Hipmunk was unfortunately shut down in January 2020. Similar services are offered by websites such as Kiwi.com and Google Flights.
There are a lot of travel sites available on the world wide web and searching them all for the optimal flight or suitable accommodation will consume a lot of your precious time. That’s where Hipmunk comes in. It searches the top travel sites and displays the results in such a way that you can easily compare them. You’ll find the flight and/or accommodation that best suits your needs faster and more efficiently.
Let’s give it a try and search for a flight: a roundtrip from Brussels to New York for 2 adults, coach, departing April 1 or a day later, returning April 11 or a day earlier. I watched the chipmunk pretend he’s a plane for a bit, et voilà!
As you can see, the results are plotted on a timeline so you can quickly compare departure and arrival times, and the duration of the different flights. Also the layover, a not unimportant inconvenience, is displayed, for example in the flight offered by Lufthansa. In this search, the results are sorted by “Agony”, an interesting feature by Hipmunk. It combines 3 characteristics that influence the agreeableness of the flight: price, number of stops and duration. Other possibilities for sorting are price, duration, time of takeoff and time of landing. If you want to be informed when prices of your search change, you just have to click on the “Fare Alerts” button and leave your email address behind.
After booking your flight, the next thing to worry about is where you’ll sleep during your stay. Simply click on the “Search hotels in New York City, NY” shortcut at the top of the page to find accommodation at your destination. You’ll get the following screen:
There are many tools to help you find a suitable accommodation. First of all, you can apply different filters like price, stars, type of trip, if you prefer a certain chain, etcetera. Next, you can sort the abundance of results based on price, stars, reviews or “Ecstasy”. “Ecstasy” is similar to “Agony” in the search for a flight and combines price, stars and location. Another interesting feature are the heatmaps you can enable. You can quickly see if the accommodation of your choosing is near nightlife hotspots, for example, and decide for yourself if that’s a good or a bad thing.
You can use Hipmunk on their website or download the free app for iPhone or Android.