Battle of the Travel Websites
With all the travel websites offering good deals, which ones really deliver great value? Matt Gross, writer of the New York Times Frugal Traveler blog, put them to the test in a battle royale, Travel Websites: A Click-On Showdown.
The Frugal Traveler at work
The contest pitted old favorites like Kayak with relative unknowns, like Dohop and Bing. The results? You can find out in the article.
The trouble with so-called “aggregator” websites is that they don’t cover all the websites. Some airlines even refuse to be post their airfares on such websites. Sometimes your best bet is to look for promotions on the airlines’ own websites.
Was your favorite website not in the article? Share your tips in the comments.
August 10th, 2009 at 10:51 pm
I have found that there is no silver bullet to booking cheap flights, and if you want to consistently get close to the best deals you have to have a large radar, patience, and a healthy dose of obsession. I go to Brazil quite often, and many times the consolidator clickandfly.com out of NY has the best deal. They typically beat the airlines own prices. However, lately I have been noticing a real push across the board by most of the major airlines to real in the travel agents and channel more traffic to their own sites. If the move by United stick, and gasp… expands to other airlines we will see less and less travel agents. I am referring to passing the credit card charges back to the travel agent instead of the airlines absorbing the cost… I digress…
I typically start with Kayak.com and then look around multiple sites to find any deals or promotions and go from there. If you want to really get the best price, you have to often put in more time than the savings are worth,,, but it feels great when you get that low price 🙂