studentsineurope

Review: Kayak.com

A sample search on Kayak.com

If you’re looking to book your next trip but don’t want to waste your time going to every single travel site on the web, try Kayak.com.

Founded in 2004, Kayak compiles results from over 400 different travel sites to find you the flight, hotel, or car you’re looking for.  Kayak has been voted by Consumer Search as the best travel search engine, and the site is well known for its nifty fare alerts and fare-comparison tools.  It even shows you the cheapest fairs of the month when you type in your destination and desired dates, a handy thing to have if you’re flexible at all on your travel dates.

Though Kayak can be a great starting resource to compare some of the bigger online travel websites, keep in mind that it only searches some international websites, meaning that if you’re aiming to buy an intra-Europe flight you might be better off looking at websites dedicated specifically to this purpose such as Easyjet or Vueling.  But Kayak often has some of the cheapest fairs found online for longer trips, such as travel from the U.S. to Europe or vise versa.

Also, many consumer reviews say that you’ll often find cheaper hotels through Hotwire.com and Priceline.com – but it may be worth the extra bucks for you to actually know which hotel you’ll be staying at.

Despite its few drawbacks, Kayak is an invaluable travel resource for the student traveler, and is definitely worth checking out before booking your next trip.