoombu [...]