
CardMunch CEO uses Flightfox for 29-Country Startup Trip - todsul
http://flightfox.com/blog/lessons-from-bowei-gai
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xb95
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.

This isn't just -- they put it together and you click a button and suddenly
you have your tickets.

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".

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.

~~~
laumac
Thanks for the feedback, we're looking into booking options now so that you
don't have spend time trying to book yourself.

For others it has been an easy process to book as we have some verified travel
agents on board. Other times when your trip is super complex, you may have to
book on different websites. We're definitely aware that it's a friction point
though so we're trying to fix it asap.

~~~
xb95
I wasn't aware of/able to find the travel agents, so I paid the finder's fee
but never actually booked tickets. It was too intimidating for me and I was
too worried about ending up with half of the tickets and the other half
becoming unavailable and ending up holding expensive partials.

Anyway, I'd be happy to pay for someone to handle it -- I'd even pay going
rates -- but the whole process of me having to take the itinerary to someone
else (that I have to find via Yelp or some other vehicle) or spend time on the
phone with a couple of airlines is just too much for me. I'm super busy, and
my expertise lies in tech -- not travel. :(

~~~
mixmastamyk
In general when you book flights you don't have to pay for a day or two. This
is in part to solve the problem you mention.

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iag
Bowei here.

I just want to give a huge shoutout to FlightFox co-founder Lauren. She's been
absolutely amazing to work with.

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.

Thanks Lauren!

~~~
inspiredworlds
hey thats awesome! I've started following your journey via your LinkedIn blog.
You also had a really good slide deck on China ecosystem. 29 country trip -
that's epic.

Its a great use case for Flightfox. My gut feeling at the moment is that its
better for more complicated trips - multi-hop or where there is some kind of
complexity like carrying a surfboard or if you have several kids, etc...

Nice work Lauren & Todd - from a fellow aussie!

~~~
iag
Yep that is correct. For simple trips you can just use Kayak, but as soon as
you start to deal with multi-hop, points purchase and all sort of crazy
tricks, you need a service like FlightFox.

~~~
laumac
Also anything that's not your normal trip. I.e. travelling with pets or
surfboards, help using frequent flyer miles, help getting frequent flyer
status, or just going to a new country that you've never been before.

~~~
rdl
"Help me fly with my pet in cabin" would be a great service -- only some
airlines do it, and they have weird rules. International even harder due to
quarantine rules. (i.e. if I want to go to Hawaii with a cat in cabin, I'd
have to charter, since I think the last airline doing cabin pets to Hawaii,
Alaska, stopped on that route in 2009).

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MichaelGG
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?

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.

Maybe on FlightFox trips are usually shorter, easier, and less money, so it's
not as bad - is that the case?

~~~
xb95
In my case on Flightfox, the person was clearly just using some software. The
time investment was probably minutes.

The value for me is that this person knows all of the rules -- cheap legs,
good days to fly, how to get X or Y, fare codes, etc. Plus they have the
underlying software that powers ticket searching, they don't have to use
ridiculously terrible web portals like us normal folk.

In my case, Flightfox took what was a simple round trip "I am flying to Sydney
for a conference" for $2400 and turned it into:

* Fly to Sydney * Return via Manila, stop for a week * Return via Hong Kong, stop for a few days * Return to San Francisco

They teased out my layovers into full-fledged stops, and brought the total
cost down to $2100. They found a way to get way more value out of this trip
than I would have otherwise.

Of course -- then they gave me a pile of fare codes and letters and said "call
the airline, good luck!" I haven't actually booked the tickets. :(

~~~
JonLim
Curious: given that you saved about $300 despite all the extra time abroad,
aren't you just making up for it by spending more on accommodations and food?

I mean, I'd do it in a heartbeat, but you aren't saving that much more, I
gather. If at all.

~~~
xb95
Absolutely, yes. In my case I was annoyed that my round trip from Orbitz took
me through Hong Kong for 3 hours, so I went to Flightfox to see if I could
make it 3 days. They said yes -- AND made the flight cheaper!

The other option was to try to book multiple round trips or a multi-city with
Orbitz/Expedia/etc and in my case it was driving the cost way up. I wasn't
happy with the result, and couldn't get the price sub-$3500 to do what I want
-- and then I would have had to pay food and accomodations on top of the
higher price.

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ttbmike
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?

~~~
iag
From my quick survey, it took them between 20-30 hours of work to build my
itineraries for me.

So by a rough estimate, I saved hundreds of hours by running this contest
rather than doing everything myself.

Pretty amazing stuff, I think I will make Tim Ferris proud.

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richiezc
Interesting, may I ask how much did you pay out as the finders fee?

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.

Also I'm curious did you consider a RTW ticket?

~~~
iag
Finders fee was $500, but I added a few bonus prizes for fun you can read
about it here: <http://flightfox.com/contest/36810>

Yes, I considered doing a RTW ticket. It was way more expensive ($20k min vs.
$7500 cheapest itinerary from the experts). The price differences were
astonishing.

~~~
richiezc
Seems reasonable.

Flight hacks and getting the most out of my frequent flyer miles is somewhat
of a hobby of mine, I'd bet there is a high correlation between flightfox
experts and people on flyertalk.com

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hsikaria
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.....

~~~
inspiredworlds
I agree with flights that involve multiple places. But there are also lots of
RTW trip options. I've done a RTW trip myself with 5 destinations, and even
then the options were a bit mind-boggling.

It was my first RTW trip so I spent a few hours looking up different RTW
tickets, as well as figuring out what destinations to go to, how many stops
were available, etc.. I ended up researching online, and then going to see a
travel agent twice. I even brought an atlas with me the second time to see the
agent! I also spoke to a couple of friends that have done RTW trips to get
their perspective. Then you have to consider frequent flyer miles and what
destinations, seasonality etc...

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tlrobinson
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?

So far I've been using a combination of TripAdvisor, Hipmunk, etc, but it's
still really painful.

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.

~~~
todsul
It's definitely in the pipeline for us, but our most redeeming feature (not
being restricted by traditional search APIs) is also the thing that makes
automated bookings the most difficult. But we have a solution; stay tuned.

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rdl
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.

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bdesimone
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.

~~~
iag
I think the cheapest was $7,500 for economy, and business class for $16,000.

That is still amazing consider when I book business class flights on my own,
it's usually $3-4k per round trip.

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tyang
Love this.

