Since the recovery of the internet from the dot com burst of the millennia, there has been a spurious growth of the ecommerce sites and the aggregator sites. While ecommerce needs no introduction, it is worthwhile to spare a few words for the aggregator sites.
To qualify as an aggregator website, a website has to cater to a specific product or service genre and within that genre, act as a common platform for all the service providers who may or may not have their individual websites. For example, Uber is a cab service aggregator and Alibaba is an ecommerce website following the marketplace model. One should not confuse an aggregator website with an ecommerce marketplace website, because the 'modus operandi' of the two forms is quite different from each other.
Now that the basic definition and the preliminary concept are quite clear to the reader, we can proceed to the next step which will be about the differences in the two business models – the aggregating websites and the booking websites. Both the business models of the aggregator sites and the booking websites are quite well established and are capable of earning revenue, although the former category does so in a more subtle manner than the latter one.
For the purpose of illustration, let us consider a particular service – hotel and flight ticket booking. For providing this service, there are numerous websites that have been formed. While some of them cater to the booking service for a particular company, an aggregator website has a more liberal or generalized approach and acts as a pointer to all of the booking websites in business or most of them. They essentially act as a common platform for providing useful information to the general public, apart from diverting them to appropriate and dedicated booking service providers.
The main difference between the two types of website is that though aggregator websites, general public can take a preview of the actual service providers are, the rates they are offering, the discounts they are offering and many other bits of information. Such crucial information helps people to compare and contrast between a host of actual booking websites and then zero down on a particular one.
In essence, aggregator websites equips the user with useful information that can directly influence the decision of the user to choose one service provider over another by providing the comparison of price, rates and discounts offered by them for booking hotels and tickets. This is quite common in almost all developed countries in the world and the idea is catching up its pace in the developing countries also.
There can be numerous companies and websites of individual hotels and airlines through which people can book their rooms and tickets according to their schedule and itinerary. However, it is advisable to the general public to consult any of the reputed and authentic aggregator websites before they go after a website that provides hotel and ticket booking service. In general, the aggregator websites do not charge anything from the user but charges the individual ticket booking websites for getting enlisted with them or for facilitating traffic diversion to their websites. To decide which one is the best hotel booking service or cheapest ticket booking service provider, one should consult aggregator websites for their own gain.
Martin Wynn
