Daily Archives: March 3, 2009

If you happened to visit TripAdvisor  in the past few days noticed a couple changes  – the most obvious being slightly modified logo, and a new “get the best flights. then go.” tagline at the top of every page. When a company makes these sorts of changes it usually indicates something big – and such is the case with TripAdvisor, who launched a sophisticated airfare meta search engine last Friday.

TripAdvisor’s Flight search competes in a fairly crowded space, but has several really useful features that set it apart from some of the established players like Kayak, Sidestep or Farecast:

• Fee Estimator: Its no mystery that airlines often tack on fees for checking bags, in flight entertainment and beverages (among other things). TripAdvisor’s “fee estimator” allows travelers to calculate the real cost of flying by indicating various preferences. The tool even takes loyalty program membership into consideration and adjusts the total cost accordingly.
• SeatGuru and seating availability integration: TripAdvisor leveraged its SeatGuru.com relationship for this product, allowing travelers to see detailed layouts for the planes used on each leg of a flight within their search results. Additionally (and this looks like its currently available only for flights through Expedia) travelers can view actual seating availability information. This is a huge convenience for anyone looking for specific seating arrangements or looking for that couple inches of legroom.
• Advanced Filtering: While some of these options may appeal only to hardcore airplane or airport enthusiasts, TripAdvisor’s Flights tool has a couple interesting filtering criteria  such as “airplane type”, which allows travelers to filter down on individual plane configurations.

The service isn’t perfect (for example, there’s no “surrounding airport” or “flexible date” search yet), but it’s a solid offering for a beta release, and represents a huge value add to the TripAdvisor experience. Travelers can now use the site for almost all stages in the travel purchase process: finding a destination, the best lodging, cheap flights and even activities once you’re there.  With TripAdvisor’s massive traveler community, this move could really shake up the meta search space.