Yahoo has launched an upgraded travel service that combines Yahoo Search with travel-specific features, posing a serious challenge to travel-focused sites, reports Reuters. With Yahoo Search, consumers can receive airfare and hotel price comparisons, satellite overview maps and user reviews of restaurants and tourist destinations - features previously available, but throughout the Yahoo network and elsewhere online.

Using terms such as "flights to Timbuktu" or "compare Yerevan hotels," travelers will receive hotel or airline prices and direct links to detailed fare information. The fare offers are from Yahoo's FareChase system as well as CheapTickets and Orbitz. Those links go to a second-level page with a Yahoo map or a detailed satellite image. Links lead to Yahoo Trip Planner, allowing users to create, categorize and share itineraries and publish online travel journals.

Yahoo is differentiating itself by the comprehensiveness of travel planning information in one place, said Forrester Research analyst Henry Harteveldt. Yahoo Travel had 15.75 million unique visitors worldwide in February, according to comScore Networks.