Kayak Data Analysis Brings Budget Travel Tips, Not God-Like Mantra

by Chris Owen on

Kayak, the travel search giant, took a look at more than a billion search inquires throughout 2012. Crunching the numbers, they came up with some interesting information. Based on what those who visit the popular website were looking for, Kayak has some tips aimed to save on travel. Considered a snapshot of information, the study is relatively harmless and can be a generally helpful budgetary tool.

Look through a billion sets of data on any given topic and certain similarities are bound to rise to the top. It is often what we do with the data that counts. In the case of search data, if millions of people were looking for information on “cruise fire,” for example, it does not necessarily mean that cruise ships are inherently dangerous.

But if accepting some notions about those who use Kayak, like that everyone visiting the site is looking for the cheapest flights, the results can verify (or not) preconceived notions we have, booking strategies and more.

Let’s break that Kayak study down a bit and see if there is some useful information that may be of benefit to travelers – some guidelines rather than rules.When to buy-
Kayak found the least expensive airfares to be within 21 to 35 days of departure. That adds some validity to the buying strategy held by many travelers to hold out and wait for a last minute deal.

If that strategy makes you nervous, you’re not alone – and for good reason. Waiting until the last minute can also leave us with a limited seat, flight or airline selection. Those are important considerations when, say, travel includes a family with children who want to sit together, someone with specific flight time requirements or a traveler wanting a certain airline.

Going on a trip and don’t really care when you get there, what airline you use or traveling alone? Waiting until the last minute can be a good idea.

Still, the factors that fuel the Kayak data can change, making today’s strategy obsolete tomorrow. Hooking up with a free service like Airfarewatchdog can bring real-time confidence in the data we collect and base our buying strategy on.

When to fly-
It was no big surprise to see the Kayak data indicate that September was a choice month for low airfare, with average rates coming in at the year’s lowest. Pretty much any travel professional could have verified that though, as September is traditionally a low-travel month. That works for airfare, hotel stays and even cruise travel as does the first weeks of November and December, otherwise busy travel months at other times.

Kayak data also revealed the most searched destinations, least busy times to fly and more. A snapshot of such factors, based on 2012 data, can surely help guide buying decisions but needs to be looked at as just that, a “snapshot” of information, not the word of a travel god.

See Kayak’s full Where To Go and How to Save guide for more.

Much of what we get in the way of travel tips depends on the source too and advice changes over time. The video below, from three years ago, encourages an entirely different strategy on buying airfare.




[Photo credit – Flickr user dcaceresd]

New Map From American Airlines Shows Award Seats By Location

by Grant Martin on

One of the biggest complaints with airline mileage programs is that the miles are often difficult to redeem for flights. The carriers may hand them out left and right while claiming to have low-cost awards, but in practice, those tickets can be difficult to find. As a result, many passengers either end up getting gouged on miles for their ideal trip or booking a completely different itinerary.

Researching an ideal destination based on one’s mileage balance has always been limited, however, based on the number of airports a passenger wanted to search. For example, if I wanted to get out of Chicago and take a miniature vacation this weekend with the 25,000 miles in my account, I would be limited to checking availability on each route manually by typing in San Francisco (SFO), Sioux City (SUX), New York City (NYC), etc., and checking availability by hand. It’s both time consuming and risky, because there is no guarantee that those 25,000 mile awards will be available for any given destination.

Perhaps realizing this, American Airlines just launched a new online tool to map available destinations based on your origin, dates of travel and number of available miles in your account. Plugging in the above query thus brings up the above map, where dark blue pinpoints indicate possible trips and light blue pinpoints show upsells.

There are still plenty of imperfections in the system. Partner availability doesn’t seem to be showing up fluidly, and passengers taking transatlantic flights on British Airways are still exposed to the egregious taxes. But the tool does a great job at exposing travelers to the wide spectrum of flights available with a constrained number of miles. Today, I learned I could fly to either the Canary Islands or Sofia, Bulgaria, for only 40,000 miles during the winter season, and that’s a great deal regardless of taxes.

Give the app a try yourself at aa.com/awardmap# and see what you find.

The Gastrointestinal Gamble: Eating A ‘Dirty Water Dog’ In New York

by David Farley on

I was feeling adventurous. After all, it had been a whole month since I’d had food poisoning. On a recent trip to India I got the infamous “Delhi belly” – not once, but twice. And here I was sitting in my West Village apartment feeling the need to play Russian roulette with my stomach all of a sudden. And that’s when I slipped on my sneakers and pointed myself toward Union Square.

I was going to eat a dirty water dog.

