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.
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.
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. :(
we're looking into booking options now so that you don't have spend time trying to book yourself
This is the pain point which has prevented me from recommending flightfox to anyone else yet: When I tried it, I was pointed towards orbitz for flights which it turned out that they were advertising but (after I provided my credit card details) they didn't actually have. I'm still glad that I used flightfox, because the expert advice I got saved me $300 by pointing out that returning to Canada from Germany was much cheaper than returning from Austria -- but the booking instructions were completely useless.
If you can add a "book via flightfox" mechanism which guarantees that the flights actually exist, I'll tell everybody I know to use flightfox every time they travel.
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.