Adioso Blog

Adioso: a new beginning

When Adioso was first launched in January 2008, our ambitions were fairly humble.  We simply thought there should be an easier way for Australian travellers to find the cheapest flights on low-cost airlines.  As a bit of a novelty, we thought it might be cool to allow open-ended searches via a natural-language interface.

At that stage it was just a side-project from other pursuits; a way to try our hand at building consumer-focused web-applications and see what we could learn that we might put to use in a more serious venture. 

It's fast approaching three years later and, well, we didn't get a chance to look for a more serious venture.  It turns out that many people the world over agreed that a much better option was needed in travel search, and liked the look of what we had to offer.

With their support and encouragement, we immersed ourselves in the travel world and worked hard to create a search product that supports spontaneous, adventurous and nomadic styles of travel; a tool that enables passionate travellers to explore options and discover great new destinations, and that combines the best fares from different low-cost airlines to help budget-conscious travellers get to places in the most convenient or affordable way possible.

And so today we're pleased to announce the launch of Adioso version 3.  

Here's what we hope you'll like about it:

As always, it provides a natural-language search interface that supports broad or open-ended queries on both dates and destinations, eg:
And it still allows searches to be constrained by date or price:
A new feature of the search engine is that you can now do searches to continents or regions:

And we've enhanced support for place-name abbreviations:

The biggest new feature is our multi-airline route generator, that allows you to save hundreds or thousands of dollars on cross-country or transcontinental trips by joining together flights from different low-cost airlines.  Eg:
  • Perth to Phuket offers a route consisting of two AirAsia flights for just AUD$180 one-way, $200 less than the cheapest direct flight on another airline.
  • Ho Chi Minh City to Copenhagen will link flights from Jetstar, AirAsia and easyJet for USD$672 round trip, little over half the best fare from a traditional carrier.
  • Edinburgh to Prague will get you there via Stanstead on easyJet for £42 - less than half what you'd pay a traditional airline.

Though if you don't like transfers and want to limit your search to direct flights only, you can do that by specifying "direct" in your search:

Finally, we've completely rebuilt the site from the ground up, including a new platform that allows faster performance, better scaling and more rapid implementation of new features, and a newly designed user-interface that combines the simplicity you've always loved with some powerful new features to make finding and booking that perfect trip easier than ever before. 

We're pretty excited about all these changes and we hope you will be too.

That said, we're still very much in beta as a globally-focused product, and there are still some limitations:
  • We only cover a selection of low-cost airlines in Australia, Asia, Europe and the USA.  We'll be increasing our airline and destination coverage as quickly as we can once we're confident the new platform is performing well.
  • For now we've removed the ability to limit searches to airline, time of day ('morning", "afternoon", etc) and "weekend".  Though these search options weren't particularly widely-used, the people who used them really liked them, so we'll be looking to reintroduce them once other higher priority features have been finished.
It's very early days for Adioso's new version but we'll be working hard to add features and coverage as we continue on our quest to build the world's coolest travel search engine.

We hope you enjoy using it as much as we've enjoyed making it, and we welcome you to contact us to let us know how you're finding it or just tell us of your Adioso-powered travel experiences.

Tom, Fenn & Andrew
Adioso Founders

Find us on Facebook or Twitter

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A traveller reports: AirAsia X now offering luggage transfers for flights transiting via KL

A wonderful person called Marie has posted a fabulous comment on Fenn's review of AirAsia's Melbourne-London route.  As Fenn's post is nearly a year old, it contains some very useful updates.  Particular highlights:
  • Marie took 3 kids under 6 all the way from Perth to Stansted, and found the whole experience quite satisfactory.
  • Their luggage was checked all the way - no need to re-check it at KL!
  • Whilst there were some unpleasant aspects (KL-London plane not so nice, entertainment poor, bassinet seat not always available), Marie was willing to wear the hassles given the several thousand dollars she saved, and was much happier being able to spend that money in the UK.
Sounds like a big win for consumer choice to us!

