October 19, 2010

Want to Travel but Don't Know Where to Go? Use Kayak Explore

Even if you're only a semi-regular traveler you're probably familiar with the time and money saving search engine Kayak.com, which searches all of the major airlines at once to help you find the best flight for your budget and destination.

But what is a traveler to do if they want to take a vacation, have a set income, but aren't really sure where to go? I would encourage them to visit Kayak Explore.
It does the same awesome aggregation that Kayak is known for, but takes a new approach to showing the search results.

Kayak Explore

All you have to do is type in your departure point, your price range and the time of year you want to travel (it's as easy as saying Spring 2011) and boom -- Kayak serves up a visual of the world with price tags to allow you to easily scan the map and choose a location.

Say you're looking for an Italian getaway, but aren't picky about your destination. Just zoom in on the area and you can see that there's not much of a price difference in flights to Rome versus Naples, but flights are much more expensive if you want to go to Bari.


Beyond price and travel dates you can also tell Kayak Explore to filter the results by activities -- like beach, skiing or golf -- and/or by language spoken. Once you've found the destination of your dreams you just click through to the purchasing point and pack your bags!

As someone who has only traveled abroad once before I am itching to visit more of the world, and let's be honest, my financial abilities will be the main factor in selecting when/where I travel next. Even if I don't use Kayak Explore to book my actual tickets it's an excellent tool for browsing worldwide flights and finding out which times of the year are best for certain areas.

I am a devoted Kayak user, but I also have to give a special shout out to Hipmunk.com which not only aggregates flights price, duration and number of flights, but rolls them up into one filter type called "agony!"