GetGoing, the Y Combinator-backed startup that helps you find discounted vacation packages, just launched FlightFinder, a new search service to find more affordable airline tickets by showing you nearby destinations to fly into.
If you don’t live in the Bay Area, you might not know that you could fly into Oakland as an alternative to SFO. Depending on your final destiation and ticket price, Oakland may be more preferable. In like vein, if you were flying to Rome, and the price may be a bit steep, you might want to consider other airports relativley nearby with lower airfares.
“Travel search is broken,” said Alek Vernitsky, founder and CEO of GetGoing. “You have to search one city at a time. We’re giving you the ability to search by region.”
“We show you different destinations with different options,” said Robb Henshaw, GetGoing’s VP of marketing. “We’re helping people discover and explore cheaper prices than what they originally searched for.”
For the airlines, showing vacation travelers other options is a good way to potentially complete a sale. “The airlines love it because if someone sees a $1200 price, they assume they can’t fly to Italy,” said Vernitsky. “But if you can tell them somehing is much more affordable, people would be willing to pay.” Studies conducted by the airline industry have shown that a small reduction of 15% in ticket prices for an airline tickets leads to an increase in market size of 30%, Vernitsky added.
Sounds like an obvious benefit to vacation travelers. The question is, why aren’t the airlines or even other services, such as Kayak offering this kind of travel search?
“The technology to do this is very complicated,” said Vernitsky. “Airlines are not able to suggest alternatives that are nearby and affordable. We have a large and good development team.” Even travel sites such as Kayak don’t offer an ability to search for altnerative routes, Vernitsky said, suggesting that the travel industry needs a more up-to-date and innovate travel site, despite Kayak only being around 10 years old. “We want to be the Kayak on steroids.”