Read the whole post, including some handy tips at the end:

Just got back from UK flying Air Asia : Perth - KL - Stansted with 3 kids under 6!! 

Perth - KL flight was great. New plane, friendly staff - they even checked our luggage in all the way through to Stansted (this is being trialled now as only 3 hours between flights). There was no entertainment offered on this leg so bring something with you. We took our own food for this leg as only missing breakfast. 

KL - Stansted not so much fun... Older plane, seats not great, staff ok. Took our own food for kids & ordered adult meals - food was ok. Paid for Entertainment but was pretty average & headphones were terrible - bring your own. Main problem couldn't get a bassinet seat for this leg as booked out by people who didn't have a child!!!!!! So had a screaming baby on my knee for 13 hours!

The way back was much better Stansted - KL check-ins very quick at both airports. New planes, much better seats & room. Had bassinet seat & baby slept for 10 hours! Food fine, staff helpful & friendly. There was a 6 hour wait in KL & couldn't get into Tune hotel (you need to book in advance) so that was pretty long with 3 kids as not much to do.

So would I fly with them again? Absolutely. Saved thousands, which we got to spend in UK. All flights on time.

Tips - pre-book baggage. Have cash on you for onboard purchases - they prefer Malaysian Ringits but will accept Australian Dollars on the Aus- KL flights & Pounds on the KL-Uk flight (just costs a bit more). If you have a long stopover pre-book Tune hotel - free shuttle bus from airport. Buy water as soon you go through to departures as expensive on board & warm. You can only check-in at KL LCCT 3 hours in advance & the airport is quite warm & humid even with air-con going. The plane does get pretty cold so the comfort pack is worth it for the thin blanket, or bring your own.

Happy travelling!

On behalf of the many people who'll find this info invaluable, sincere thanks to Marie. 

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AirAsia's World's Best Sale starts Jun 9, 2am AEST - AU-London from $372 return!

In the 2 1/2 years we've been running Adioso, this is the best sale we've seen.

To celebrate being named World's Best Low-Cost Airline at Skytrax's 2010 World Airline Awards, AirAsia is offering incredible savings across the AirAsia X long-haul network, for flights between 11 October and 14 November 2010.

Deals include:

By connecting AirAsia flights, here are some of the trips you'd be able to take:
  • Gold Coast to London: $372 return
  • Melbourne to London: $406 return
  • Perth to London: $404 return
  • Melbourne to Bangkok: $263 return
  • Perth to Phuket: $242 return
  • Gold Coast to Hanoi: $195 return

There's even rumoured to be some flights from London-KL as low as $10, and KL-Gold Coast for $21, but we'll wait to see if they materialise before we get too excited about that.

All this on AirAsia's newly fitted-out planes with enhanced comfort even in basic economy, OR premium economy with lie-flat beds!

Sale commences at 2am, Wednesday June 9, and runs for 48 hours or until all flights are sold. For further details, check the promotion page at AirAsia.Adioso will be updated with the flights soon after 2am. 

Happy searching!

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AirAsia educating the public about excess baggage charges

Low-cost airlines are often accused of hitting their customers with unexpected charges for basic features like baggage.

It's good to see AirAsia going to some effort to take the "unexpected" out of it.

Their message:
"Last year 660,000 people paid RM92 million for excess baggage.  Don't be a statistic." 

via youtube.com

 

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Review: Melbourne to London with AirAsia X

Here at Adioso, we like to "eat our own dog-food", that is - we like to use the products that we promote, namely: airlines. About a month ago, I did exactly that and took up the challenge to fly the most popular (and longest) route-combo on Adioso: Melbourne to London via Kuala Lumpur with AirAsia X.

So the big questions is: Is this the best way to get to London?

First off, let's look at some options - The AirAsia method is via Kuala Lumpur and is in two legs, first Melbourne to Kuala Lumpur (approx 7 hours) then Kuala Lumpur to London-Stansted (approx 14 hours) totaling 21 hours flying time. I did a quick search on Webjet and found (to my surprise) that there are actually no direct flights to London at all from Melbourne on any carrier, full service or otherwise. 

