These days, traveling seems to be a part of all of our lives. Sometimes for business and sometimes (hopefully more often than not), for pleasure. Planning trips can be great fun but it can also be stressful trying to find the best deals at the right time in order to make your trip as economical as possible. I am always asked to help Kosherica clients find the very best flight deals to get them to one of our Kosher cruises or hotels. Below are some of the best sites that I have found for getting the best deals in airfare to anywhere in the world.
1. Kayak – www.kayak.com – I use Kayak several times a month and I have always found that it is really the most reliable site for airfare and hotel bookings whether for business or pleasure. One of the great features that I love is the "hacker fares" which basically means that they will find a roundtrip ticket with the lowest fare by combining 2 flights on 2 different airlines and explain to you how to book it with those airlines directly.
2. Tripadvisor – www.tripadvisor.com – I found this site incredibly helpful to use in conjunction with other booking sites. The reason is because if I am about to book a hotel or other accommodation and I need a second opinion on the quality or star level – Tripadvisor offers real reviews from real people who have stayed there. It also lists the date of the review so you can always be sure what you are reading is current and relevant.
3. Skyscanner – www.skyscanner.net – I use Skyscanner more for flights within Europe. It checks a lot of the European flight websites that can sometimes offer the best deals for flights to and from European countries.
4. Google Flight – www.google.com/flights – Google Flights has some really creative features that can actually make searching for flights fun along with being efficient and economical. First they have a map view so you can drag and drop to different destinations. They also have a calendar feature where you can search within a timeframe to find alternative days, weeks or months for cheaper airfares to your desired destination.
5. Hipmunk – www.hipmunk.com – Hipmunk was named one of the best travel sites by Forbes Magazine for a reason. Firstly, it shows your results in a very easy to read graph. Secondly, the filters are great because not only can you filter by length of flight and number of layovers but you can also filter by airport and airline – easily identifying which are the cheapest options.
6. Airfare Watchdog – www.airfarewatchdog.com – This site is really aimed at those frequent fliers who are going to be ready to go at the drop of hat as soon as a good deal comes along. They actually have a team of people lurking various sites waiting to pounce on those incredible deals that we all wish we had the time to find. It will also pull up deals from some of the smaller airlines which may not come up on some of the more popular sites.
7. Momondo – www.momondo.com – One of the greatest features of Momondo is the graph at the top of each search page which shows you how the prices will either increase or decrease in the days surrounding the dates you selected for your trip. It also offers 3 automatic filters in every search – "Cheapest" (least expensive), "Quickest" (fastest) or "Best" (a great combination of both). It will also show you frequent flier alliances for your various flight options which can be a huge help to those looking to rack up points.
8. SeatGuru – www.seatguru.com – I used to only use SeatGuru after I had purchased my flight in order to check the specs of the plane, best seat to choose and other amenities that my flight may offer. However, you can also use SeatGuru to search for flights and the results will actually show you if that flight has certain amenities such as Wi-Fi, option to purchase additional legroom seats, etc.
I am confident that with the various websites above you can take all the stress and guess work out of booking flights for your next vacation so that you can focus on planning all the fun things that you can do together as a family. Happy Travels!