Dirty water dogs, more popularly known around the world as hot dogs, were once an ubiquitous street food staple around the Big Apple. I didn’t take my first trip to Gotham City until I was 28 but up until that time one of my main images of the city – besides, ya know, people having harsh violence inflicted on them – was locals and tourists alike standing pleasantly in front of a hot dog cart while the hot dog vender garnished dogs with condiments (of course, a minute later they were probably pummeled and robbed by New York thugs). I’d seen the image of people buying frankfurters in New York on TV and in movies so many times that it just seemed like the thing to do when one visits or lives in the Big Apple.But I’ve lived here 10 years and had never even considered eating a hot dog on the street. These particular hot dogs have earned the nickname “dirty water dogs” because the tubular meat sits in warm, murky water all day until enough daring people either can’t find anything else to eat or they actually want to get sick.

On my way there, I looked for the familiar blue and yellow umbrellas that sit on many street corners. Instead, I walked by six hallal chicken sandwich and kabob carts, three taco trucks, two pretzel carts and one homeless guy trying to sell me a half-eaten doughnut that he’d named Jesus.

But by the time I got to Union Square, there it was: blue and yellow on the southwest corner. I put my index finger in the air indicating I wanted a hot dog. The Hispanic hot dog vender asked: “ketchup, mustard, onions, relish, sauerkraut?”

I went with a Teutonic combo: mustard and sauerkraut.

“This is my first dirty water dog,” I said. “Should I assume I’m having a date with my toilet tonight?”

The hot dog vender looked up and said: “ketchup, mustard, onions, relish, sauerkraut.” This time without the question mark.

“How many hot dogs do you sell per day?”

“Ketchup, mustard, onions, relish, sauerkraut.”

I was starting to get the sense that these might be the only five words of English he knows. Or was this some kind of code? Did he think I was part of a tubular meat-loving terrorist sleeper cell and now, after hearing the Five Condiments, I’d have to strap frankfurters to my body and blow myself up in a vegetarian restaurant?

Fortunately, not. He handed me the hot dog and smiled. I walked down 14th Street, eating my first dirty water dog. Was it good? Was there any gastro-intestinal retribution? It was really just a hot dog, one that I probably won’t eat again. But that’s beside the point. I just acted out a childhood fantasy. Next up: making Daphne Blake from “Scoobie-Doo” my next girlfriend.

I finished the hot dog and turned the corner at W. 14th St. and Sixth Avenue, where the homeless man once stood. He was gone but there was Jesus, the doughnut, sitting on the sidewalk unloved and still only half eaten.

[Photo by David Farley]

One Day In Nicaragua: Self-Deportation, An Active Volcano, A Dead Boa, A Dip In A Lagoon And An Art Deal Gone Bad

by Dave Seminara on

Stepping over a dead boa constrictor with flies buzzing around it wasn’t what I had in mind when I hired a guy named Carlos to take us to see Volcán Masaya, a national park in Nicaragua where you can drive right up to the crater of an active volcano. But when we piled into his Toyota Corolla on a sizzling hot morning in late February, Carlos wanted us to see much more than just the smoldering volcano.

“I’m going to take you to a farm and then we’re going to visit a mask maker, before we hit the craft market, Laguna Apoyo and the volcano,” he said, before we’d even had a chance to test his air conditioning or fasten our seatbelts.

We wanted to see the craft market in Masaya, Laguna Apoyo and the volcano but I wasn’t sure about the rest of it. That uncertainty grew when we pulled up in front of what seemed to be a dilapidated farm as a host of mangy looking dogs serenaded us with howls and barks. A young man in a dirty, pale-blue T-shirt led us into some caged enclosures to look at iguanas and Carlos asked me if I’d ever eaten one. I have not.


“It takes like pork,” he said. “You put it in a tortilla and serve it with a little salt and lemon juice. You want to try it?”

I didn’t but I’d seen Andrew Zimmern feast on iguana, porcupine and other exotic delicacies while filming his Nicaragua episode back in 2009 and was curious where he went. Carlos said that there was only one restaurant that had retained a permit to cook iguanas and it was in Masaya, near where we were going.

Carlos and the farmhand showed us some turtles, lizards and bunnies before leading us into a caged enclosure to see some boa constrictors. I assumed they would be inside cages but as we stepped inside the enclosure, we nearly tripped over a dead boa, whose carcass was a target for swarms of dozens of hungry winged creatures.

“When did he die?” I asked Carlos.

“Hard to say,” he said as the farmhand began poking a stick under some empty shelving units behind us. “But there are four other boas in here, don’t worry.”

