Bezurk to power TODAY hotel search

Starting today, Singapore based travel search engine and former E27 presenter, Bezurk will power the TODAY newspaper's online hotel search service.

According to this post on Channel News Asia, Bezurk will provide Todayonline with a database of dozens of hotel suppliers, allowing users to search for the latest information including availability and pricing on over 100,000 hotels worldwide. After comparing multiple deals and making their selection, users will be redirected to the Bezurk site to make their booking.

This deal is clearly an ace for Bezurk. Inspired by the success of travel search engines like Expedia and Priceline in the US, Bezurk hopes to recreate this experience for frustrated Asia Pacific travellers. According to their website, Bezurk comes to the aid of numerous people who go "berserk" searching for travel information on the Internet.

Having initially focused on hotel search, Bezurk seems to be building a new Flight search engine as well. Not too long ago, I was looking for some cheap tickets to India. Normally, I would've just called my travel agent and booked the most economical ticket that he would offer. This time around, I decided to try Bezurk. While not expecting much from a Singapore site in terms of user experience, I was pleasantly surprised by the simple and intuitive interface. It had all the things I needed and in the right places. They had also added just the right amount of AJAXy goodness in the page to make it feel like it was always a step ahead of me. Bezurk also allowed me to tweak things like desired flight times, currency type and price range.

However, the results turned out to be pretty disappointing. The minimum price that Bezurk's search returned was almost S$200 above what my travel agent offered. Of course, it wasn't the same airline, but that wasn't one of my considerations. I was simply looking for the most economical way to fly home. And I couldn't find it using Bezurk.

Well, to give them a break, Bezurk's flight search engine is still in Beta and they are perhaps in the process of adding more airlines to their database. I will definitely return to the site the next time I need tickets. Hopefully, I am not disappointed again.

Prashant.