9 ms·

CardMunch CEO uses Flightfox for 29-Country Startup Trip

85 points by todsul 14y ago

iag 14y ago
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 14y ago
  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 14y ago
    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 14y ago
      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 14y ago
        "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).
hsikaria 14y ago
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 14y ago
  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...
- laumac 14y ago
  We're focusing on anything international and/or complex. Online travel sites like Kayak and Hipmunk have already done a good job for simple and domestic travel.
richiezc 14y ago
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?
- laumac 14y ago
  Here's a link to the post Bowei wrote when we started the contest which lists the prizes: http://flightfox.com/blog/world-startup-report http://flightfox.com/blog/world-startup-report
- iag 14y ago
  Finders fee was $500, but I added a few bonus prizes for fun you can read about it here: http://flightfox.com/contest/36810 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 14y ago
    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
xb95 14y ago
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 14y ago
  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 14y ago
    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 14y ago
      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.
  - 14y ago
ttbmike 14y ago
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 14y ago
  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.
MichaelGG 14y ago
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 14y ago
  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 14y ago
    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 14y ago
      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.
tlrobinson 14y ago
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 14y ago
  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.
bdesimone 14y ago
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 14y ago
  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.
tyang 14y ago
Love this.
rdl 14y ago
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.

85 points by todsul 14y ago

iag 14y ago

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 14y ago
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 14y ago
  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 14y ago
    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 14y ago
      "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).

hsikaria 14y ago

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 14y ago
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...
laumac 14y ago
We're focusing on anything international and/or complex. Online travel sites like Kayak and Hipmunk have already done a good job for simple and domestic travel.

richiezc 14y ago

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?

laumac 14y ago
Here's a link to the post Bowei wrote when we started the contest which lists the prizes: http://flightfox.com/blog/world-startup-report http://flightfox.com/blog/world-startup-report
iag 14y ago
Finders fee was $500, but I added a few bonus prizes for fun you can read about it here: http://flightfox.com/contest/36810 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 14y ago
  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

xb95 14y ago

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 14y ago
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 14y ago
  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 14y ago
    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.
- 14y ago

ttbmike 14y ago

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 14y ago
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.

MichaelGG 14y ago

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 14y ago
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 14y ago
  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 14y ago
    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.

tlrobinson 14y ago

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 14y ago
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.

bdesimone 14y ago

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 14y ago
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.

tyang 14y ago

Love this.

rdl 14y ago

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.