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Kayak, Mobissimo, and Bing Travel: Part 2 - domestic airfare
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Price your trip to the Big Apple.
Continuing our comparison of three big travel meta sites – Kayak, Mobissimo, and Bing Travel – today we’re going looking at three domestic routes originating in Chicago – to New York City, to Miami, and to Los Angeles. Read on to find out what each site found.
CHICAGO to NEW YORK CITY
(search dates: July 17-20)
Kayak: $191 on Delta (Midway to LaGuardia) and American Airlines (O’Hare to LaGuardia). Kayak allows you to choose – in one convenient pop-up – which site you’d like to purchase from at a particular price point. In this case, Orbitz, Priceline, Delta and American Airlines all turned in the same low price.
What’s interesting there is that there were five pages of Delta flights at the $191 price point. It wasn’t until page six (out of 15 pages of results) that the American Airlines fare – at the same price – was found. It seems like there could be a more convenient display that groups results from the same airline together to show more carrier choices.
Mobissimo: $191 on Delta (through Orbitz; Midway to LaGuardia) and American Airlines (O’Hare to LaGuardia). Pretty much the same results as Kayak, except with the extra promotion of Orbitz with the Delta results (when you can clearly get the same price directly from the Delta site).
Bing Travel: $191 on American Airlines (O’Hare to LaGuardia); and Delta (through Orbitz; Midway to LaGuardia). Again, the same results as the other two sites, but this time, the American Airlines price was listed first, but it was easy to see the Delta option, as that was also listed on the first page (unlike the Kayak results, where the American fare was buried under six pages of Delta flights).
Bing Travel’s ace in the hole is its Farecast technology, which said that this fare is holding steady. In the past 67 days, the lowest fare was $186, only $5 lower than our found price. Bing Travel had a 72% confidence that this flight would remain within $15 of this price in the next seven days. (Did it? Check here to find out!)
The winner: A draw…mostly. Bing Travel’s Farecast might have a slight edge; it gave me extra security that I should go ahead and buy the ticket rather than wait and hope prices would drop.
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Get some sun in Miami.
CHICAGO to MIAMI
(search dates: July 17-20)
Kayak: $210 on Northwest (from both O’Hare and Midway; via Orbitz, Cheaptickets, and nwa.com; one stop-over)
Mobissimo: $210 on Northwest (Midway; via Orbitz; one stop-over)
Bing Travel: $235 on Delta (Midway). Bing Travel turned in $235 as the lowest price for this flight, but clearly, after selecting this price point and being directed to Delta.com, a search there garnered a price of $210.40 with one stop-over. Plus, Bing’s Farecast said they were more than 80% positive prices would drop at least $37 in the next seven days…but is this on the $235 price? Or the true lowest price of $210? Perhaps this means the fare will only drop $10 or $12…is it worth waiting to find out before purchasing? (Check here to find out how much – or if – the fare dropped.)
The winner: Kayak, because of offering more choices - flights from both major Chicago airports and several purchasing options.
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How much will your trip to the West Coast cost?
CHICAGO to LOS ANGELES
(search dates: July 17-20)
Kayak: $340 on Frontier Airlines (Midway; one stop-over)
Mobissimo: $340 on Frontier Airlines through Orbitz (Midway; one stop-over)
Bing Travel: $340 on Frontier Airlines through Orbitz (Midway; one stop-over). Farecast says that they’re 89% sure that prices will drop more than $50 in the next seven days. (Did they? Check here to find out.)
The winner: Clearly, Bing Travel. Anyone who can tell me with nearly 90% certainty that I’ll save $50 if I wait and check their site (every day, knowing this traveler) during the next week has got my business.
THE OVERALL WINNER: I gotta say, even with the Chicago to Miami price snafu, Bing Travel’s Farecast function is addictively comforting and is something that the other sites don’t offer. I’ll definitely use it again.
A note about how the search was conducted: All searches were conducted on June 23, 2009. All searches were made choosing “all airports” for each city and with no restrictions (i.e. without “non-stop only”). Each reported fare was checked by clicking through to the purchasing site, whether it was directly from the airline's site or from an alternate booking site such as Orbitz, Priceline or Hotwire.
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