I'm trying to determine if any one of the online travel sites are better than the others for booking flights. I've heard a lot about Kayak, Expedia, Travelocity, and FareCompare. Any suggestions or input on any of these sites?
Trying to differentiate between online air travel booking sites and wondering if my fellow travelers can provide their favorite sites and why?
Reply to this Hi Michelle. Here's my run-down regarding the sites based on my personal opinion. Take it with a grain of salt!
Kayak - I really like Kayak for comparing different fares across the board. It searches all the other travel compilation sites (Travelocity/Expedia). You can't book through Kayak directly, but instead it routes you to whichever site you find the lowest price to book.
Expedia/Travelocity - These are both third-party travel bookers. They contract with various hotels/airlines/tourism partners to negotiate prices and deals and then you book through them. A "middle man" if you will between you and the place you're making a reservation. For a long time they charged a booking fee, but now I believe both have waived them, so they're a better deal. Sometimes you can find better prices with these guys, sometimes you can't. As far as differences between the two, I think they're minimal.
FareCompare - Also a site which searches for the best prices, similar to Kayak, only it searches airlines/hotel sites. Rick Seaney is the guy who runs this and he's pretty up to date on travel deals and things like that, which are blogged about on the site. So a little more "hands on" that the others. I don't think you can book here, but may be wrong.
When I go to book a ticket, I check all the above, see who has the best price and deal and TRY to book directly with the airline/hotel/tourism service. I find you get better service that way and the prices are usually the same.
One you didn't mention (but I like) is FareCast. It's pretty new but more or less tracks the trends of airline prices and lets you know if you should buy now or wait, but again you can't book directly through them, you need to book with the airline. On my user experience, it's pretty accurate (but not fool-proof).
Reply to this Thanks Stephanie & Andras! Appreciate your break down! Super helpful!
Reply to this Another online site that has great deals and exclusive packages can be found at www.myshoppinghub.net. Like the third party companies you mentioned. This site is powered by the major databases that airlines, hotels, cruise lines and others report their current inventory to. The pricing can change based on the current inventory. But I have sen that more times than not the prices are equal to lower than the companies that advertise on tv and other media.
Reply to this I did a job for a travel agency in developing his website (increasing web traffic to his site).
He demonstrated the different options travel agencies have for looking for good and cheap trips and I was astonished and disgusted!
What I remember is that a travel agency has four different networks available for the information of flights and hotels and other deals. He showed me flights for only a couple of dollars, while in another network the same flight was hundreds of dollars!
If you want, I can give you the URL (if that is allowed here) from his site (where you can contact him for such deals).
I know that I normally fly Jordon-Seattle WA for about $900, now I fly for various prices at the same airplane (one time I flew for $150).
Wim
Reply to this Another thing about online booking.
When you go to a travel agency, they give you the standard prices, which are the prices as much as reasonable possible is.
When you try to use the Internet to do it yourself, than it might be cheaper indeed, but never complete.
For me, for a couple of dollars more, they (agency) supplies me with the complete picture in a couple of seconds, while I am working for ages at the Internet to get a good deal together.
But if you only need a flight, an online booking site might be interesting.
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