If you’re stuck in a rut when it comes to booking travel online, give the plucky website Kayak a try. Kayak might not be new to travel veterans, but it’s worth bringing to the attention of occasional travelers who always head first to the biggies such as Expedia, Travelocity, Hotwire and Priceline.

Unlike those other sites, which are basically online travel agencies, Kayak doesn’t actually sell anything. Instead, its powerful search engine scours the sites of airlines, hotels and other travel providers to find the best deals in airfare, lodging and car rentals. Its main asset is flexible filtering. You can, for example, choose to:

• See only flights that take off in a certain two-hour period.
• Find out if there are better deals up to three days before or after your search date.
• View pricing trends based on other users’ searches.

There’s also an email service that lets registered users (it’s free) set all kinds of parameters to be informed when prices reach a certain level for specific destinations. For posterity, Kayak can even show you what the other major travel websites show for the same search.

Kayak shouldn’t be the only travel website you use. But if you make it your first, you’ll be better served when you go to the usual ones.

What’s your favorite travel website?

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 1st, 2007 at 3:34 pm and is filed under Web pick. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.