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People who shop for price rather than destination will find Kayak's Explore a very useful tool. But what if you have a specific location in mind and it's not on the list of top destinations?
Let's consider a trip from Memphis to Beijing, because the capital of China does not appear on the Memphis "Asia list" this particular day.
One technique is to enter the destination as a starting point. A reverse search shows a good fare from San Francisco to Beijing ($780 USD).
If I'm in Memphis, I can now search for a cheap fare to SFO. But there are better options in this case.
Another possibility: I can search from cities that are more likely to have Beijing travelers. Beijing shows up on Detroit's Asia list at $819. Atlanta's lowest recent fare was $784. There are many flights between Memphis and those two cities.
Now I have several itineraries that are based on the actual fares travelers have searched in the past few days. They aren't sale fares with strings attached.
If you're that flexible, it only takes Explore a second or so to provide a list of cities that can be very affordable.
What are my golfing vacation options from New York? Assuming I don't really care where I'm going, I simply enter New York and Golf in the Explore interface.
At this moment, several Florida destinations show up at $110 USD round-trip. Phoenix comes in at a decent $200. Lisbon is the lowest international destination at $510. The Lisbon golf outing is set for early February.
You can see in this example that such tools have their limits.
Booking a February golfing vacation near Lisbon might not be ideal. But in the process of the search, I've found a very reasonable fare to a beautiful city. My golf clubs could stay at home.
Click "next" to the right for other places in cyberspace where you can search actual fares rather than sale prices.
People who shop for price rather than destination will find Kayak's Explore a very useful tool. But what if you have a specific location in mind and it's not on the list of top destinations?
Let's consider a trip from Memphis to Beijing, because the capital of China does not appear on the Memphis "Asia list" this particular day.
One technique is to enter the destination as a starting point. A reverse search shows a good fare from San Francisco to Beijing ($780 USD).
If I'm in Memphis, I can now search for a cheap fare to SFO. But there are better options in this case.
Another possibility: I can search from cities that are more likely to have Beijing travelers. Beijing shows up on Detroit's Asia list at $819. Atlanta's lowest recent fare was $784. There are many flights between Memphis and those two cities.
Now I have several itineraries that are based on the actual fares travelers have searched in the past few days. They aren't sale fares with strings attached.
If you're that flexible, it only takes Explore a second or so to provide a list of cities that can be very affordable.
What are my golfing vacation options from New York? Assuming I don't really care where I'm going, I simply enter New York and Golf in the Explore interface.
At this moment, several Florida destinations show up at $110 USD round-trip. Phoenix comes in at a decent $200. Lisbon is the lowest international destination at $510. The Lisbon golf outing is set for early February.
You can see in this example that such tools have their limits.
Booking a February golfing vacation near Lisbon might not be ideal. But in the process of the search, I've found a very reasonable fare to a beautiful city. My golf clubs could stay at home.
Click "next" to the right for other places in cyberspace where you can search actual fares rather than sale prices.