I guess this makes sense, as it's too far for a plane to fly in one leg. So first conclusion - You're going to be stopping off somewhere no matter how you do it. If you look at the travel times above with the full-service carriers, they have between 3-9 hour stopovers and cost between $1960 - $2300.

The tickets we'd booked were during a sale, and the total cost including taxes + meals was about AUD$850 return. Our tickets had come from the initial launch sale, but since then I've found (through Adioso) return tickets available as cheaply as AUD$620 (right now they're about $1000). We'd elected to stay overnight in KL (I think the hotel cost about $60 between two) to be able to sleep, shower and rest between the two legs as who really wants to travel non stop for 30 hours.

So, we know right away that if nothing else, AirAsia is almost certainly the cheapest way to get to London if nothing else.

Now on to the review part - 

The Planes

The first thing to note is that the two legs are not on the same type of plane: The Melbourne to KL leg is on an A330, while the London leg is on an A340. Why should you care, unless you're a plane geek? In a word: comfort.

For the A330's the upsides are that they're brand new, ultra clean and very modern. The downside is, the seats are rather small, fairly hard and don't recline*.

*Update 13-April-2010: AirAsia are aware of the seat issue and are currently in the process of retrofitting all planes with more comfortable, reclining seats.

 

 

Now, remember that this is only a 7 hour flight. I say "only" even though 7 hours is a long time, but if you were to watch 2 normal movies (or one Lord of the Rings) and eat a meal, you'd basically be there. Which brings me on to a point I'll cover shortly: Bring a copy of Lord of the Rings.

The London leg was in the larger A340's. These are slightly older planes but have bigger/better padded seats, more leg room and are generally far more comfortable. I would go as far as saying that this plane was significantly roomier than any of the Qantas 747's I've flown in recently.

So, in summary - the short leg was a little cramped, but at least it was short and, to be honest, only cost us AU$82 each. The longer/more expensive leg was roomy, more comfortable than full-service carriers I'd travelled with recently and still a lot cheaper.

The Service 

On a plane, you want to be entertained - on our outbound Melbourne leg, the plane was not equipped with any entertainment at all. The in-flight magazine mentioned personal media-players, but the actual hardware seemed nowhere to be found. We later learned that this was a temporary problem, and sure enough, on the London leg (and on the way back) the media-players came out in force. I think they cost about AUD$10 but I have to say, whilst the players themselves were fine, the selection of media left a lot to be desired - There were maybe 6 movies (2 of them in Malaysian) and a few single episodes of average TV shows (Everybody Loves Raymond springs to mind).

In our case, this didn't bother us too much, as we had a laptop, an iPod and two iPhones, but not everyone was so fortunate and many had to spend the time worrying about contracting swine flu instead (see face-masks picture).

The food was about what you'd expect for plane food - not great, not intolerable and actually tasted a lot better than it looked (see below). You get one meal + snacks on the 7 hour flights, two on the 14 hour and as many drinks as you can afford. I recommend you pre-book meals online if you're planning on eating as otherwise you have to wait for the second round through and cash/change handling (slow).

 

The Conclusion

So, is this the best way to get from Melbourne to London? Well, although it was a little uncomfortable at times and I didn't get to see the latest Adam Sandler movie (actually, I did - Click was one of the movies on the players: 2 and a half stars) I can't argue with getting a shower/sleep in-transit whilst saving $1000 - $1200 and arriving with myself and my wallet feeling a lot better.

Can you get these super-cheap deals all the time? Well, maybe not all the time. That's what Adioso is for.

5 Essential iPhone Apps for the Modern Traveller

The iPhone, with its wifi, media player, camera, email, browser, social networking, GPS and mapping capabilities is quickly becoming the hot hardware item of choice for travellers these days. You can quite reasonably get away with carrying little but a few clothes, an iPhone and a backpack full of power-adapters and still be able to keep in touch with friends and family and taunt them with your envy-inducing holiday snaps and updates.
However, one of the best things with the iPhone is the ability to put on 3rd party applications via the iTunes App Store. Below is a list of essential apps (in no particular order) that I used regularly on my most recent travels.

