Travel > Columns > The Sensible Traveler

Seeking the lowest-price Web deal? Sidestep lends a hand

By Bruce Mohl, Globe Staff, 03/02/03

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Internet search engines have transformed the way people research issues, so it's no wonder that sensible travelers are tapping similar tools for searching the Web for the best air fare, hotel room, or rental car.

The universe of travel is so vast and so complex that you need help finding the best deal. When you hunt for an air fare on Orbitz, for example, a screen used to pop up saying the online travel agency was "searching all airlines and more than 2 billion fares to find the lowest fare available."

Yet even with such an extensive search, Orbitz wasn't able to track down all the available fares. Flights on Southwest Airlines, one of the most popular low-fare airlines around, don't appear, which may explain why the Orbitz website eventually changed its pop-up to say it was searching for "the low fares and options you want."

One of the best ways to explore the travel universe is with Sidestep at your side. It's not an end point or even a starting point in any travel search. It's more like a safety net, watching your back so you have the peace of mind that you're getting all the information you need.

"We enable you to feel confident you've found the best deal," said Phil Carpenter, director of marketing for Sidestep.com of Santa Clara, Calif. "It's a bit like having a doctor give you a second opinion."

Unlike most websites, Sidestep has no interest in being an Internet destination. Users download software from Sidestep.com that's integrated into their Internet browser toolbar. Whenever the user does a travel search on some other site, the Sidestep software pops up and launches an identical search of airline, hotel, and consolidator Web sites, giving you a side-by-side comparison.

Sidestep earns a commission when users like what they see on its search engine and click through to the vendor to book their flight or hotel. The privately held company has more than 3 million users and has been turning a profit since last May.

Jon Douglas, news editor at Smarter Living Inc., a travel information company based in Cambridge, often uses Sidestep and says its biggest advantage is that it saves the user time.

For example, none of the major online travel agencies lists Southwest flights and fares. Most also don't list information for rising-star discounter Jet Blue or for the discount chain Motel 6. By using Sidestep, which does search the Southwest, Jet Blue, and Motel 6 websites, the user can avoid time-consuming secondary searches.

Sidestep also can help you guard against biases on the sites of online travel agencies, some of which make side deals with airlines to promote their fares. Since Sidestep links you directly to airline websites, it can also help you avoid the small commissions that online travel agents charge.

After downloading the Sidestep software, I did 13 air-fare searches on the three major online travel agencies — Expedia, Orbitz, and Travelocity. Six of the searches found no discrepancy between the fare listed by the online travel agency and Sidestep's fare, but on the other seven, Sidestep's were better.

Most of those differences were due to Sidestep's ability to search airline websites that the online travel agencies did not have access to. For example, a Providence to Chicago flight turned up a $201 fare with United Airlines on Orbitz and a $185 fare on Southwest with Sidestep.

Similarly, researching a flight from Oakland to New York turned up a $301 fare with American on Travelocity and a $285 fare with Jet Blue on Sidestep. (One quirk with Sidestep is that it automatically includes nearby airports in some of its searches. Searches of flights to New York City often come back with fares on Southwest, which actually flies into Islip on Long Island.)

Even when the online travel agent and Sidestep had access to the same fares, prices differed occasionally. Researching a flight from Providence to Oakland turned up a fare of $379 with United on Travelocity and a fare of $320 with Continental on Sidestep.

The most interesting price discrepancy surfaced in researching a flight for late March from Boston to London's Heathrow Airport.

Curiously, the same Virgin Atlantic flight to London showed up on all four sites with different prices offered for the same seat. Travelocity was charging $443, Expedia was charging $420, and Orbitz and Sidestep priced their seats at $386. That flight was the cheapest on all but Expedia, which listed another flight at $404.43.

Eleanor Crow, a spokeswoman for Sidestep, said her site's Virgin Atlantic fare to London was probably a consolidator fare. She said Orbitz probably has a deal with Virgin requiring the airline to match any consolidator prices. "Expedia and Travelocity clearly didn't negotiate as well as Orbitz did," she said.

In six searches for hotel rooms in various cities, I found relatively few pricing discrepancies between the online travel agencies and Sidestep. Crow said Sidestep tends to do better finding lower prices at hotels belonging to the Six Continents (Holiday Inn, Crowne Plaza, and Intercontinental) and Starwood (Sheraton and Westin) chains, since they guarantee that customers will find the best prices on their websites.

My experience was that Sidestep often offered better deals than the online travel sites — but not always. In searching for a hotel room in Boston for late March, I found a nightly rate at the Wyndam Boston of $120.70 on Expedia. Sidestep's rate for the same room was $140, 16 percent higher.

Bruce Mohl can be reached at mohl@globe.com.