Discount Travel Review: Kayak.com Vs. Sidestep.com

I always make my flight bookings online. In the past I used to look for cheap flights on sites like expedia.com, priceline.com, travelocity.com and orbitz.com. It meant having many browser windows open, noting down the best deals from each site and comparing the actual itinerary. It was quite a bit of a hassle. Then along came kayak.com and changed the way I shopped for cheap airline tickets.

I have purchased tickets for 6 trips from kayak.com for both domestic and international travel in the last two years and am very happy with my shopping experience. I found the cheapest airline tickets each time. Kayak provides airfare deals from all the individual airline sites like United, Air Tran, American Airlines, etc. and also travel sites like Expedia, Priceline, etc. Only Southwest is excluded because they do not participate with any discount travel site. Their search result is the most comprehensive I have ever seen. And it is easy to compare the deals on cheap flights side-by-side and make a selection.

Usually my travel dates are flexible but I take a while to make up my mind about our travel dates (considering that I often travel with an extended family and have to take into account their schedules). And Kayak has a tool just for me! They have a feature which shows historic airfares; it helps in predicting pricing trends – it tells me if I can afford to wait or I should buy quickly to get the best deals on cheap airline tickets.

In my experience shopping for cheap airline tickets for international travel is more challenging than that for domestic travel. I usually travel to India every year and find that airfares vary wildly from carrier to carrier. Often the prices quoted by Expedia and Priceline are way off those on the individual airline sites. On the other hand, prices quoted by Kayak generally agree with the online fares published by the airline sites. So Kayak works really well!

But I must warn my readers that sometimes I have found the cheapest deals with mom and pop travel agents who offer discounts from their commissions selling tickets.

Kayak also has the option of filtering search results based on airlines. This is a useful feature for those who may be looking for a particular airline to use their mileage points. You can also refine your search results based on arrival/departure/layover/travel times.

I have also booked hotels via Kayak twice and I found the cheapest deals with Kayak as compared to hotels.com and Expedia.

Sidestep.com is another discount travel site where you can search cheap airline tickets, hotels, cruise, etc. I was not much of a Sidestep fan – in my experience from the past, they did not display up-to-date fares and flight seat availability.

But of course, Sidestep has been acquired by Kayak recently and the two sites are almost mirror images of each other now – they have similar looking websites and in my experience, carry identical deals.

There is one difference (which may vanish if the sites merge) – Sidestep has a toolbar that provides alerts on cheap flights when you search on a competitors website. Some may like it. But this toolbar works only with Microsoft Windows and Internet Explorer. So users with other operating systems and browsers like Firefox cannot use this feature. Sidestep also carries a comprehensive travel guide that many may find useful to plan their trips.

I expect that in future the pluses of Sidestep (toolbar, travel guide) will be merged into Kayak’s website and we will have a more satisfying experience looking for cheap flights and hotel deals.