Flightfox is neat, but the thing that wasn't super clear and I found out later, after paying a finder's fee, is that you have to go through hoops to book your tickets.<p>This isn't just -- they put it together and you click a button and suddenly you have your tickets.<p>This is "now you have to spend hours on the phone, attempting to book these tickets, and you don't have enough information to really do it -- nor enough confidence to pull it off".<p>So I love Flightfox and I hope they succeed, but I'm hoping to save time -- and Flightfox definitely doesn't. It saves you money at the cost of adding a lot of extra time to your booking process, but that's not a tradeoff that is apparent from the start, IMO.
Bowei here.<p>I just want to give a huge shoutout to FlightFox co-founder Lauren. She's been absolutely amazing to work with.<p>Early stage startups, please take note. This is how you get loyal first customers. You treat people like VIP and make sure they're taken care of.<p>Thanks Lauren!
The thing that bothers me here is the same as with 99Designs. You pay an award fee but that only goes to the winner, right?<p>After using 99Designs a couple of times, I'm happy with the results, but probably won't use such a system again; it just feels a bit exploitative. I know, people elect to enroll in the system and compete so it's "fair" that way, but it just feels sorta icky to know I had X people spending so much time on my project and they get no compensation at all.<p>Maybe on FlightFox trips are usually shorter, easier, and less money, so it's not as bad - is that the case?
Pretty interesting service! I'm always surprised that human experts can challenge algorithms in setting up travel itineraries. I wonder how much time an average expert spends putting these proposals together?
Interesting, may I ask how much did you pay out as the finders fee?<p>I see lots of promise in these types of crowd sourced activities and I'd like to compare the cost to self described "experts" who do this type of trip planning as a side business.<p>Also I'm curious did you consider a RTW ticket?
Interesting post and a very interesting concept of FlightFox! I think it would do well, especially if you're flying to several places. However, I wonder if I would save much if I was just doing a simple round trip flight.....
Is there a more complete service, like a travel agent, to help book an entire trip? e.x. I want to go to a beach in country A, B, or C, on X dates, I prefer Y type of hotel/resort, my budget is $Z, what are my options?<p>So far I've been using a combination of TripAdvisor, Hipmunk, etc, but it's still really painful.<p>I looked into using an old school travel agent, but it seems like they work on commission from the hotel, which doesn't really align incentives. I like Flightfox's model where the fee is simply based on complexity.
I wish they'd partner with a travel agent (or become a travel agency themselves) to issue the actual tickets. If they could do that, I'd be a lot more interested in using the service.
I just similarly booked a round the world honeymoon ticket. I'd consider myself pretty good at scheduling domestic and international travel, and I'm an American-Airlines life-time platinum member. That said, the experts really impressed me and were able to find me business class flights for the entire trip for 7k a head. Not bad.