Most of you reading this are likely to be web-savvy pros who will probably recognize at least a few of the above listed companies. But surveys have shown that a majority of people who use the internet for for travel bookings have no idea or clue what site they're on, and what the site's purpose is.

Simply put, they go to Google, type in what they wnat, and from there on, it's irrelevant what site they land up on. They just read what's in front of them, and if it looks good, it's booking time. If that site, in turn, leads them on to another site, they'll follow along meekly and continue reading there, even if they don't know what the site does. In fact, in the same survey, some people actually were under the impression that Google was taking their travel booking.

Surprised? Me too, but it underlines the point that it does not matter what the site is, or what it does, so long as it puts the requisite options in front of somebody who's looking to book a vacation, flight and/or hotel. And this is where the travel metasearch websites jump in.

What it is, according to wikipedia is "A travel meta-search engine is a search engine that sends user requests to multiple search engines and/or travel suppliers and aggregates the results into a single list or displays them according to their source or ticket price."

So, let's say, for example, Kayak.com. When you do a search for a specific flight, it will spit out the fares and other details for all available flights on the specified date, with results gathered from a variety of sources, including the airlines themselves (AA, Southwest, etc.) and also from the online travel agencies (Orbitz, Expedia, etc.). So the consumer can now compare all the available flights and booking sites, and click on to the site which offers the most suitable one, in terms of price, departure and arrival time, etc.

This, in a nutshell, is what we call travel metasearch. And that brings us to the question of why you need to know more about this. That's because there's big changes going on in there, and it's going to effect not only how people search for flights and hotels, but also the price and the kind of deals available.

It all started with the economy going bust, which led people to cutback on travel and even those who are traveling, are doing so with reduced budgets.

That led to more people using Priceline.com, which offers big savings by letting bid for low prices for hotels and flights. That, in turn, led Expedia - which is the travel industry's 'Big Daddy', to respond by cutting it's booking fees - meaning that both Expedia and Priceline.com allowed consumers to book flights at the same prices as that offered directly by the airline, without adding any extra charges to that.

So there's virtually no price difference left for sites like Kayak to put in front of the consumer who's looking for a flight which costs less. On another front, TripAdvisor launched it's own flight search engine, and Travelzoo launched another one on Fly.com.

All of this feverish activity made old hands at flight metasearch like Kayak start sweating, and looking for additional sources of revenue. Kayak's foray into hotel review metasearch has put it in direct competition with Uptake.com, which has a kick-ass patented technology for pulling in relevant hotel reviews from all over the web, based on the user's search query.

And as a result, there's a fair bit of attacks and counter-attacks being made, between TripAdvisor, Kayak and Uptake. There's a lot of big name CEO's in the travel industry weighing in on this matter, and it's summarized in this post on the Uptake.com blog.

It's important because with the inability of sites like Kayak to offer price differences in future, the focus of metasearch shifts to offering better quality, and more value, for the same price.

Which hotel will be more helpful to families with babies? Which one is better for a romantic weekend? Which flight offers more leg-room? Which one takes less time, and offers in-flight wi-fi? Questions like these can be answered by sifting through existing hotel and flight reviews, and listing those which qualify.

Summary of it is that you need to know which travel metasearch site you should be using, because unlike today - where the focus is on price - the travel metasearch of tomorrow will be dominated by different sites offering totally different things. Which one becomes more popular will be determined by you - the traveler. And that's what you'll be stuck with for the next 10 years or so. So choose carefully.