Online travel: Stringing it together | The Economist
▻http://www.economist.com/blogs/schumpeter/2013/09/online-travel?fsrc=scn%2Ffb%2Fwl%2Fbl%2Fstringingtogether
Stringing it together
Sep 16th 2013, 12:45 by T.R. | BERLIN
FINDING the best deal online for a flight, train connection or rental car is pretty straightforward. But figuring out the cheapest and fastest combination of forms of transport to get from door to door is still rather time-consuming. Two start-up companies in Berlin, Waymate and GoEuro, have made it their mission to make it quick and easy to plan travel that combines different means of transport.
This is a harder nut to crack than it may seem. The airline industry has been working with standardised reservation and ticketing systems for ages. But train and bus operators, car-rental firms and taxi dispatchers have not. What is more, most big players, particularly Europe’s state-run monopolists, don’t like to share data and allow others access to their systems.