The Search for the Perfect Airfare Search Engine: DoHop Doesn’t Stack Up
I’ll admit that I was predisposed to like DoHop from the minute that Byron mentioned it. After all, what’s cooler than an airfare search engine that searches all the low-price travel agencies like Expedia and Travelocity and all the airlines’ individual sites and then puts together the lowest-cost itineraries?
But the truth is that DoHop isn’t really all that special. For one thing, the itineraries it suggested didn’t have any measurable advantage over the itineraries and fares suggested by other websites. In fact, when I searched for airfares from Seattle to Los Angeles for Blog Business Summit’s upcoming Essentials of Business Blogging Seminar, the lowest fare the engine returned was 277 Euros, which translates to $334 in American currency - and this is a search two months ahead of time. Meanwhile, a search of Orbitz returned a nonstop itinerary for $255 on United.
There are other problems, such as the euros-only price listings. I wouldn’t mind if the site were truly brilliant in its comprehensiveness, but it’s frankly a waste of time to type various numbers of Euros into Google for a conversion when other sites give present you lower prices with no conversion necessary.
The idea of DoHop is a great one: search everywhere and return the pricing information to one place. Trouble is, that’s not what DoHop actually does.
{ 7 comments… read them below or add one }
Kayak.com seems awesome to me. I’d be curious if others find it helpful
Hi,
There is a currency picker right above the price column. You can use it to change the price display from EUR to USD.
All the best,
Frosti
Frosti,
Thanks for writing, we’ll have Teresa give it another go.
Well I feel silly. I’m going to blame missing that feature on jetlag, but my other two problems still stand. The engine didn’t find me the cheapest fare, and it acts all buggy in Safari, which forces me to break out RAM hog Firefox if I want to use it.
Hi,
dohop supports the latest versions of IE and FF, but unfortunately not the Safari browser. Although it is not tested for Opera people tell us that it works fine there.
Most of the time dohop will find similar results as other flight search tools but in some cases dohop.com might find a better deal. This search from AOC to KEF May 21st is an example.
dohop finds a fare of $200 while kayak.com finds no route, but is able to suggest a flight from a nearby airport in Germany for $1675
Just wanted to make the point that dohop is different and can be worth checking out if you don’t find a route elsewhere.
Frosti
Hmm…so are you saying that perhaps DoHop is better for international travel, or is it more like the luck of the draw?
I had hoped, given that DoHop integrates several different engines into one, that it would be a sort of one-stop shop for airfare searching. Won’t that be the day? As it is, I’ll be using it as another option when it comes time to buy another plane ticket.
Thanks!
Frosti,
Thanks for the update on IE and Safari, I used it in Safari and it works, the layout is whack in the results page, but it works.
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