1) TripIt

TripIt (Free) is the iPhone companion to the excellent TripIt web service. The idea behind TripIt is that you forward all your flight, accommodation and other travel booking confirmation emails to them and they auto-create a single comprehensive itinerary accessible from one central place - and now your iPhone too.

The service is really, really clever and highly useful, particularly when you're on the way to the airport having a mild panic attack about forgetting your exact flight time. My only complaint with it is that it it does occasionally get booking information slightly wrong (we accidently left a hotel 1 day early when TripIt interpreted our check-out date slightly incorrectly, however if you double-check things before you leave, you shouldn't have a problem). As well as showing your basic itinerary, TripIt will automatically import/associate map data, phone numbers, contact addresses other details about all your travel arrangements. Very cool.

2) OffMaps

The iPhone Maps application, whilst great, suffers from one major problem: It doesn't work if you don't have internet access. Enter OffMaps ($3.99). As you may have guessed by its name, this handy little app lets you pre-download maps of areas you're visiting, and then access the maps offline whilst you're travelling.

Unfortunately, due to licensing restrictions, OffMaps are not permitted to use the actual Google Maps data, so instead use maps sourced from http://www.openstreetmap.org/.  From my experience, the quality and detail is excellent (perhaps 90% as good as Google), even in more obscure/remote areas (I used it extensively recently in Ronda, Spain for example and there was down to street/address-level detail).

The new version supposedly supports pre-route planning (ie: offline walking/driving directions), but from my quick play with it, it appears to need a little work. That aside, OffMaps is an essential and has certainly saved me from plenty of unnecessarily scenic walks.

3) Skype

This one shouldn't need an explanation. Skype for iPhone (Free) is the slightly-crippled sibling of its desktop brethren from the biggest internet-phone-call family of them all. How crippled? Because of the iPhone tie-ups with large telcos, Skype for iPhone is unable to make calls over 3G, or in slightly clearer terms: It can only make calls if you're connected to a wifi access point. Thankfully, when travelling, this is probably going to be the case anyway. The upshot is, providing you buy some SkypeOut credit, Skype will let you make decent quality phone calls, from your handset to anywhere in the world very cheaply, providing you've found a half decent internet connection.

4) World Nomad Language Guides

Whilst varying in quality and coverage, the World Nomad Language Guide apps (Free) are a pretty decent quick reference for language basics for many languages. It's a different app for each language and some are definitely better than others, but the interface is clean and they're quick and easy to use.

As well as text-translations, the app has spoken pronunciation of each phrase, and a quick little intro to the language and culture. It's not going to turn you into a multi-lingual master in a day, but it might get you out of trouble when you're desperate for a coffee with a hangover.

5) WifiTrak

Now, assuming you can't afford the exorbitant international data-roaming charges, one of the most frustrating parts of international travel these days can be finding internet access itself. You may have taken 50 photos of your breakfast to tweet and found a boatload of hilariously misspelt signs for your facebook album, but what's the point if you can't actually get them uploaded.

There are a few apps around that claim to point you in the direction of free-wifi access points by having a database of them and showing them to you on a map. In (many) countries I've found this not all that practical, as the well known access points (ie: McDonald's) are often miles away and not worth travelling to (for the food or the internet).

The best solution to this I've found is WifiTrak ($1.19). WifiTrak is a pure wifi scanning tool, that monitors the area for all access points, then displays a list of whether they're open/protected/hidden/etc, as well as the signal strength and other information. 

WifiTrak works really well and seems capable of finding heaps of networks that aren't visible in the normal Network Settings view on the iPhone. Additionally, you can set the app to play a sound when it detects an open network so you can just walk around with it scanning in locations with hard-to-find net access.

There are a few other apps that didn't quite make the list (ie: UrbanSpoon, Yelp, AroundMe, etc) that while fantastic/useful, only work in some countries so are not really core essentials, or are completely unhelpful in many places. Also, as the app store is regionalized (ie: I have an Australian iTunes store account), I dare say there are a host of other apps that I'm not even aware of as they're not available in my iTunes account.

