What is momondo.co.uk?
It is more than an online comparative website for flights, but the site does also have standard filtering systems other websites use. Flights are organised mainly by price with both standard and budget airlines. Using separate one-way tickets, momondo.co.uk are able to offer cheaper return flights, as buying two one-way tickets with different airlines can sometimes be cheaper than one return-ticket. This also saves you the time it takes to find individual one-way tickets from numerous different websites. Momondo.co.uk lays it out clearly for you to see. You are also able to search for flights based on the time of your trip. Or search by airline carrier for a specific level of comfort or a direct flights on long haul journeys.
Be aware that some of the prices quoted in ads on and off the website are not always realtime prices and once you get to the results of your search, the price may increase. Momondo.co.uk also quotes flight prices that do not include an admin fee or credit card charges so the quoted price may increase yet again.
Features
The website is not only a search engine for flights, you can also use it to compare hotels and holiday rentals – depending on what kind of a holiday you’re after. Momondo.co.uk in collaboration with HotelsCombined.co.uk, one of the leading hotel comparison sites, are able to bring you millions of hotel offers at the click of a button. The holiday rentals include villas, chalets and apartments all over the world from private owners and agencies. All these options on one website where you can search and compare all types of properties.
The ‘Where To Go’ tab is fun and inspirational to play around with. Using a colour filter it asks you to fill in what month you’re looking to go on holiday, which city you depart from and what ambience you’re feeling – think pink for trendy and chic, ruby red for warm and intimate, yellow for popular and lively, blue for tranquil and spiritual and purple for elegant and classic. Using the month and mood, momondo.co.uk picks cities to visit. It’s an interactive way of suggesting places to visit and helps to inspire new travel ideas. The feature works well and chances are you’ll leave the momondo.co.uk website and have a holiday you are beginning to plan or already booked!
Also featured are user-generated travel guides organised according to city and, again, the colour filter allows one to pick hotels, places to eat or things to do according to mood. Use the travel guide in your own city to plan your romantic Valentine’s date or the perfect cultural day out. The travel guides are interactive and momondo.co.uk encourages you to sign up and comment, connect and share your own places, as well as review ones you’ve been to. There is nothing better than exploring a city like a local. Search where to sleep, eat and drink, party, shop or for general information or by neighbourhood. It will also bring up other related things near to your selected area, helping you plan everything quite easily.
Travel search engine momondo.co.uk searches more than 700 travel sites and compares the best offers on flights, hotels and car rental. In addition to offering online search, momondo provides user-generated city guides. Download momondo’s free mobile apps for the iPhone and Android device.
PROS
Comprehensive flight search
Momondo flights offers a vast and comprehensive flight search. The search is not as fast as some other search engines but it covers all of the major sources for short haul as well as long haul flights. They boast searching over 700 sources for cheap flights and include a very handy multi city flight option which not many other aggregators do.
Flexible dates calendar
Momondo flights immediately brings up a graph of flexible dates as soon as you search for a fare on their site. The graph enables you to see at a snapshot whether there are cheaper dates before or after your chosen flight route.
Ratings
Momondo “rates” flights from 1-10 based on its duration and price. The shorter the combination of duration and price the higher its score. It is a very handy function which enables you to search for a convenient flight at a reasonable price. The cheapest flights are shown by default on Momondo but you can activate this feature by selecting it on the results page.
CONS
Prices sometimes do not exist
One of the biggest problems with momondo flights is that you will sometimes see a great price and click it only to realise that the flight does not exist. This is something which affects all meta search engines due to the huge number of sources being searched simultaneously. This remains the single biggest annoyance for consumers using meta search engines. In fact, our research shows that even one incident of this occurrence can turn consumers off for good.
Flexible dates can be misleading
We have found the flexible calendar to be a bit hit and miss. Sometimes it can help you but at other times it is not very accurate at all. It should be noted that the graph is generated by other users who are searching for flights on those different dates via the same route. Due to this fact you will not see data for every single date on every single flight route. Nevertheless care should be taken to update the graph regularly so that outdated flight prices are quickly removed.
Can be beaten by other aggregators
We have found that Momondo flights can be beaten on price by its competitors. Skyscanner. Kayak, Fly.com, Mobissimo and others have often outshined Momondo on the same flight route and on the same date. This is due to the fact that even though Momondo has developed a very powerful search engine it does not search every single travel source available. By searching many different search engines you can expand the breadth and width of your search and find the absolute best flight deal available.
