In the first article on this topic, I laid out where I felt that search was going.

In Part 2, I provided some examples of innovative approaches to search. Small World at Cleartrip is now live. Croatia Airlines is also now using Amadeus Affinity Shopper.

Things are moving in the right direction. But what of the dark side? What could derail the emergence of natural search or, worse, result in a new dominant player who will control search?

The whole issue comes down to the move from explicit to implicit search – where we have to stop thinking about the fully explicit nature of the interaction.

We know so much, yet why can’t we use the information that is already available and make the process less tedious for the consumer? What we must do is remove, from the search/shopping process, the most explicit interactions and focus on the nuances.

A good analogy is – today we are using a telescope backwards and moving it very fast over the pool of potential results. What we should be doing is to turn the telescope the right way round and be able to see the “appropriate” universe of results.

I see search as a convergence of factors. To me the true C-Spot in search is measured by the level of trust that the consumer will have in the results.

Let’s call it like it is – at present search is both unsatisfying and still so flawed that we have little or no credence in the answers. We cannot tell with any surety that the answers are good or bad. In any process of search we undertake, we are thrown into different environments and get different results. Some with taxes and fees – some without. I can’t tell which one is the best answer because I don’t have any way of validating the information until I am facing the “BUY NOW” button.

For every vendor, the process of search is a game that they play with the consumer. Obfuscating the price is the mission. This is accomplished by making the navigation process hard (passing by lots of aisles to get to the milk) and by simply confusing the user.

Even the simplest of the simple – Ryanair will do what he can to throw stuff in the way of the consumer before the purchase button.

Well, enough is enough. The emergence of Google as a major force in travel – they are already making more money out of travel than most of the traditional players – will make you change your ways.

If Google does proceed to move down the path of buying ITA software and its alternative supply access, it could result in a radical shift of who controls distribution.

And the traditional cabal of players in travel will only have themselves to blame for not taking the time to address the flaws of the consumer interaction.

This is the crux of the problem. The GDSs today present only two choices for search in arguably the simplest form of travel search – Fares+Availability. These two choices from the legacy GDSs are “use my cache” (with its built-in flaws) or “hit me for large volumes of data” and then see if you can construct the best results. Oh yes – and my threshold of pricing will ensure that you will never get enough data fast enough and it will cost you a fortune in hit charges.

Thus the context of search is proving to be harder than what a lot of people thought.

In my view there are three levels of search – all of which are pretty complex.

Level 1 – I want to know absolutely the lowest price no matter what. Travel is full of strange quirks, particularly airfares

Level 2 – I want to know the lowest logical price, don’t throw at me the ends of the bell curve – give me the lowest logical results

Level 3 – I want to know the lowest desirable price, matching my semantic needs, context and the dynamically available information.

Unless you understand this, you will fail by just trying to answer level 3 questions. I can provide good examples of each of the first two but the third is still elusive.

Finally we should look at the search solutions as being the arena where we can de-commoditize travel. The airlines and hotels are finally waking up to that fact. The OTAs have not yet figured out the right balance.

Collectively we can really make the change as an industry. If we fail, we surrender our business to Google. And maybe that is not a bad thing. Just don’t expect me to be cheering on the sidelines.

There is a story about one of the most famous headlines in advertising. It was written by legendary ad man David Ogilvy: “At 60 miles an hour the loudest noise in this Rolls-Royce comes from the electric clock.”

Everyone lauds this ad as being a brilliant statement. I do too. Now our task is to see if we can make search abstraction move away from explicit forms of technology and process so that we can all ride along at 60 MPH in peace and quiet.

Featured image credit (e-learning): Ockra/iStock