Airfarewatchdog, a popular website (https://www.airfarewatchdog.com/) founded by the travel journalist George Hobica and acquired by TripAdvisor's editorial division Smarter Travel Media in 2008, aims to help its users find great deals and the best fares available on trips they wish to take, as they search every day over 20,000 routes. They claim that they are different from their competitors in four different ways:
- Top Value: Airfarewatchdog, as they state on their website, looks for great deals on trips, short flights, limited stopovers and top routes
- Real Time: As prices always change, they send instant alerts so that the visitor of their site can see the best offers before they sell out.
- Human Crew: They spend their whole day searching and finding the best deals and then they sent it to the users inbox.
- Complete Coverage: They search thousands of routes, airlines and hotels to find the best deals available at that particular moment.
Airfarewatchdog offers a curated hotel recommendation service, where the best hotel offers at a particular moment are presented to the user. In addition, it includes promo code offers and airline sites exclusive offers and, finally, the free Fare Alert tool informs users if a lower airfare price comes up, by sending them an email.
However, does Airfarewatchdog live up to its promises? Read this article to decide for yourself whether Airfarewatchdog is the right place to book your next flight or if you should continue searching for other websites to find the cheapest airfare.
How to use Airfarewatchdog
The website’s design is simple, colorful and user friendly. At the top there are 6 main sections: Flights, Airlines, Hotels, Credit Cards, Travel Blog and My Alerts. Let us take a closer look at each of these sections and see what they are all about.
Flights The visitor of the website can find the most amazing deals of the day at ‘Today’s Top Fares’, check the ‘Weekender’ at the ‘Weekend Deals’ section, which is a unique and useful tool for anyone planning an impromptu weekend from two to four days and wants the best deal, search fares from a city and to a city and find out which is the cheapest month to fly to their chosen destination. In addition, the visitor can search and compare flight fares and set up fare price alerts so that he will be notified about the lowest prices found by the website.
Airlines In this section the user can search all airline deals -including smaller airline offers like Southwest Airlines deals- and obtain airline information. This includes specific airline information, airline baggage fees and airline codes guide.
Hotels Airfarewatchdog hotel section can prove to be a useful tool for the user as it provides help to find the cheapest hotel in any given moment. The visitor can search hotel deals by destination, set up hotel alerts and also, search his favorite hotel brands and weekend deals.
Credit Cards This section helps the user compare travel credit cards, helps him choose the credit card that better fits his needs, has a credit card article section, gives tips for flying almost for free and offers advice to overseas travellers wishing to use a credit card.
Travel Blog Next, the site features its travel blog where they offer travel tips and advice. They also have blog posts, recent fare sales and travel gear.
My alerts By signing the user receives email alerts in order for him to be notified as soon as possible about all deals that might come up.
What are the main advantages of using Airfarewatchdog?
Airfarewatchdog has gained popularity during the past few years. It is a user-friendly website which offers good deals and the visitor can often find amazing airfare offers. It has a wide range of flights to numerous destinations and usually the user is able to find the best deal quickly and easily.The Airfarewatchdog staff has airfare analysts who research millions hotels and airfares deals to make sure they find actual good offers. The email alert makes sure that the user won’t miss any deals, as he is notified about new offers instantly.
Airfarewatchdog offers something that most of its competitors do not. They check for seat availability BEFORE they post their fares in order to ensure that there are available seats on the specific flight. Therefore, Airfarewatchdog users don’t waste their time searching for flights that do not have available seats, as sometimes happens when using similar websites.
The negative side
Even though Airfarewatchdog seems to be an excellent source to find the best deals, a closer look at the site will reveal certain disadvantages.
First, the website is designed to offer deals only on flights, hotels and weekend packages. However, many of its users will need to rent a car, book a cruise, a tour, tickets for museums etc., and Airfarewatchdog cannot help them do that. This is a major disadvantage, as many travellers do not want to waste additional time or energy to search elsewhere in order to rent their car or buy their museum tickets.
Also, the site does not have a rewards program for returning customers and its mobile app, even if it is useful, it does not offer anything new or unique.
The Verdict
Airfarewatchdog is a user-friendly website to find amazing airfare and hotel deals and weekend offers. The user will be able to book the cheapest flight available quickly and save a lot of time. Also, by checking out this site, he knows beforehand if there are actual seats available and not only just get a price for the particular flight, as many of its competitors do. However, the website should also add more categories, like car rental, cruises, museum tickets booking in order for the users to be able to plan their entire trip and not just the flight and the hotel, since many of their competitors offer these options. Finally, customer reviews are few up to this point and a bit mixed, but, overall, they tend to be on the positive side.
