Low-cost airlines like to sell their own tickets, so unlike traditional air fares which could be compared and booked through global reservation systems, it has been difficult to find the best available prices for budget seats. However, there is a small but growing number of 'meta search engines' (aka 'airfare comparison sites' or 'sweeper sites') that compare air fares, and now holiday prices, in real-time or near-real-time. |
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| dohop.com |
Icelandic travel search engine launched in April 05 that simultaneously checks flights and fares across 80 low-cost and 570 traditional scheduled airlines. |
| Gooflight.com |
Simple and efficient low-cost fares search engine scanning 19 low-cost European airlines. |
| Kayak.co.uk |
We used to list Kayak below as one of the batch of USA-only sites that appeared in 2005, but now there is a UK version and it has expanded into a full travel search engine, covering hotels as well as air fares. Kayak.co.uk currently (June 07) searches over 120 travel sites across the world, displaying prices and itineraries for hundreds of airlines and more than 160,000 hotels. The hotel service offers prices sliders, star ratings, and an accuracy promise and integrates its search results with Google Earth, so consumers are able to view the exact location of their hotel. They plan to add car hire and packages later in 2007. |
| Openjet.com |
Cool-looking meta search engine/online agency, making fare comparisons on a selection of low-cost and mainstream airlines. |
| Sidestep.com |
Until Jan 06 Sidestep was listed in research tips below as a USA-only meta search engine. Now they have launched a UK version of the site which checks prices on over 100 airline (inc low-cost), hotel and car rental sites. |
| Skyscanner.net |
Shows you what the fares were on a particular route when it last auto-searched (IE when the last visitor asked a few hours/days ago) and then gets updated prices for the flights you pick (thus updating the database). Bookings are made on the airline site. |
| TravelJungle |
An air fares search engine for flights ex-UK, launched in Oct 03. It searches 23 low cost carriers and 9 online travel agencies such as Expedia, Opodo, Travelocity and lastminute.com, to make sure it has the lowest price. |
| Wegolo.com |
European low-fares checker site. Launched in 2004 and now fares from 40 low-cost airlines in the EU. |
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| Research Tips: | * | Travelsupermarket.com searches air fare databases as well as holiday package and product databases. |
| * | So too does Allcheckin.com which was launched by former executives at ebookers.com and BT Looksmart, and launched in May 2005. It lets you search for the best up-to-the-minute air fares, hotel prices and car hire prices at a number of mainstream travel suppliers including opodo, lastminute.com, ebookers.com, British Airways Holidays, Intercontinental Hotel Group, cng-hotels.com, Hotelclub.com, RatestoGo.com, octopustravel.com, Holiday Autos, Advantage Rent-a-car and Enterprise Rent-a-car. |
| * | Ufly4Less.com is also a budget airline fare-checker (currently {Feb 05} comparing fares at Ryanair, easyJet, Jet2, bmiBaby, Flybe, ThomsonFly, MyTravelLite, EUjet, First Choice, Monarch and Aer Arann) but it is not a website, it a piece of software that you buy and run from your own PC. |
| * | Cheapflights.co.uk has been around since 1996 publishing best value flights, as well as holidays and short breaks. They are not a meta search engine hunting for best prices. Their 700+ 'partners' (airlines, travel agents, and tour operators) send their best deals for display. |
| * | It's not just here that fare-checkers are 'taking off', The USA saw a batch of them appear during 2005, including Mobissimo.com, Qixo, and Yahoo's Farechase. Unfortunately unless you have a credit card registered to a U.S. address, they are not much use to you. |