“Four other boas?” my wife said, grabbing our little boys, ages 3 and 5. “Where?”

“They could be anywhere in here,” Carlos said.

And with that, we were ready to exit, but the farmhand seized a massive boa by the neck and we couldn’t help but stop to stare at the darn thing. It was hissing and coiling itself around the guy’s arms, clearly pissed off. For all we knew, it probably killed the dead boa in the corner, so after a few minutes we beat a retreat back to the car.

The visit to the mask maker felt safer and, to me, more interesting. I’m usually leery of these types of stops on a tour because typically the point is to bring you to a place where you will hopefully buy something, securing a commission for your guide in the process. The whole spectacle makes me feel like a piece of meat on a hook in a slaughterhouse, but in this case, it was just an old man sitting in the courtyard of his home with no shirt on making colorful, painted masks with his own hands. He made no attempt to sell us anything and seemed please to have us wandering around his home, snapping photos and asking ignorant questions.

The craft market at Masaya, built in 1891 and refurbished in 1997, is the best place to buy handicrafts and souvenirs in Nicaragua. There are dozens of vendors and if you enjoy haggling, this is the place for you. I sparred with a 4-foot-tall woman who called me “my love” and “my dear” over a painting I wanted but ended up paying very close to her original asking price because she correctly sensed that I really wanted the thing and used that advantage to crush me like a bug.

After a delicious lunch and a dip in the Laguna de Apoyo, a terrific swimming hole near Masaya, Carlos told us about his U.S. immigration woes. When he was 12, his mother arranged to send him to the U.S. by purchasing fake identity documents to make it appear as though he was the child of a Nicaraguan woman who had a better chance of getting a U.S. tourist visa than she did. At 22, he paid an unscrupulous immigration attorney $10,000 to try to legalize his status but it didn’t work and he eventually returned to Nicaragua. Now, at 40, he felt like his chance to live in the States had come and gone.

The Masaya volcano has to be one of just a handful in the world where you can drive right up to its craters. The volcano has erupted 18 times since the early 16th Century with the last major eruption going down in 1772, but there was some volcanic activity in April of last year that forced the closure of the park for several weeks. Prior to 1529, locals threw virgins and children into the volcano as sacrifices, and during the Somoza dictatorship in the ’70s, dissidents were also supposedly tossed into the volcano.

We hiked around the Santiago crater and although I appreciated the view and the novelty of standing right on the age of the smoldering volcano, I felt dizzy after a half hour and couldn’t help but assume that in the U.S., tourists wouldn’t be allowed anywhere near the crater of an active volcano.




On the way back to the hotel, Carlos regaled us with stories about tourists he’s guided and I asked him if he wanted to see tourism boom in Nicaragua.




“We want more tourists,” he said. “But not at the expense of our culture and our traditions. We’ve got to keep what we have.”

[Photo/video credits: Dave Seminara]

Travel Tweets Cue Thought, Savings

by Chris Owen on

A great amount of travel information is available on twitter, much more than the standard 140 characters might elude to. Some is straightforward, a simple statement of facts, making who we follow the key to travel info riches. But sometimes, thought provoking travel tweets can prompt a search for knowledge that brings a learning element and along with it, more meaningful information.

@united, the Twitter handle for United Airlines, posed an interesting question recently

“Our longest nonstop flight is 8,065 miles. Do you know which two destinations it connects?#avgeek”

Following up later, @united answered

“EWR to HKG is our longest nonstop route. “


That made me wonder, “so is that the longest non-stop flight in the world?”

Not even close.

Singapore Airlines Flight 21 claims the title of having the longest regularly scheduled non-stop flight in the world. Also flying from Newark Liberty International Airport (EWR) to Singapore Changi Airport (SIN) Singapore Airlines uses an Airbus A340-500 for the 9,534 mile trip in about 18.5 hours flight time.

That knowledge led me to check that tag, #avgeek, for more. That search revealed a plethora of information about aviation-related topics including this video, posted by who explains some otherwise very technical information about jet design in an understandable way.




Of the video, @clemensv says

“I’m a software dude, not an aerospace engineer. But I’m an aviation geek with a bit of 1950s aerospace engineering envy. Because: unlimited money.

Therefore please excuse my amateur attempt at explaining the Area Rule of supersonic jet design completely without resorting to math but rather in the sand and showing it off on a F-86, F-102, F-106, and F-5.”

Perhaps better yet, tweets by travel-related service providers such as @Airfarewatchdog, @livingsocial, @ViatorTravel (or @ViatorGear), @SmarterTravel and others can make for big savings on travel and travel-related products.

[Photo credit – Flickr user eldh]