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Professor Arms Travel and Telecom Consumers
By Guillermo Garcia
Want an economical, last minute airfare to Vegas? How about a hotel room upon arrival for up to 70% off the advertised rate?
Want to verify that your telephone long distance plan really is the advertised 7-cents-a-minute that the carrier claims?
You can do all this and much more, thanks to a pair of Web sites created by Marc-David Seidel, McCombs School assistant professor of management.
Seidel, whose research specialty is social and inter-organizational networks, founded the sites to provide valuable, nuance-free information to consumers on subjects ranging from travel to telecom.
Both sites, ABTolls.com and AirlinesOfTheWeb.com, have received considerable media attention. The Los Angeles Times refers to ABTolls as one of the best consumer oriented phone sites on the Web, while The Washington Post says the listings “brim with important details normally hidden in (a telecom’s) fine print.”
ABTolls.com
ABTolls’ long distance rate database relies on volunteers “whose joy it is to keep every-one informed of rate changes,” Seidel says. The community of informants includes telecom firms, pricing specialists, state regulators, reporters, and consumer protection groups. Not surprisingly, the most frequent visitors, in addition to consumers looking for a better deal, are the telecom firms themselves, anxious to keep customers while looking for opportunities to acquire new ones by raiding their competition.
The major phone companies may not always like it, but a number of state regulatory agencies rely on Seidel’s site to provide rate analysis. ABTolls has even received the endorsement of the Federal Communications Commission, because of its almost instantaneous posting of telephone provider rate changes, according to CBS Marketwatch.
Seidel says that some 150,000 people have switched long distance providers as a result of information gleaned from the Web site. “My goal is to have a more informed, savvy consumer,” Seidel says.
AirlinesOfTheWeb.com
What Seidel started as a hobby site in 1994 now contains information and pricing schedules on 500 airlines that operate around the world. “I just wanted to learn how to make a Web page,” he says, “It has just sort of taken on a life of its own.”
AirlinesOfTheWeb contains a slew of useful data, including travel tips on how to save money on car rentals, air travel, and hotels. It also offers bargain basement airfares through its link to OneTravel.com, a popular discount airfare sites.
Being the first such site on the Web guaranteed it worldwide media attention, which in turn stimulated airlines to start their own sites. The site now garners some 4.5 million page visits per month and generates about $7 million in sales yearly.
Seidel says he is satisfied with the operation and sticks to his goal of keeping the focus simple, “which really means that the focus is not on maximizing the revenue stream, but rather on maintaining the old network philosophy of simply sharing information. I believe the site has been very successful in that regard.”
For information on specific programs at the McCombs School, consult our contacts page. For media information, contact the Communications Director by phone at 512-471-3314 or by email at CommunicationsDirector@mccombs.utexas.edu.
