When searching for plane tickets, you can save a ton of money by searching with flexible travel dates.
As part of our cheap travel tips series, I’m going to reveal my three favorite search engines for when you have very flexible travel dates. All three of these search engines allow you to search with more than the standard flexible search of 1-3 days around your travel dates. Instead, they allow you to search for flexible travel within the next 330 days.
Searching for flexible travel dates can save you literally hundreds of dollars on a flight. For example, if looking at airfare from Washington, DC to San Francisco, if you have flexible travel dates for when to visit you could pay $219 to for a flight in June. But, if your dates aren’t flexible — forcing you to leave a few days earlier or later — you would pay $319 for the cheapest flight. This is how flexibility saves you money.
Again, very few travel search engines allow you great flexibility when searching for flights. Usually the “flexible search” option is 1-3 days around your given date, but these search engines allow you the maximum flexibility — 330 days from today.
The three best are FareCompare, Kayak, and Travelocity.
Kayak for Flexible Travel
Kayak’s search function also shows a popup window when you type in your to/from cities.
Cons: Kayak’s flexible travel search is based on other’s recent searches– so the results they show aren’t necessarily fares that are still available for you to purchase. This can be frustrating if you find a great fare, but then it’s no longer available.
FareCompare for Flexible Travel
I like FareCompare the best for flexible travel because it shows you the cheapest dates earliest in the searching process. As soon as you type in your travel to/from airports, the cheapest and most expensive months to travel appear on the right hand side. Then as soon as you click on the departure date, a calendar pops up. It’s fast and easy to follow.
Travelocity for Flexible Travel
Travelocity also has a great flexible travel search option that searches 330 days out. It lists the very cheapest ticket price first (no matter what month it’s in), but I don’t like it as much for three reasons.
Cons:
- First, it isn’t laid out in a format that works well for me. I like the calendars that appear on both Kayak and FareCompare. Why? Because if it’s only $3 more to fly on a Friday versus a Thursday, I’m going to pay the extra $3. With Travelocity it’s much harder to see the flexible travel dates that work well with a certain schedule.
- Second, it takes 4 or 5 times as many clicks to choose your actual flight options — this gets cumbersome.
- Third, Travelocity don’t include taxes/fees in their results — giving you an artificially reduced price (until the final screen).
Searching for airfare with flexible travel dates will save you tons of money on your next airline ticket.
About the author
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i prefer FareCompare especially during this time when there is an economic downturn. it comes in handy.
I agree with your comments about Travelocity.
I had never used FareCompare before, but I like their setup. I wish they had a way to search for last-minute deals, though, because if your travel plans are very flexible, you can often find great deals that way.
TravelSearchPro.com offers consumers the convenience of comparing rates for flights, hotels, and car rentals across more than 200 travel suppliers simultaneously. TravelSearchPro.com differentiates itself from existing meta-search engines by performing unbiased searches and therefore offers its visitors comprehensive and competitive search results, uninfluenced by exclusivity contracts. TravelSearchPro.com also searches regional specialty travel companies, providing exclusive offers not available on leading online travel agencies. We offer our visitors the ability to input their search parameters and itinerary details only once in order to obtain unbiased results from major travel and airline websites.
At TravelSearchPro.com, we provide our visitors with a single location from which to search many travel providers’ websites for the lowest prices on travel and then allow them to book their travel directly on the travel providers’ websites. By booking directly with the travel provider, customers can often avoid paying service fees, which are usually charged by regular travel search engines. In addition to saving time and money by finding the best prices in one location and avoiding a service fee, customers can also benefit from this process by taking advantage of the guarantees offered by some travel providers’ websites.
As well as offering two travel search capabilities, TravelSearchPro.com also offers an array of travel tools, airport tools and vacation deals in order to offer our visitors a complete travel toolkit, all from one simple, clean, professional website.
I think this very important feature belongs in the travel meta-search side of the world. That would be Kayak / Farecompare / MSN Farecast.
Expedia, Orbitz, Priceline and Travelocity users are looking for something else, though I am not sure what that is.
Do you know BookingDay.com? It is a new but powerful travel search engine. BookingDay.com search over 180,000 hotel deals in 30+ travel websites. The hotels are presented with full description, maps, photos, etc.
Can I find the flexible travel tool when using multiple destinations? please help!
I’ve found on that one of the best resources to book Resort Vacations is at http://www.ResortsClubInternational.com
We were able to save $100′s and even sometimes $1,000′s depending on the location of the resorts compared to other on-line search engines.
I do agree with travelocity
I don’t know if things have changed since you wrote this article but I couldn’t find the flexible option that you’re mentioning here on any of these websites. I know travelocity used to have it and I’ve used it for years but it’s not there anymore. Any suggestions?
Joel,Thank you for commenting on the site and Thank you for oreffing to give us more information. That’s what we love to hear. Could you please tell us how many people does Travelocity employ in India call centers? Either directly and / or through sub contracts? As we mentioned in the post above you do employ people in the USA, and for that we thank you. But we do know a lot of people in the USA used to work for Travelocity before their job was outsourced. (see various news clippings above.)Another question: Has Travelocity explored bringing back some of those jobs? Another Question: Where do the majority of Travelocity’s customers come from? What country gives Travelocity the most business? Look forward to hearing back from you! And thanks again, your the first company to respond back.