SideStep Introduces Web-Based Travel SearchSideStep Introduces Web-Based Travel Search

SideStep Inc. this week will introduce a Web-based version of its popular travel-search tool, which had been available only as a downloadable toolbar that compares options offered by travel sites such as Expedia and Travelocity.

SideStep's move was largely triggered by steady growth of the online travel market, CEO Brian Barth said during a press conference call Tuesday. Online-travel purchases are expected to total $65 billion in 2005, making it by far the biggest E-commerce retail category, Barth said.

More than 7 million people have downloaded the SideStep toolbar, said Phil Carpenter, SideStep's chief travel officer, during the conference call. SideStep, which includes paid advertising among its revenue sources, doesn't charge consumers for either search option.

But there's a key distinction between the two search options: The toolbar shows alternative prices that are frequently lower than what Expedia and Travelocity offer, while the Web-based SideStep is built for finding value before price. A consumer conducting a search for a flight, for instance, can quickly drill down to a smaller list of offers by clicking on attributes--such as price, departure times, or number of stops--listed by the results.

Also, consumers can click "compare" to see side-by-side comparisons of the various attributes of the results. The goal is to allow travel shoppers to do less typing while searching for bargains. "We're trying to do what we know consumers have a deep-seated desire for," Carpenter said. "What we didn't want to do is build a system that would force you to search over and over again."

Giving consumers a Web-based alternative to downloading the SideStep toolbar--which can fall victim to aggressive antivirus or firewall software--could result in users getting faster results, says Norm Rose, president of Travel Tech Consulting. But he questions whether airline reservations systems, not to mention those at hotels and other travel suppliers, can withstand the additional pounding they take as the result of queries from tools like SideStep and competitors Kayak, Mobissimo, and Yahoo Farechase. "Web search is becoming a very hot issue in the travel industry," Rose says.

Carpenter said SideStep did more than $500 million in bookings in 2004 and is expecting to exceed $1 billion in bookings this year.