Travel Site Wars

There are a ton of them out there, we all have our favorites but how do some of them stack up against one another? I wanted to know the answer to this question and so like Pepsi did in the 1980’s with their challenge, I will do it in the new millennium with what I call, Travel Wars. I picked the sites by my former use, google searches, and a requested review. I gave them all a fair shake and rated them on how I WOULD USE THEM, not by how the REST of the world would.

How do I judge what site is the best? I have developed 3 criteria:

1. Ease of use

2. X factor (the cool features)

3. Best Deals (who has the best price)

I am planning a trip to Central America in February and will use the following sites to see who finds me the best deal and which site has the best bells and whistles for booking travel. I kept the search mainly to flights as I rarely ever go on a cruise or book hotels with my flights. The details of the flight will be the same across all the sites, CLT (Charlotte, NC)- MGA (Managua, Nicaragua) on Feb 3, 2010- March 3, 2010. The competition is among these popular travel sites:

• Kayak
• Travelgrove
• Sidestep
• Booking Buddy

KAYAK

Kayak is an aggregation site, which means it pulls flights from all travel search sites (Expedia, Priceline, Us Air, etc) and then displays them side by side according to price. So, I searched for my flight (details above) and found one on US Air for $472 through Orbitz.com, but it has 2 stops. The next 1 stop flight was with American for $636 and found on American.com. Yikes!! Since I am a modern traveler, 2 stops during a trip is a deal breaker unless I am flying to Nepal or Azerbajan. Why do 2 when you can do 1 at the same price?

Kayak also has an adorable feature called BUZZ, this allows the flexible traveler (that’s me 58% of the time) to find the best flights in a given month to a region around the world. I know that I want to go to Central America and am flexible on the dates and arrival city, since I will be traveling all over down there. Kayak BUZZ gave me lots of options under $500 some with 7 day stays, some with 14 days, but none with 30 days. Back to the drawing board.

Kayak also has a nice log in feature that will remember recent flight searches and let you also create fare alerts for your chosen destinations. Plus they have a handy dandy trip keeper (never used but looks cool) and down-loadable IPhone app (don’t have yet). That is a nice feature but if you don’t end of buying your flight from Kayak, it’s really a moot point. So, you might as well sign up for a Tripit account.

***Tripit.com is like Facebook for travelers. It provides a nice aggregation of your future trip itineraries(flights, hotels, car rentals) from any site and you can create a travel circle and know the itineraries of your friends in case you ever end up in Budapest at the same time, you can meet at the Four Seasons and enjoy a $17 Cosmo (delicious by the way!).

TRAVELGROVE

Travelgrove is another aggregation site and is a relative newcomer to the field but definitely has a couple tricks up its sleeve. I found the flight I was looking for with only 1 stop.  It cost $461 and was on my coveted US Air (it’s all about the miles!). The actual flight was found on Vayama and due to the Holiday season, an additional $30 was knocked off the price. FYI, Vayama is a little know site that has some great deals if you are booking 100% international flights, say from Mexico City to Toronto.

One thing I really like about Travelgrove, it has a social network component to it. You can create a profile, invite your travel friends, and leave tips about places or things you have seen/done in prior trips. It even rates you among the community with the amount of info you add to your profile and contribute to the site. The community aspect is nice but not very crowded as many people have not signed up yet but that is probably due to it’s newness. I like to connection to Facebook but think the site should go further to connect with other popular travel sites like Trip Advisor and Couchsurfers. To my knowledge, there is no IPhone application either. Well, Rome wasn’t built in a day, so I doubt the perfect travel site can be either.

SIDE STEP

Side Step eerily looks and acts like Kayak and gave me the same research result as Kayak did. It reminded me of the Star Wars movie, Revenge of the Clones. Since I pretty much already reviewed Kayak, re-read that review and just change all the Kayak’s to Side Step and poof you have a review.

BOOKING BUDDY

Booking Buddy is a site I have not used much but decided to give it a fair shake. It takes all the popular sites like Orbitz, Travelocity, Expedia, etc and lets you search each site individually from Booking Buddy’s landing page. So, when I did a  flight search, I could choose what site I wanted to search in for my flight. While some people may like this, I felt it just created more work and pop ups for me to deal with. I would rather see a list from all the sites appear below my request and I’ll take it from there. The best priced flight I could find was the $469 flight on US Air with the 2 stops.

WINNER

Choosing a clear winner is hard, and if you noticed I only reviewed 4 of a 100+ sites. So, who gets the winner, winner chicken dinner? If I go by price alone, then Travelgrove is the winner ($461, 1 stop). If I go by the X factor, then I have to say Travelgrove just inches out Kayak. I really just love the social media aspect in addition to the rock bottom fares. But Kayak and BUZZ, until death do us part. Plus TG gives you a sense of community with its forum and advice giving. All 4 sites were easy to use with Booking Buddy being a bit more clumsy than the rest in my opinion and Side Step being a flagrant rip-off of Kayak (maybe they are owned by the same people?).

If I had to choose what site I would be using for my Central America trip, then Travel Grove would be it for the simplest reason of them all, their flight was the lowest!!!

<<< disclaimer>>>>

I was asked by Travel Grove to write a review of their site and was paid for this review but that in no way reflected my opinion of it. If you don’t believe me, just go to the site yourself and check it out. Click here:  Cheap Flights or if you simply want a cheap flight, go here: Cheap flights to Buenos Aires