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Better and Cheaper (than Expedia.co.uk) Travel Sites

I am very indebted to Ken for his suggestion (see comments below my post on Expedia, pt.1) to publish a list of alternative sites to use when booking flights. I have published a list below of such sites with some of my observations regarding each site. Whilst researching these options I tested each one with exactly the same flight criteria (Departure and Destination airports, dates). All tests were carried out on the same day so that the resulting costs would not vary too much.

The criteria were as follows:

Depart from London (any airport)

Destination Wilmington, NC, USA

Departure Date: 12^th July 2010

Return Date: 19^th July 2010

These dates were chosen so that there would be at least 3 weeks between the booking date and the departure date. The length of the stay was so that there would be a Saturday included and also so that the flights would be on a weekday so that the best/cheapest prices might be found (no weekend surcharges). Lastly Wilmington was chosen as this airport is not big enough to handle international passenger flights (despite being called New Hanover International J ) and so at least one other airport would be required.

I hope this helps you and if so please help spread the word to your nearest and dearest as well as any friends.

Lastly I will be publishing part 2 of my Expedia post that will show my experiences when dealing with their customer services department, as well as their explanation of the “mystery surcharge” and the booking fee.

So without further ado here is my list.

*******Travelocity (www.travelocity.co.uk ) Ok I will admit that I have a small bias towards this site as I have used this (one of the oldest and most respected flight booking sites) company for many years. Their site is very intuitive and makes booking flights very simple. I am happy to report that this site also gave the best price (together with lastminute.com) for the flight search I tested on all the listed sites. This site has no booking fee. *******

**** For more tips and tricks checkout ” The Window Seat Blog” AKA The travelocity blog. This is a great resource for all travel related information, not just flights.

Orbitz (www.orbitz.com ) This is another site of good repute and although I have never used them. Their prices looked great when I did my search UNTIL I realized that these prices did not include the taxes and fees (an extra $366). Suddenly their cheap prices were no longer cheap but more in line with the more expensive sites listed on this page.

Skyscanner (www.skyscanner.net ) This site gave cheaper prices (£690 instead of £790) for identical searches, than Opodo, ebookers, & netflights. No Booking Fee.

Opodo (www.opodo.co.uk ) good choice of airlines (£9 booking fee)

NetFlights.com (www.netflights.com ) Part of the Thomas Cook Group. Fully bonded so all flights and holidays are protected. No Booking fee for online reservations. £5 fee for telephone reservations.

Ebookers.com (www.ebookers.com ) Price guarantee (We will not be beaten on price) Sadly I did find sites offering flights to the same destinations on the same dates for less (£100). These were not the same flights or routes as offered on this site but never the less were cheaper travel options for my search criteria. No Booking Fee

******Lastminute.com (http://www.lastminute.com/ ) This site advertises cheap flights for “earlybirds” and “last minute leavers”. Interestingly they also have a section for Charter flights.

This site gave the best price of all (the same as Travelocity.co.uk) the sites listed here for their “earlybird” option which was tested using the same criteria as all other sites. The difference was a respectable £ 35.00 for a flight booked 3 weeks in advance. However they really lived up to their name when searching for the same flight destinations but with a departure date just 4 days from the booking date. Here the prices quoted were an astounding $200 cheaper than their own “earlybird” prices and £300 cheaper than most other advance booking prices on other sites. I know where this blogger will be making his next last minute flight reservation *********

Lastminute.com also has an excellent blog at http://blog.lastminute.com/ for travel. Posts on cities, shopping and hotels are all highly entertaining and always worth a read.

Cheapflightsfinder.com (www.Cheapflightsfinder.com ) This site gets it’s results from a staggering 650 airlines and travel agents. When I tested this site I was impressed by the range and variety of flights offered. If you have a preference for a particular airline (Airmiles) then this site will probably give you an option to fly with that airline. However their results whilst cheap were not as cheap as the best two sites I tested. However if we discount these two sites then this site came in a close 3^rd place. They listed 195 options for my search. These results were taken from just 4 sites and there was an option to search other sites if I was not happy with the results. A great site for comparison shopping especially if you have the time to do so more thoroughly than me. However as this site is a comparison site you would need to check the sites you will be transferred to once having decided on a flight to verify the booking fee arrangements.

Mobissimo (www.mobissimo.com ) The best thing about this site was it’s name. The prices quoted were not that great and in line with the more expensive sites listed here. Also the advertised “ Compare With” feature on their home page, which should let you compare their prices with sites like Travelocity was not in evidence anywhere when I made a search for flights.

Interestingly when I did not choose one of their listed option the screen of my computer went dark and a new window popped up showing a lower cost option. When I clicked to view this option, advertised at $685 I was shown 6 new choices for $691. I don’t know if the difference of $6 is a booking fee or just an error on their part.

Also of interest was the fact that all these options were from ebookers.com whose site I had tested earlier and who had not given me any flights costing as little. OK I was now a little intrigued and also a little confused but decided to checkout one of these amazingly cheap options. Upon clicking the select button of one of these options I was transferred to ebookers.com and to my surprise saw the correct Departure and Destinations for my search with an even more amazing price – £200 cheaper than most and £100 cheaper than the best deals I had found. However on reading the rest of the page I saw that the dates of travel were different from the dates I had chosen. They were a mere 2 months different !!!!!!!! Had I been in a hurry I might easily have missed this and booked a flight that would have been totally unsuitable.

In my opinion this site is trying a little too hard and forgetting about their customers who for the most part just want to book a cheap flight as hassle free as possible. Personally I will not be using this site again.

UK.Trip.com (www.uk.trip.com ) Compares Kayak, Trip Advisor and ebookers

Cheap Flights (www.cheapflights.co.uk ) Lets you get prices from the following sites: The Wise Miser, Net Flights, Opodo, Kayak You choose and the site serves up the best deals on the relevant site. This means you can use one site to get prices from 4 different sites and thus save a bit of time and effort if not necessarily saving much money. Obviously booking fees would apply if the site you decide to use charges these fees as you will be transferred to that site to make your booking. So please read my comments here.

Kelkoo (www.travel.kelkoo.co.uk ) This site gets flights and prices from a large variety of sites for you and displays them (cheapest first). Great site and actually beat Skyscanner by £20 on the same search. The sites they get flights from are: airberlin, Airflights.co.uk, ASDA, Bravo Fly, germanwings, hoodaki, icelandair, major, Meridianna, opodo, The Wise Miser, Travelpack, Virgin Atlantic and Expedia.co.uk.

Kelkoo also have a shopping section where users can get Kelkoo Cashback (20%) from over 1000 online stores.

Fly.co.uk (www.fly.co.uk ) Promoted as “The Cheap Flights Search Engine” – Flights and prices are obtained from both airlines and other aggregator sites. However in my experience their prices were not the best when compared with similar sites. They do however have a huge sitemap with information on most airlines and many airports, this is listed in their menu under “ Airport Guides” and is a useful resource.

***** Rating is for my personal favorites, which of course are also the cheapest (Hey I’m part Scots and we tend to be very frugal).

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