Flight Comparison Sites Explained

What Are Flight Comparison Sites?

The first thing to note is that flight comparison sites can sometimes be referred to as flight aggregators, meta-search engines and screen-scrapers. For all intents and purposes, they perform the same function - i.e.   - pulling data from a lot of different travel agents and airlines to provide the user with a list of flight results relevant for their particular flight route.

Before the advent of flight comparison sites, people had to visit a travel agent or the airline website to locate the best flight deals online.  During this time many people also relied on physical travel agents to do the hard work for them and book itineraries on their behalf. As time grew people started to realise that the best deal was not always present on one particular site or through one particular travel agent – this reality lead to people believing in the necessity of comparing multiple sites in order to secure the best online deal.

In fact, a travel survey report published by Jupiter research in the early 2000′s revealed that “nearly two in five online travel consumers say they believe that no one site has the lowest rates or fares.”

This state of mind led entrepreneurs to develop sites that would aim to collate all available fares online and show them to consumers for the purpose of transparency.

Early Pioneers

Early pioneers in the flight comparison market were Cheapflights.co.uk, Skyscanner and Sidestep. These were the first so-called comparison sites or flight aggregators. As their popularity took off a number of similar sites began to emerge such as Kayak.com, Mobissimo, Momondo, Travelgrove, Fly.com and most recently Hipmunk.

All of them aimed to be a one-stop-shop for the cheapest fares online.

Time has shown that these types of sites have been extremely successful in marketing their services to consumers. It is a matter of fact now that many consumers have made these flight comparison sites their go-to destinations when looking for the best deals online.

One of the reasons for their extreme popularity is the flight comparison site’s ability to check many more fares than any airline or travel agent can on their own.

In fact, if you type “cheap flights” into Google you will notice that some of the first results you will get will be such comparison sites.

The Problem With Current Flight Comparison Engines

Unfortunately, there still remains a problem with such comparison sites. The fact is that no particular comparison site has become truly comprehensive in the purest meaning of the word. It still remains highly unpredictable which comparison site will arrive at the best fare. Fares and sources of fares vary widely, partly due to the fact that each comparison site tends to search a different selection of travel sources.

The best workaround to this is to compare flights from multiple flight comparison sites as mentioned by numerous travel journalists in the know. This method enables you to compare many more travel agents and airlines than one flight comparison site could possibly cover on its own.

In fact, it was this very reason which prompted us to develop our very own unique flight search.

We wanted to take flight search to the next level by sitting on top of the existing comparison sites and enabling consumers to compare their offers side by side within seconds.

So that is what we did. FlightsFinder.com is the first website that allows consumers to compare up to 16 different comparison sites in seconds enabling them to quickly and easily locate the best online fares in seconds.

We call this process meta-meta flight search and in our opinion, it is the very best method of covering the entirety of flights available and securing yourself the best online deal.

Why not give it a go – try our meta-meta flight search engine now!

FlightsFinder.com