Farecast CEO Hugh Crean demo-ed of his travel meta search engine and used it as the basis for his argument that there is a difference between data and expertise, and that travel website should go beyond slapping data in front of consumers.
Currently, travel websites deliver an overwhelming volume of data to users, based on their search queries. Farecast tries to go beyond the data dump by providing consumers with the tools to make intelligent decisions about trade-offs between price and value. Most of the tools are ‘standard’ among meta search engines; # of stops, preferred airlines, preferred times, etc.

Farecast takes this to another level by making predictions about price (will it go up or down). Consumers can even by a “Fare Guard”, an insurance against future price changes. That’s a clear demonstration into their confidence about their predictive modeling. Impressive. 75% of their recommendations is “buy now”, because air travel usually gets more expensive as you get closer to departure date. I like it though, because it adds some confidence to a consumers purchase decision.
Farecast was a website I haven’t used before (they don’t include flight from or to Canada yet), and I was seriously impressed. Cream might very well deliver on his goal that his website needs to go beyond the data dump.