Last year’s travel was just about perfect. I made six trips to Europe totaling over sixty days. I made 80%+ of of those plans before Lookery was founded, and this year I’ll be overseas 30 days if I’m lucky. “Perfect” would have been three weeks of my travel time on a trip to Africa, Asia, or South America instead.
I’m a heavy Kayak user, but they don’t do so well intra-Europe (and I suspect intra-Asia), particularly where the dozens of discount airlines are concerned. Beatrice’s Mobissimo is much better at that. However, both those very good travel search engines require that you know your route and interim stops. When I’m at my nomadic happiest, I specifically don’t know those things and have wanderlust for layover serendipity.
Skyscanner just rocked my world with possible solutions to my silly, high-class problems. I’d heard of the site before but came across it again due to their effective SEO. I’ve got a professional(-ish) commitment in Menorca, Spain, in early May and want to telecommute the following week or two from someplace I’ve never been. However, other than the obvious London, Madrid, and Barcelona routes, it’s completely unclear how one flies in and out of Menorca.
Instead of city by city, or sometimes obscure airline by obscure airline, Skyscanner lets me search “Any Country/Any Airport (results pictured)” by time period for direct or connecting flights from any origin. I’m almost precisely two years late to figuring this out, of course:
Also catering for the browsing traveller who wants to be inspired, SkyScanner will display flight prices even if the only thing you know for certain is your departure country.
It’s great undirected travel search, which is almost discovery but not quite. Now if I only had a Skyscanner-Dopplr mashup …