2014
is offering 14 long weekends i.e weekends with either the Friday or Monday
being the additional holiday. Isnt it an awesome news. I know many of you
(including me) will have project deliveries planned during this holidays
:( so might not get to enjoy all the 14
long weekends but still...
As
obvious, I started looking at possible holiday options that fit the dates and
my budget. On searching for cheap flights, I landed on Skyscanner page that
claims to alert you about the best
time to flight book tickets. That thrilled me and I started exploring the
other features of Skyscanner.
By the way, if you are thinking that the post content doesn't match with the title that talks about 15% savings, I request you to keep reading the post till you land on the Best Time to book. At times you have to spend some effort to discover good things :)
So what is Skyscanner after all?
Skyscanner
is say Google focused only on Travel i.e
fundamentally a Travel Search Engine. It aggregates flight details, Hotel deals
offered by multiple Flight operators and travel agents and presents them in a
easy to understand format based on your Travel details. Skyscanner is simply
pulling out the results for us as the actual payment and ticket booking happens directly
from the flight website or e-travel site like makemytrip.com. Following are a
few credentials of Skyscanner
- It has been in business for 10+ years now.
- It is the no.1 Travel Search engine of EU
- has offices in UK, Singapore, Beijing, Miami and Barcelona.
- It offers search results in more than 30 languages
There's
also an interesting story
behind the launch of Skyscanner
So how does Skyscanner actually help in Travel
Lets me
answer this question by asking a question, What u do today to book flight, look
at the top 3 Indian travel sites and compare the price?
If you
travelling from abroad to India, you look for cheap flights in Google?
Then you
collate all the information and make the decision. By the time you finalize
your decision, it happens that the cheapest ticket that you wanted to purchase
is gone! You feel frustrated and end up paying more, also you wasted time.
This is
where Skyscanner comes handy. Based on your search criteria, it shows flight
options not only from the Flight Website but also from other e-travel websites.
So the information is all collated together and you just need to make the
decision. As the results are sorted in the order of cheapest flight, you
decision making is fastened. For an illustration, I searched for flight from
Mumbai to Delhi on 7th Mar 2014 and Skyscanner gave me 138 options across 13
providers.
It also
alerted me about the cheapest flight explicitly on the results page right at
the top left corner.
Also as
there are few more days left for me to travel, it alerted me to sign up for
price change alerts so that incase the prices come down, I can book the tickets
then instead of now.
As soon
as you finalize the destination and probable dates, make your of Skyscanners
Price change alert to create price alert for the search results pertaining to
your travel plan so that you can book tickets when the fares are low or book
right away if you see fares going up. Ultimately, the idea to save as much as
possible on the travel.
Isnt it
cool?
If you
are searching and booking tickets from a
single site and unfortunately if the site is experiencing huge loads, you
chance of getting the ticket is reduced. By using Skyscanner, you avoid this
problem as you get to see multiple vendors offering tickets for the same route
Inbuilt multi currency support
While
making international travel and booking tickets, We often look for tools or
sites to convert price from USD or GBP to INR to get relative cost in our home
currency. The minutes spent in doing this conversion could prove very costly at
times. Skyscanner has taken care of this concern by having built in option to
change currency. You can select the current at the start of the search and
that’s it, all the results will shown in that currency only. Skyscanner does
the conversion internally automatically. I changed the currency from INR to USD
for my earlier search to get fare in USD.
No more
those hassles with skyscanner.
Best Time to Book alert
Apart
from the Price Change Alert feature, there is one more feature that’s very
exciting, its called "
best time to book". According to research by
Skyscanner, February is the cheapest month to travel
and Indian consumers can expect to save 18% on flight prices on average; while
booking 22 weeks in advance would result in savings of around 15% on average.
Wow, that’s huge, the savings could finance the new gadget that you were
eyeing...isnt it?
Smart Travel Tips
While we
are holidaying, we are in indulgent, care free mood and so often end up
purchasing things we do not need, take calls that are not financially wise.
Follow the simple yet effective Smart Travel tips from Skyscanner to save few
more bucks here.
The tips
also help you in fighting some of the travel related issues like Jet Lag.
There are
few tips to bring smile on your face like this one
The
travel tips are spread across multiple dimensions like tips to avoid purchasing
gifts that receivers consider junk, tips to make travel hassle free by carrying
smart luggage, or some funny travel insights to simply giggle you.
So what would be my strategy and where do I wish to
travel
My
strategy would be to
- Finalize the destination that I want to travel and the probable dates
- Use the best time to book tool to find out the right time to travel
- Search flight for my route and create price change alerts.
- If I see prices moving up fast I book or if I see prices moving down, I wait and then book when it suits best to me.
I have
been to Nordic countries once and found the natural beauty there simply
breathtaking. I would want to go to on a Europe tour with my better half to get
mesmerized by the natural beauty out their.
Do let me know your experience about the Skyscanner services using the comments section. Thanks for reading through...
P.S : This is my entry for the Indiblogger content "Travel Smart with Skyscanner"
