Travel

#Going Once, Going Travel Auction Sites

The internet nowadays provides a way to find everything, so it makes sense that looking for good travel deals is easier than ever. While there is a plethora of options out there, I want to highlight a couple new innovative sites that rely on auction formats to bring you the best travel deals.

Flightfox.com

Fill in details about the flight you are looking for (dates of travel, type of seats, which class, destination, round-way or one-way, airline) and how flexible you are with each option. Flightfox has a minimum $29 finder’s fee to launch a contest for registered finders to offer the best price for your trip, usually lasting one or three day. You can choose which offer you accept, and the finder sends step by step instructions for how to book the flight.

Benefits

The savings can be huge. Flightfox advertises in its emails that members save an average of 27% on flights. Looking at a list of flight contests advertised, I did a quick search of a few flights to compare the Flightfox price:

Sydney to London for 4: Flightfox offers $1814 compared to Kayak’s $2036, $222 in savings

San Francisco to Phoenix for 2: Flightfox offers $117 compared to Kayak’s $297, $180 in savings

It is also flexible if you want to plan multi-city itineraries. I saw someone hold a contest for 6 flights from the US around Southeast Asia. Instead of spending hours searching different itineraries and flight combinations, Flightfox can save the time and effort.

Potential Drawbacks

Some contests don’t seem to be saving you money at all or offer negligible savings after accounting for the finder’s fee.

New York to San Francisco for 1: Flightfox offers $470 with 1 layover while Kayak gives $460 with no layover

Flightfox focuses primarily on international and long-haul flights, where you can save the most money. The founders of Flightfox note in a January 2012 interview that they are “targeting international and long haul flights, so $30 on top of that isn’t much.” So you may have to look elsewhere for better deals on domestic flights.

Flightfox is also unclear about who these flight experts are—on their “Experts” page, it seems that anyone with a name and email address can apply as long as they can describe “a great flight [they] hacked.” Anyone could be looking for flights for you, which may account for the hit or miss deals.

Overall, this seems to be a great site if you are looking to book international flights, especially flights with multi-city stops. There are some great deals, and some not-so-great deals, so I would suggest limiting Flightfox to expensive trips where the finder s fee will be offset by the amount you save.

FlyinAway.com

This site is the opposite of Flightfox. Instead of posting your trip and letting experts find you flights, FlyinAway looks at cities its users want to travel to and starts auctioning off tickets. Users bid on tickets, and whoever has the highest bid at the time of closing wins.

• Dates of travel are flexible: you get approximately one year to complete your flight, so you can score holiday tickets for much cheaper.
• There are huge discounts, partially due to the fact that there don’t seem to be many bidders. This also means you have a high chance of winning.
• There is no bidding fee, so bid as many times as you would like. It is a monthly $3.99 fee or a $49.99 yearly fee to access member-only auctions and to bid. If you would like to check out the site before committing, it is free to sign up for an account to see available auctions.

Potential Drawbacks

You must provide booking information within 72 hours of the auction closing. Similar to booking any economy flight (even through an airline), it may be difficult to change your booking. There is no information provided on the website so you should know when you want to travel when you bid. Additionally, the winner must be one of the passengers so you would need to book your own flights.

The biggest problem I see is that there are very few flights on the auction block. At the time the article was written, there was one flight on auction (Denver to Las Vegas), and no upcoming auctions listed. The cost of airfare is increasing rapidly and deals are becoming scarce. So it s no surprise that FlyinAway s auctions are limited. The smaller number of available flight auctions just makes it all the more valuable.

Overall, this is a great site if you are able to wait to see if your desired flight comes on auction—you have a very good chance of winning with a huge markdown. Be prepared to book when you bid, and don’t use FlyinAway as your only option to buy tickets in case you lose the auction. In today s travel environment, good deals are hard to come by so it s worth a little patience and effort!

Both Flightfox and FlyinAway are relatively new sites, launching in 2012 and 2011 respectively. However, they offer potential cost savings to frequent and/or flexible travelers that are willing to do a the homework. As these sites continue to grow, they will likely be able to offer better deals. Definitely keep an eye out for great travel savings on these sites.

Do you have any experience with using travel auction sites? Let us know in the comments!