Travel Site Quality Guidelines
USAToday, like other search sites, does not create the content or
products that we display in search results.
However, to help maintain high quality results on USAToday, we have
developed the following guidelines for any sites displayed on
USAToday. These guidelines were developed based on feedback from USAToday
users. These policies apply to our core results (in the middle of the results page) and to sites we search via "compare to" links.
- Sites must ensure that price and availability reported are as accurate as possible.
Due to the nature of what we do— real-time searches for travel
options across hundreds of suppliers— USAToday will sometimes find and
display a travel option which is not accurate. These types of mistakes
happen on all travel sites, but we still work hard to minimize these
types of errors on USAToday.
Usually these mistakes are due to some technical reason (it is
difficult to keep all the various computer systems synchronized as to
whether a particular seat on a plane or room in a hotel is booked).
USAToday will not tolerate any sort of "bait and switch"— if any travel
site is found to repeatedly provide mistaken information, they will be
removed from USAToday.
- Taxes and fees must be included, or noted when not.
In the USAToday UI, we use a * to indicate that taxes and fees are not
included in the price. If you see a price that violates this policy,
please report it to USAToday.
- Sites should take orders only for what they can deliver.
If a travel product is shown as available in USAToday results, and then shown
as available on the travel site, and a credit card is taken, then the
travel site must confirm the purchase within 24 hours, by email, phone,
or other means. If the travel product is no longer available, then
the customer must be immediately refunded all money, including all fees.
If USAToday detects a consistent pattern of accepted bookings that are then
cancelled, we will remove the site from our results.
- Sites must be responsive to customers.
Sites must clearly publish contact email address and phone numbers.
If you have a question or problem with a purchase you made on any site
you found through USAToday, that site must be responsive to your email
and/or phone calls.
How You Can Help
If you find a site on USAToday which you think intentionally or
repeatedly violates any of these guidelines, please send
us feedback with all details, and we will
investigate. If we find that a site is intentionally or repeatedly
providing bad service, we will remove that site from USAToday.
See also our affiliate quality policy and our spam policy.
