Is DoHop.com the Latest and Greatest Travel Search Engine?
When I was approached by DoHop.com about testing out their new travel search engine, I was psyched! Yeah, I get excited about these types of things. Feel free to call me a geek if you’d like.
Although DoHop may sound new to your ears, they’ve actually been around for a while. It seems they may just be hanging a little under the radar considering they’ve got big time competitors who are constantly moving forward with new technology and new ways to find the best deals for your next flight, hotel, and rental car.
With competitors like Kayak, SkyScanner, Orbitz, and CheapOAir, it sure is quite the job to figure out a way to pull people from their favorite travel search engines over to DoHop. Believe me, I’m one of those guys who hates to stray from a certain travel search engine that he’s so familiar with. It’s like saying that you should switch your Internet Explorer or Mozilla Firefox default home page from Google, to Ask.com. Yeah, right! Easier said than done.
Flight Search:
To search for flights on DoHop you simply choose your departure airport and your arrival airport, just like any other travel search engine. What I like most about DoHop is the interface.The layout of the page is so simple and clean. There’s no intruding ads hanging around on the left or right sidebar of the site.
Plug in first few letters of your departure and arrival airport and it auto-suggests the airports for you. Plug in the dates of your travel, whether it’s return or one way and with a whack of the Search button, DoHop starts searching over 660 airlines from across the world in order to find you the best deal around.
Results:
When doing a side-by-side comparison for a direct flight between DoHop and one of it’s top competitors I came up with the same exact price for my flight search which was surprising considering I had been told by one of DoHop’s staff that a certain competitor site was just a pretty face with Orbitz prices. In saying that, it’s still refreshing to see that the prices were exactly the same on DoHop and it’s competitor site because at least you know that neither of them are making commissions when you book through their search engines.
DoHop is best known for it’s “linking” or “joining” of indirect flights. For example Shannon, Ireland (SNN) to Bangkok, Thailand (BKK). Quite obviously there are no flights that go direct from SNN to BKK, so in this case DoHop does the dirty work to find connecting flights for you in order to get you to Bangkok. I was very surprised in the outcome of this particular search comparison between DoHop and it’s competitor. The difference was quite impressive if you ask me.
- DoHop.com: $690 USD
- Competitor: $879 USD
Other Interesting Features:
Recently Found Deals: Besides being the best at linking your next indirect flight, DoHop has a cool feature that lies underneath their flight search box that shows recent prices found by DoHop members.
Currency/Language Options: Another cool feature is the ability to change the Currency, and Language at the top right hand side of the site. This helps if you’re currently in Dublin and you’re interested in finding out how much your flight to Paris will cost in Euros. The language translator is self explanatory and helps when you’re in a foreign country and you log on to DoHop only to find that the entire site is in Thai!
Final Verdict:
Overall I think DoHop has major potential to become one of the heavy-hitters in the travel search engine world but they’ve still got a little ways to go. There are a lot of other features that they’re lacking when comparing to it’s biggest competitors. They should offer new features only available to registered users like their top competitor does. The one thing I really thought was interesting about DoHop is the Travel Guides, which allow you to research your destination and even find out which low cost airlines fly there. Very cool.
Overall Score:
7/10
This is Sponsored Review. Please see our disclosure policy for more information.
Have you had success when booking flights, hotels or rental cars on DoHop.com? If so, feel free to share your thoughts by leaving a comment below!
