Search Party Unveils Hotel Search Engine

HostReview.com
Thursday, May 4, 2006; 06:26 AM

Mountain View, California - A new hotel price search engine has been launched by search engine company, Search Party, in hopes of providing consumers with several new comparison features not currently found through any other travel site.

Search Party is offering a new desktop tool that can be downloaded free of charge and enables online travel shoppers to compare hotel prices while they are also shopping on Expedia and Travelocity, even though these companies do not actively participate in Search Party or other travel search engines. Once downloaded, Search Party Desktop automatically activates when a user searches for hotels on Expedia or Travelocity and compares the selected hotel's price to other sites in Search Party's system to identify if lower rates are available.

Eric Christensen, Founder and President of Search Party and a 20-year hospitality industry veteran commented, ''People who think prices don’t vary much online need to shop for hotels on Search Party. Search Party helps prevent consumers from overpaying for hotels. We understand the cost of a hotel stay is significantly more than just the average nightly rate and we’ve created Search Party to provide a complete view that helps our users compare the total 'real' cost of the stay to find the best all-around value that saves time and money.''

Search Party intends to allow consumers to easily search and compare nightly room rates, taxes and booking fees, and cancellation policies for more than 40,000 U.S. hotels, across most major hotel brands and leading online travel sites, including Orbitz, Lodging.com, One Travel, Reserve Travel, LastMinuteTravel.com and many others.

Some of the unique comparison features and services Search Party offers can help consumers identify variances in total costs that can range between 25 to 30 percent, or an average $50 per booking.

The new features include the ability to:
•    Compare More Rates from More Sites - Search Party searches and compares prices side-by-side for up to 8 different sources versus the one to three sites compared through other travel search sites like SideStep or Kayak.
•    Compare Taxes and Booking Fees - Search Party calculates and compares taxes and booking fees. Taxes and booking fees can vary considerably from site to site and can add up to 20 percent to the cost of a hotel room, yet are excluded from most online price guarantees. Search Party's unique side-by-side comparison grid can save shoppers significant time by eliminating the need to click through to the hotel or agency site to conduct the comparisons manually.
•    Compare Cancellation Policies - Comprehensively compares cancellation policies and fees across participating sites. As penalties have been become more stringent and costly, Search Party helps its customers find less restrictive policies that can help save an average of $25 per booking or what could even be the forfeiture of the full cost of one-night's lodging or, in some cases, the entire stay.
•    Compare Specific Room Types - Compares prices for specific types of rooms to provide travel shoppers a true ''apples to apples'' comparison so they don’t waste time comparing the price of a no-view, double room with a full-view, king room.

Founded by a group of online hotel veterans, Search Party was in development for more than 18 months. Search Party hopes to vastly simplify hotel comparison shopping for consumers while also helping hoteliers and distribution companies sell more rooms without straining reservations systems or compromising important revenue and yield management practices.

To celebrate its official launch, Search Party is offering visitors the chance to win free hotel stays in exchange for sharing their online hotel shopping experience with Search Party. Anyone who uses Search Party to find a hotel can send a brief e-mail to Search Party at savemoney at searchparty.com with details about how Search Party saved them money. Each month through December 2006, Search Party will select three submissions at random and reimburse the Search Party user for their hotel stay, up to US$500.

To learn more, please visit: www.searchparty.com.