Travel Technology - Questions about building a travel site

Hello everyone! I am pretty new here at flyertalk so I am not sure if I am posting in the right place. I have been researching for quite some time now on how to build a travel site. More specifically, a site like Orbitz, Expedia, and Travelocity. I know that there are many more travel sites like this out there, but I am hoping to strike it lucky :) From my understanding, a site like Expedia for example pays monthly to have access to one or more of the four main servers that keep track of airline information like booking and flight times in the world. They then use the information from the servers to allow one to search for a flight. Am I on the right track so far? I know that constructing a site like this will take a lot of time and effort, but I am willing to do so...eventually. For now though, I decided to sign up to be an affiliate with Orbitz. Does anyone have experience with this? Is it worth doing? For those of you who are interested, my site is http://www.mileflyer.com As of now, there is only a display picture up because I am rather confused as to what to do with it. Also, any suggestions or ideas would be great for example. What do you think needs to be changed about the logo? Its a rough design of what I would like it to look like. I look forward to all of your replies. PMs would be nice as well!

I think you need to ask yourself what you want to gain from making another booking site.

You'll be competing with massive companies, and you won't have any real advantage over what they can do.

You'll need e-ticketing, credit card processing, customer service and lots of other stuff.

I 'd suggest sigining up for more affiliate programs from these sites, and hand picking the best deals from them. That way people still book through them, but you make a few bucks off bookings.

I don't mean to make you depressed, but unless you have something really innovative, I don't think you'll ever see a single booking, even on affiliate links. There are just far too many similiar sites out there who have been around longer.

Well said, ScottC.

Well said, ScottC.

+1

+1
+2.

Also, while "mileflyer.com" isn't a bad URL, you do undermine it by hosting a frameset on another site with a decidedly less businesslike name.

Nice travel photos of Paris, BTW.

-C

Well thanks for the feedback :) I suppose I should rethink this whole idea. Any ideas what to do with the domain? One idea I had at one point was to make a site where people could buy, sell, and trade frequent flyer miles. For example, I have seen people selling their whole frequent flyer account with tons of miles. This of course is against any airlines terms of service, but eBay hasn't stopped this from happening. I guess you could think of it as a Craigslist or eBay for flyer miles. Feedback?

Well thanks for the feedback :) I suppose I should rethink this whole idea. Any ideas what to do with the domain? One idea I had at one point was to make a site where people could buy, sell, and trade frequent flyer miles. For example, I have seen people selling their whole frequent flyer account with tons of miles. This of course is against any airlines terms of service, but eBay hasn't stopped this from happening. I guess you could think of it as a Craigslist or eBay for flyer miles. Feedback?

eBay does actually shut down those auctions and folks do get caught and have their accounts terminated. I wouldn't get in to that business.

but eBay hasn't stopped this from happening.eBay cooperates with the airlines on this. They let the auction go through to completion, and then bust the seller. I have no doubt that a mileage sales site like you describe, if at all successful, would get sued by the airlines.

How about using the domain for travel blogs, they're real popular these days. Perhaps you could set up a blog hosting site. (not that there aren't already too many of those, but...)