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Where can I fly for how much?

kayak.com

31–40 of 110 posts

Re: Where can I fly for how much?

#31
post #22

OMG, I've been waiting for someone to build something like this forever. I've always hated the fact that all major travel sites work based on the assumption that you already know exactly when and where you're going, rather than at least giving you the option to explore your options.

Me too! www.voyij.com is the closest I've seen. Really glad one of the bigger sites started doing this too.

[deleted]

Re: Where can I fly for how much?

#32

OMG, I've been waiting for someone to build something like this forever. I've always hated the fact that all major travel sites work based on the assumption that you already know exactly when and where you're going, rather than at least giving you the option to explore your options.

my problem is, I know my travel dates (mid-August) and I know my budget, but still not sure where to go. Unfortunately Kayak searches (including this very cool hack) are useless at solving that.

P.S. ITA Software Matrix is good at this if you have a list of places, but not for random destinations.

Re: Where can I fly for how much?

#33
post #30

OMG, I've been waiting for someone to build something like this forever. I've always hated the fact that all major travel sites work based on the assumption that you already know exactly when and where you're going, rather than at least giving you the option to explore your options.

Yea but dont rely on the data that is displayed, i just checked out 5 flights and the flights listed there were not even close to what i found on the website itself. But otherwise definitely damn cool

that's because they show the cheapest round-trip someone else has found previously

Re: Where can I fly for how much?

#34
post #2

Wow, talk about impressive. Just curious about the tech behind this. Do they just cache a bunch of average prices together between major airports and just set a max limit? Surely it can't do fully comprehensive search at the speed it runs at.

They're definitely showing you historical prices from their cache. Kayak gets such a huge volume of traffic that they can use the lowest price on that route seen in the last 24 hours and have pretty good coverage/accuracy.

Personally, this thread is eye opening because I work on a similar product. I saw this when it came out (a couple weeks ago maybe). My first impression wasn't that it was particularly impressive, but apparently I just don't know what's cool for users in a travel product =P

Re: Where can I fly for how much?

#36
We built a similar proof of concept just this weekend, at London Startup Weekend. http://london.startupweekend.org/

It doesn't contain any real information, and is targeted at people who want to take holidays, instead of just flights, but is the same concept.

It'll also do some analysis of your facebook profile to automatically sort results so you instantly get relevant places to go.

It's still purely a proof of concept, and a bit crashy on Heroku because of a bug in the facebooker ruby gem (don't facebook connect right now!), but that should be fixed when we have more time to work on it.

http://www.zolidays.com/ "Have Budget, Want Holiday"

Re: Where can I fly for how much?

#39
post #26
post #19

It's a neat tool (if you're in the UK check out the similar "I'll fly anywhere" option at http://flightchecker.moneysavingexpert.com/ ) but the problem with it is that for most people the cost of the flight is going to be less than the cost of the hotel. So if you're after a cheap holiday it's much more important to fly somewhere where you can get a cheap hotel than to get a cheap flight. Hopefully they'll add hotels…

If you're travelling in a pair, and you're staying for a reasonable length of time (say, a week) then the hotel cost shouldn't dominate. 7 nights * $100 a night / 2 people is only $350 -- less than the airfare to most places. Besides, saving money on a hotel is mostly a matter of deciding how awful a place you're willing to put up with. You don't get that option with airfares.

Hmm maybe it's just a European thing, you can typically fly most places in Europe/North Africa for for a couple of hundred dollars. Getting to the US isn't much more. Hotels on the other hand tend to be more expensive + hotel tax can be pricey.

And you do actually get the awful trade-off with planes in Europe as well, you get budget airlines like Ryan Air which many people don't travel on because they're so bad.

Re: Where can I fly for how much?

#40
post #29

OMG, I've been waiting for someone to build something like this forever. I've always hated the fact that all major travel sites work based on the assumption that you already know exactly when and where you're going, rather than at least giving you the option to explore your options.

so, i built something almost exactly like this for myself to use, except it doesn't display itself on a google map. instead, it cross-references itself with a database of people. i use it when i'm hiring sports officials, to find the ones that would be the cheapest to fly in. never really considered how useful it would be for others. i feel dumb as hell, looking at this and seeing what i could've done :*-(

don't feel dumb, just put it up, add user accounts/Facebook, and make it a group travel planning tool. I could've used something like that while helping plan a bachelor's party.
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