FN ISI Export Format VR 1.0 PT J TI Booking recommendations of search engines AF Wittmer, Andreas Nachbaur, Sabrina AU Wittmer, A Nachbaur, S AB This paper investigates the influence of search engines on the booking behavior of passengers and the airline industry. It is examined whether new functions of booking portals advising to book or to wait with respect to price changes in the future influence the booking behavior of passengers and whether the recommendations of search engines are precise. This is relevant and can become a threat to airlines with respect to ticket pricing. Therefore, an online survey was developed to collect data about booking behavior. 543 persons representing current and future users of online booking portals across all age groups in Switzerland and the surrounding boarder regions in Austria and Germany were used as a sample. In addition to the survey, an experiment to test the accuracy of booking portals was carried out. The results indicate that the booking recommendations of Kayak or Swoodoo are used by about 25% of all participants. In future usage can be estimated increase. Relations can be seen with the price sensitivity and the frequency of traveling. However, with different functions entirely different correlations were found. Overall, the survey shows that the features of the search engines can have an influence on the booking behavior of passengers. According to the experiment the portals must be assessed differently: while Google Flights was correct in all predictions, there were partial deviations for Kayak. Assuming that the portals continue to evolve and that passengers pay attention to these recommendations full service carriers need to be aware of these developments in the future. ER