Most promising site I’ve seen – ExpertFlyer.com

Travel is both a passion and a necessity for me, anything which can make it easier is something I’m interested in.

TechCrunch just posted about ExpertFlyer – this site looks like it has the most potential of any travel site I’ve seen – definitely subscribing to their blog (feed).

When I was booking my travel on point with Qantas back to Australia in August it was a real pain – flights not being available, tricks like changing destination and planning to jump off the plane in a lay-over, etc. – booking international flights on points is a massive time drain – but you are happy to spend the time as its a cheap flight.

Few thought about biz model:

• I’m guessing ExpertFlyer is betting on the free trial being such a benefit you’ll subscribe next time – and they have great verification of who you are as you’d give them your Frequent Flyer number so duplicate accounts may be hard.
• The service is so compelling that paying $foo is something you would do.
• I’m not sure 250 is enough queries as running a query to find 0 results would burn through the queries a little fast I think, but if you do go through the $4.95 i’m assuming you’d just pay the 9.95 to get unlimited.
• Booking flights on points isn’t something you’d always do, so having a subscription model is probably the best approach – unless the advertising is super high value – if you look at the home page there are 0 external ads.
• you can buy gift certificates for your friends – great idea – if you know someone with lots of points saved up its an easy way for you to get indirect benefit from the joy they get from their trip

security - Do airlines expose Delegated Authentication end points? probably not, its bad to share your credentials.

help/sales - Finally the interactive tour is an awesome feature if you are going to have a subscription only model.

On travel sites in general

ExpertFlyer definitely gets up there in my must have travel utilities: TripIt and Dopplr in my travel utilities bag ;

I am wondering when there will be massive consolidation of the travel utility market; with so many great focused portals like Kayak/FareChase/FareCast/ExpertFlyer, TripIt/Dopplr, SeatGuru and then destination information portals like Lonely Planet.

How does this relate to Windows Live Platform? There are lots of services which can be used such as Alerts (for sale notifications), Virtual Earth for geographic visualization, Agents for an alternative input source instead of just via the web, and Messenger Library for collaborative planning.