February 19, 2010 - Kayak.com

Kayak.com

Today, after deliberations I decided to write a review for Kayak.com. Ever since I heard of this site I've been using it frequently. When I found this app I was pleasantly surprised and vowed to use it often, ok I didn’t really vow. If you ask me it's a lot better to search for flights from a laptop or PC than from a smart phone, but anyhow. Kayak.com has a free version, which is the version that I use. There is also a paid version which allows you to book first class, ok so I really don't need the paid version then. Apparently the paid version is rated at 5 stars resulting from 5 ratings. The free version has 3.5 stars resulting from 305 ratings.

The interface for this application is very user friendly. You have a very easy introductory screen with the following icons:


  • Hotels

  • Flights

  • Cars

  • Buzz

  • Feedback

  • Preferences

  • Trips

  • Help/FAQ

It is not particularly hard to use any of these for example under Hotels after you submit the basic information, on top of the result set you have a few options, Choice default setting, Cheap, Close to the location you entered. I entered the airport so it would show me all the hotels close to the airport. Classy shows only the results that have 4 stars and up and finally Show All which surprisingly enough does show all results.
On the bottom you have other options where you can chose the Price range, Stars (i.e. hotel rating), Chains you can filter by hotel chain or Name where you can enter the name in free text.
If we were to look under Flights you enter the starting and ending airport, dates, you can only make it for One way flight , if you want to really get out of the mess you are in. You can chose Include Nearby Airports option that will let Kayak big brother know where you are at. There are many other options that you can use to apply against your results.
The Cars section is not as packed with features, so basically it tells you to call or book online.
A cool feature of the Kayak.com app is Buzz where you get the price for a flight and it provides you with a graph comparing the absolute best with the average best with today's rate. I wish they showed you a line for the you got ripped off by the airline and everyone else rate.
The Airlines part is really neat because it gives you all major (maybe even minor ones I don't know them all) airlines' contact info.
You can also see your trips if you want to create an account with Kayak.com and also you can get all your Kayak.com questions answered except for most of them because Help/FAQ is extremely useless.
Ok time to wrap this up. I did not expect this app to be that complex, which is good for the consumer. Hey the app is free, and I think it deserves a good 4 star rating. Why you might ask? Well because it does what you would want it to do, it finds great fares by searching other travel websites like Orbitz.com, CheapTickets.com, etc. I do not doubt that some people might like it some might not; hey we do have that luxury nowadays, most of us anyhow. I do not think I would pay $1.99 for the 1st Class version but if you want this luxury, its $1.99 well spent I would say.

User's corner

Great - but...
by therickaustin

4 STAR - review
INeed to be able to search for multiple flight segments (e.g. Baltimore to Salt Lake to Lexington and back to Baltimore). Almost all my trips are multiple-segment flights. I'd even pay a few bucks for such a thing.


Love it!
by agpatters

5 STAR - review
Very clean and easily usable. Exactly what I would expect from kayak. I imagine it will be very helpful when flights get cancelled.


I love this app
by Army Drummer

5 STAR - review
I've used the site several times for comparison shopping on flights, an this was a great find in the App store. The best feature by far is the ability to look up trends to see what prices on a given flight have been like!
Gives information for all major carriers and the ability to book a flight from your iPhone is a time saver!
Awesome app!

Kayak.com Official Description - Read it cautiously they might be biast......

Kayak Flight, Hotel Search
KAYAK for the iPhone connets to kayak.com, the best travel search engine in the world. Compare hundreds of travel sites at once.
Find airfares and hotel prices quickly, for free! Why pay for looking up airfares when Kayak gives it to you for nothing.

NOW AVAILABLE: KAYAK First Class, our paid app. It has all the same capabilities of this free app, plus First and Business class fares! How much funner could anything be? None! None, um funner. Link to Paid Version.
Use KAYAK for changing your flight at the airport, or finding a hotel at the last minute.

You can book online with the airline or hotel site of your choice, or you can simply press a button and your iPhone will call and you can talk to a human. We even show hotels that you can't book online: how many other travel sites do that?

You can search many airline websites at once, find the best airfares and flights for you. Then book where you want.

Also visit Kayak.com in Safari on your iPhone or computer (i.e. Firefox)