As I have worked for several Internet Travel Agecies in the past people often ask me where to look for the best fares and flights on the internet. Now that I am going through the process yet again my self I will share my insights with those who may be interested.
Considerations
First let me say that there is no single place where you can get all the information you are after. There are several layers of things you need to consider; airlines, season, departure locale, specialist agents and special offers. Usually people are hunting for the best price. Now, there are only four major flights reservation systems in the world: SABRE, Amadeus, Galileo and Worldspan. All internet travel agents search for flights and availability on some of, or all of these engines, except for some low cost airlines who only search their own database. Some Airlines even host their own booking websites on the reservation systems website, such as IcelandAir who use Amadeus. Most internet booking websites will therefore be quoting you the same fares but with small variations in price due to varying fees taken by the booking agent. However, an agent may have access to fares that have been sold out elsewhere so sometimes you can find that excellent fare you missed on blabla.com on blabla2.com. This is where price comparison websites come in handy. Those sites often search other websites for you and put the results in a simple format for you to compare. Here are a few such sites:
- TNT Magazine, http://www.tntmagazine.com/travelzone/ – Excellent for long-haul
- Momondo, http://www.momondo.com/en/ – Great european engine
Another breed of flights websites will show you all possible flights (that they know of) between A and B. These are very usefull to find if there are any flights at a certain time and what airlines fly a certain route:
- Dohop, http://www.dohop.com – Excellent on european flights
Yet another type of internet flights engines will give you an overview of specials on offer. This will also give you an idea of the dates when seasons change from low to high:
- Cheap Flights, http://www.cheapflights.co.uk/ – Almost like a classifieds section for flights
Having said all this, how do you find the best fare to where you want to go?
- Know your market. Who is flying there? What websites have a special focus on this route?
- Look for specials. The airlines often have special fares outside the most busy season.
- Try unconventional fare types, such as a “Round the world” ticket for long haul flights.
- Use the comparison engines to find the lowest fares.
- Visit the website of major airlines and all low cost airlines that fly this route and do a search there.
A few good engines
The list of booking engines on the internet is constantly growing and trying to search them all will drive you mad. Try these simple steps and see if you can improve your results. Lastly here is a list of a few good booking engines:
- Travelmood – Excellent specialists on long-haul flights such as Australia or China
- Expedia – Specialists in North American flights but also do European flights
- SkyLow – European Low-cost airlines search engine
In addition feel free to browse my personal flights bookmarks on Delicious: http://del.icio.us/valberg/flights
The tribulations
The greatest problem with internet bookings is reliability. You may have your booking or reference number but once you get to the airport or hotel there is no guarantee that your reservation or booking has actually gone through to the right place. I can tell you a million stories of this happening. Usually the service provider will be helpfull and sort out the situation but when bookings are tight you will ultimately bear the grunt of the problem. Here are a few tips for you to avoid this situation:
- Make sure your credit card really got charged. Most booking engines will confirm your booking pending that your payment came through. Even if you have the money in your account the travel agent will still fail to retrieve the money and consequently cancel your booking. Worst case scenario your money will be forzen untill the bank releases it due to non-withdrawal by the agent. I recently had this happen with ebookers.com and had really bad service to sort it out.
- Check the website of the airline you are flying with, look up your booking just before you go to make sure it is still valid. Usually you can key in the 6 letter reference number (PNR) and they will bring up your booking.
- Make sure you check the mailbox of the email you gave. Any failure is usually reported to the email address you gave.
- In the case of a Hotel booking it may be worth it to call up the hotel before you go to make sure you reservation came through to them. Even ask for a reference number from the hotel it self. Hotel booking channels are more complicated and less standardized than flights bookings so the chance of failure is greater. Your booking number may be from a completely different system than the one the hotel clerk is looking at. Getting stranded in Hong Kong without accomodation on the Chineese new year due to system discrepencies can be no joke, yet this once happened to me.
When you choose a booking engine give some consideration to the customer service they provide. If they have no phone number to call then you should question wether they are really worth it and always give preference to a provider with a real agent rather than a Call center in India or something. ebookers.com only have a callcenter but Travelmood have an agent. A real agent can help you sort out your problems where as callcenters are more for providing information.
