Google mapping with flight search/booking component unveiled

A travel website claims to be the first in the UK to use Google mapping with a visual flight search and online booking service.

Travelwhere FlightMaps features 31 UK airports with more than 140 routes to airports in 11 points – France, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Canary Isles, Greece, Cyprus, Switzerland, Tunisia, Turkey and Malta.

Other destinations will be added in Travelwhere’s next release, including: Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Egypt, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Gibraltar, Hungary, Iceland, Republic of Ireland, Latvia, Luxembourg, Morocco, Holland, Norway, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Sweden and the Ukraine.

Founder Ian Champness believes the FlightMaps application can work for travel agents as well as consumers.

“Travelwhere is an open access website and whilst agents will not want to book flights through us, they can use our UK and destination FlightMaps when searching for flights,” he said.

“FlightMaps will help them quickly find the routes operated from 31 UK airports and the ability to see the airlines who fly to our featured destinations from multiple searching of scheduled, low cost carriers and (where available) charter operators should be a very useful sales tool and a quick way to help agents find the best flights for any dynamic or component packaging.”

He revealed that Travelwhere, which attracted investment from Sunvil Holidays in January, is working on a white label version of the FlightMaps feature that agents could integrate into their websites.

This could also include a scheduled ticketing fulfilment service through Alternative Airlines, Travelwhere’s IATA fulfilment and affiliate flight partner that would enable agents to charge a separate booking fee, added Champness.

He said the service combines airport routes display with a flight search functionality to check availability and prices.

It visually shows airports in a destination country so users can instantly see which airports serve that destination from the UK.

“Making our FlightMaps viewable over Google mapping we believe is a first,” said Champness.

“From the Google Maps, visitors can find both UK and destination airports, see the routes operating to and from those airports and in two clicks check availability and find the prices. They can then go on to complete an online booking if they wish.”

He said: “Most web-based flight search systems let you enter any outbound airport from the UK to anywhere overseas without validating whether any airlines actually fly on those routes. This can be hugely frustrating and irritating for the consumer, when X seconds later the flight search results come back to tell the user there are no flights.

“Worse still, most do not then tell you there are no flights on the route, which can waste even more time if you have re-chosen on another date.

“We only show valid routes on our FlightMaps, so this is a service we think will provide convenience and choice in one stop and help consumers save a huge amount of time in hunting through multiple airline sites to see if that airline flies there.”