Send in your tips on any hot apps I've missed!

A New Adioso

In case some of you haven’t noticed, Adioso has changed!

Welcome to beta 2.0 of adioso.com, complete with a shiny new look, new features and a whole bunch of improvements and tweaks.

Tom and myself have been on an intensive development binge for the past 3 months in Silicon Valley, and the Adioso you see now is the result (the intensive development is our excuse for the rather belated blog post - by “new” Adioso, it’s actually a month or two old now).

For our non-Asia-Pacific visitors, please be aware that with this beta, the vast majority of the flight data we have is for Oceania/SE Asia, so if you’re in the USA/Europe, you’ll likely be a bit disappointed with the lack of results.

We’re currently working hard on scaling out to the whole world as soon as we can, so you can all enjoy the Adioso goodness.

Watch this space for updates on this and our official launch.

Cheers!

     Fenn & Tom.

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5 cities, 4 countries round trip for $619

The current AirAsia Melbourne to Kuala Lumpur for $199 promotion got me thinking about what sort of round-trip type tours you could do incredibly cheaply at the moment. It’s a bit tricky to choose as there’s so many cool places to go, but here’s an option of the sort of thing you could do:

Leg 1: Melbourne to Kuala Lumpur ($199), then Kuala Lumpur to Krabi ($39)

First proper stop is Krabi (via KL). Jump on a ferry to one of Thailand’s gorgeous tropical islands, maybe Ko Phi Phi, Ao Nang or one of the other numerous options that seems to keep expanding by the day and spend a few days doing what everyone does round there: That is, lazing about on a perfect white beach, snorkelling in ridiculously clear water and drinking equally stereotypical cocktails out of something you’d find in a tree.

Leg 2: Krabi to Bangkok ($45)

Back to Krabi, then jump on an flight to Bangkok to buy some awesomely cheap clothes and get run over by tuk tuks. Even if temples are not your thing, the ones in Bangkok are worth seeing (they’re shiny, if nothing else!). Have some fun avoiding the ever-amusing tuk tuk scams. If it’s a weekend, head to the Chatukchak Market and, depending on the time of year, it might be worth buying some warm clothes as hour next hop could be cold….

Leg 3: Bangkok to Hanoi ($71)

Jump on a plane to Hanoi, Vietnam - the “Rising star” of SE Asia! Hanoi is awesome - If you thought the streets were crowded in Bangkok, you should see how many motorbikes they can fit in a laneway in Hanoi. Stay in the Old Quarter, eat stunningly good Vietnamese/French fusion food (you absolutely must have the Cha Ca from Cafe Bar 69) and take a trip up to Halong Bay, spending a couple of days cruising about in a boat in stunning natural beauty and trying to forget the noise of motorbike horns. Once you’ve eaten all you can manage, jump on a plane back to…

Leg 4: Hanoi to Kuala Lumpur ($66)

You dropped in on the way, now it’s time to spend whatever money you have left in KL on clothes, gadgets or whatever else takes your fancy. The Golden Triangle is supposed to be the best place to shop (no, that’s not the same as the notorious drug golden triangle) and there’s heaps of food options as well. Take it slow, after all, there’s no rush until…

Leg 5: Kuala Lumpur to Melbourne ($199)

It’s time to go back home to Melbourne and boast to your friends that you got through a big chunk of SE Asia for a total of $619 (inc tax); much less than a return ticket to Broome with Qantas! Head home, relax on the couch and keep an eye on Adioso for the next bargain sale to come up again :)

Australia to UK or USA for under $500?

It’s been a good day for Australians when it comes to discount airlines today, with two major announcements bringing some exciting options to the table.

Firstly, the launch of V Australia (Virgin Australia) happened today with 1000 return seats from Sydney to Los Angeles going on sale for under $1000. You can book these as two one way seats as well with prices as low as $463 inc tax. This is pretty phenomenal, considering that your average ticket to Thailand is around that much.

