The Scrappy Momondo Is Still Convinced That it Offers the Cheapest and Best Flights for Your Travel Needs
Yesterday I met with Martin Lumbye, one of the founding partners of Copenhagen-based Momondo (
www.momondo.com
), who's in New York on a short working trip. Momondo (a name created from the Esperanto for "my world") is an airfare search engine of only 23 employees that competes with the hundreds of persons staffing such giants as Travelocity or Expedia. I had requested the meeting because of my concern over Momondo's recent merger with Cheapflights (
www.cheapflights.com
) and the almost simultaneous emergence of Google/flights as a new competitor of Momondo in the airfare search engine business.
On the merger with Britain's Cheapflights, Martin made all the standard arguments: Momondo has simply obtained greater resources by permitting itself to be acquired, that it will continue to operate as an independent entity, that it has lost none of its entrepreneurial spirit and zest for innovation, that we consumers will hardly notice the difference. And on the challenge offered by the mighty Google, he was surprisingly optimistic.
According to this very effective spokesperson for Momondo, Google's initial foray into airfare search is surprisingly weak. It surveys only the fares offered directly by airlines (and by a fraction of those airlines only), and passes up the bargain fares often offered by lesser airlines and by online travel agencies (namely, the other airfare search engines). He is at a loss to explain why Google began in such a tentative manner, and is unable to predict whether they will take the steps needed to create a really effective search engine. But for the time being, he asserted, this giant in the world of search hasn't really made an effort to excel.
We talked about a great many other things, but his assertion about the tentative nature of Google's initial program is similar to that of several other qualified observers. For the time being at least, Google/flights is a helpful service, but not a definitive one; and it often misses some of the best flights for your own travel needs.
On the merger with Britain's Cheapflights, Martin made all the standard arguments: Momondo has simply obtained greater resources by permitting itself to be acquired, that it will continue to operate as an independent entity, that it has lost none of its entrepreneurial spirit and zest for innovation, that we consumers will hardly notice the difference. And on the challenge offered by the mighty Google, he was surprisingly optimistic.
According to this very effective spokesperson for Momondo, Google's initial foray into airfare search is surprisingly weak. It surveys only the fares offered directly by airlines (and by a fraction of those airlines only), and passes up the bargain fares often offered by lesser airlines and by online travel agencies (namely, the other airfare search engines). He is at a loss to explain why Google began in such a tentative manner, and is unable to predict whether they will take the steps needed to create a really effective search engine. But for the time being, he asserted, this giant in the world of search hasn't really made an effort to excel.
We talked about a great many other things, but his assertion about the tentative nature of Google's initial program is similar to that of several other qualified observers. For the time being at least, Google/flights is a helpful service, but not a definitive one; and it often misses some of the best flights for your own travel needs.
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