Alex Bainbridge's Musings on travel ecommerce blog
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The value of my time…

Thursday, June 14th, 2007

Today my annual car insurance was up for renewal. I buy my insurance via a small, independent, broker. They record my details (a 4 year old Mazda) and then using software search the marketplace for all offers from multiple insurance companies.

Could I make a saving by booking online? Probably yes. I expect there are websites that offer better prices when purchased direct rather than via my broker - but I don’t have the time to go and search the marketplace myself - besides my broker answers the phone within 2 rings - and I have a named individual there who I can contact.

What makes this interesting to me is that insurance is a bit like travel - a marketplace that has moved online. However I have kept my offline broker as they offer me a personal service and competitive prices….. I value my time - and they save it.


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This blog is about travel ecommerce with a focus on topics of interest to tour operators & travel companies

Alex has previously started up a small tour operator (5 staff) and also worked for leading "dot coms", airlines, hotel chains and tour operators advising and project managing web, ecommerce and reservation system projects.

Alex is available for travel ecommerce consulting via Travel UCD. Travel UCD also operates TourCMS - a web based reservation system for small tour operators

I will be at WTM London
Thursday 13th Nov
Happy to meet for a chat!

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Recent comments
Alex Bainbridge: Hi Stephen, I agree with you!

Stephen Joyce: Yes. I believe screen scraping is hacking. Let’s use a non-travel example. I build a website that uses a screen scraper that allows you to log into your on-line bank accounts (all them one in one...

Michael Madison: Alex, Let’s extraplolate from Skyscanner’s comment: Scraping is okay, if intended to show, promote, maybe compare flights with other offers, but it is not okay when it is used for...

Skyscanner Flight Search: Hi Alex, We (Skyscanner) have just publised a statement in response to this which you can read here: http://news.skyscanner.net/art icles/2008/08/000550-skysca...

Alex Bainbridge: Hi Guillaume, Yes - I think I have posted enough about Ryanair now! (which is why I have just posted a summary!)

Kevin May: this is a follow-up to the easyjet story above: Travolution EasyJet article 

Guillaume: Hi Alex, This list is a joke and aims at attracting media coverage (follow Travolution and co immediate response). For instance, Booking.com and Active Hotels don’t offer Flights on their website so...

WhichBudget: Hi Alex, We own up to NOT screescraping Ryanair website. All we show are routes which are flown by Ryanair and we get that information manually. We were thus even more surprised when on 18 January 2008 we...

James: Well Ryanair’s booking engine is certainly very slow but I supect that there are other reasons for that. I can understand both their business reasons (low air fares so they want to be able to get the...

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