Unfortunately, you can’t find these flights on Adioso (yet), as the V Australia site only appeared today and, fantastic though we are, it’s going to take us longer than a single morning to teach Adioso how to search V Australia :)

The second great bit of news is that AirAsia has just spent $2 billion on aircraft and announced they will be operating out of Melbourne to Kuala Lumpur from early next year. Whilst not that interesting in and of itself, this will be connected to a London route, with the result being Melbourne to London return for under $1000.

Adioso already indexes all AirAsia flights, so as soon as these start appearing, you’ll know about it.

Confirmed - Tiger tricks on bundled fares

When Fenn made his post about Tiger’s strange pricing on the Singapore-Melbourne route, it occurred to me that there could be a plausible explanation.

I speculated that the $200 premium could be a kind-of insurance, so that if the Singapore-Darwin leg was delayed and you missed the connection to the Darwin-Melbourne leg, they’d put you on a later flight to Melb.  If you had bought them as separate fares, I figured, they wouldn’t be obliged to do so.  Sure, $200 seems like a lot to pay for insurance on a single flight, but you can see the justifiction.

Well, needing to get myself home from Bangkok last week, I decided to test it out for myself.  I booked myself a <$100 flight from Bangkok to Singapore with Air Asia, then booked with Tiger from Singapore to Darwin, then Darwin to Melbourne.  Bought as separate flights, the Singapore-Darwin-Melbourne journey cost me about AUD$560.  To buy it as a single fare would have cost about an extra $210… a worthwhile saving for a budding web startup operator at the tail end of a couple of months without income.

Having arrived in Singapore about 3 hours early, things were all looking good.  I cleared customs then took the short train & bus journey across Singapore airport to the new budget terminal, and checked in with Tiger a good 2 hours early.  After killing a full hour trying in vain to access their much-lauded free Wi-Fi service, I proceeded to the departure gate and joined the queue.  After the scheduled departure time came and went, it emerged that there was an aircraft maintenance issue.  Well I thought, looks like I might just be able to put my theory to the test.  By the time an alternate aircraft had been procured and we had been herded over into a new queue and finally onto the tarmac and into our plane, we were running about 90 minutes behind schedule.

With the Darwin-Melbourne leg scheduled to depart at 2.20AM, we touched down at about 1.30, only to find the Darwin customs service both (a) exceptionally rigorous, and (b) astoundingly slow.   Being a little panicky about whether I’d be able granted permission to continue on to Melbourne, and fatigue rapidly diminishing my sense of adventure, I was none too pleased to be singled out for and extra-thorough going over by our men & women of border security.  Evidently I ticked all the potential drug dealer boxes and was taken aside, left to sit in isolation for about 15 minutes then subjected to quite the inquisition about my travels and activities, before my luggage was X-rayed and disappointed-looking officials waved me onwards to freedom, by now surely at least an hour past the scheduled check-in cut-off time.

Nevertheless, as I approached the counter and presented my passport, I was checked in and presented with a boarding pass without the slightest raised eyebrow, and with several fellow travelers still held up in customs, I even had time to sneak in a Flayva from Red Rooster before we boarded and took off to Melbourne, arriving about 2 hours late at 8.30 AEST.

So, it looks like confirmation that the extra $200-ish you pay to buy your SIN-MEL flight as a single fare gets you ABSOLUTELY NOTHING.  Everyone who paid the extra had to collect their luggage, clear customs and re-check-in, just like me.  The ONLY difference was that I saved a coupla hundred bucks.

Having said that, I’m well aware that Tiger was not contractually obliged to let me on the Melbourne flight, and had they wanted to, they would have been well within their rights to leave me stranded in Darwin, or at least ask me to pay the difference.

So I guess the reality remains that whilst in practice, the chances are you’ll be no worse off if you take the cheap option like I did, you just never know what policy they may adopt at any given time.

But I reckon that $200 would be better spent on decent insurance covered any flight delay, than on a bundled package that more often than not will give you no benefit whatsoever.