Europe String

This Just In is a new weekly column at EuropeString.com featuring the week’s best European travel deals. Have something to share? Leave a comment or Twitter @europestring.

We didn’t have a column last week, for the US holiday (plus I was on the road traveling)– so this week’s column is extra special.  It’s something that I wish someone had thought of years ago.  Imagine this scenario:

• You want to spend sometime in Europe.
• You don’t have a fixed date or a fixed city.
• You just want to find the cheapest flight over there, and then you can travel around and come home.
• Maybe it’s a week, or 2, a month or longer.

It used to be that you’d have to test each city: Dublin, London, Paris, Munich, Barcelona and so on and test dates.  You find something cheapish, then you keep searching.  Is it cheaper if I leave on Tuesday?  What about if I stay for an extra week?

Now, there’s a website that does that for you!

Go to Kayak.com.  Click on Buzz (left hand sidebar).  Here you can search for the cheapest fares, and it will look at every date and every city option and all the major airlines and get this– Just Give You the Best Ones!

I searched for Boston, MA to Europe for Jan 2009 and here is what it found:

Here is why this is amazing:

1.  It checks all the major airlines.

2.  You can pick dates or not.  It can tell you the cheapest dates available (airlines usually publish no more than 1 year out) or just a month you want.

3.  You can pick the city you want, or just a continent.  I picked Europe, and it checked ALL European destinations.

4.  Once you’re done, you can have the fare updates emailed to you or you can add to your RSS Reader.  See that red circle I made on the screen shot?  That’s where you can get updates on the type of trip you searched for– making it hugely valuable.

So if you were thinking of spending some time in Europe this summer, you might pick a few options: June/July/Aug 09 travel dates to Europe or pick a few closeby airports (if that’s an option for you).  Then click on the “Get these by email” link and Kayak let’s you set an alert:

As you can see from the screen shots, you can even pick how often they send updates.

As far as I know, no other flight website let’s you do this.  I’ve already set up a couple alerts myself.  If you use this service to book your flight to europe, tell me about it!

So go, check it out, and report back… is this a helpful trick?

Can’t find the deal you need for your trip? Send me a twitter @europestring and I’ll put my industry contacts to work. Know about a great deal I haven’t mentioned? Tell me, and it could end up here in next week’s This Just In.