A Better Way to Find Travel Deals: SideStep

I've recently began to notice the ever growing popularity of online travel searching. In many ways it could be seen as the wave of the future. Everyone is already well aware of the big names in online travel like Travelocity and Expedia. But these are all travel agencies themselves and in the end, the user is getting taken advantage of with added booking fees that they find out about after they've made their order. I'm not saying anything bad about these sites because, in reality they do in many cases have the ability to get consumers great deals on flight, hotel, and car rental. However a new era of travel search has begun and that's in the sector of meta-search. A few sites have sprung up across the board that offer travel meta search. Sites like Mobissimo.com, and Kayak.com, have sprung to the scene offering a different kind of experience for searching travel. They search the travel providers themselves, instead of going through a global distribution system (GDS) like the online travel agencies.
Another site, SideStep.com, is poised as the leader of online travel meta search. Their interface is clean and smooth. They have access to well over 600 airlines, 150,000 hotel properties, and over 30,000 car rental locations around the world. From what I've seen, it's the most comprehensive list of travel providers I've ever run across.

When you load the site, you are greeted with a simple interface that allows you to begin your search for airlines. Along the the top of the page is a selection of other travel options. Along with flights, Hotels, and Car Rentals as standards, SideStep also adds the option to search for Vacation Packages, Deals, and an industry pioneer in offering an activities search. From my exploration, I found that SideStep was the first travel search company to offer an activities search. What do I mean by activities search? It's pretty straight forward. It allows you to search for Concerts, Plays, Tours etc... that are available wherever you may be traveling. Or if you just want something available in your local area SideStep can help you with that.

A recent experience that helped solidify for me that SideStep would be the first location I would check for travel in the future was when a good friend of mine recently was talking about going to London sometime in February. I recommended her taking a look at SideStep to search for flights. We were both really amazed at the price we were able to find. The round trip flight for a week stay, leaving mid-week was less than $500! We both turned to each other and agreed that that was quite the steal! We had no idea that a flight to London would end up being that cheap! On a few other searches I did for trips to San Diego and LA, I was able to find flights for less that $150. All these experiences left me convinced that SideStep has definitely got something unique going on here. Sure their competitors can offer a similar experience, but I felt that SideStep did it with a kind of flair that was not seen on the other sites. I frequently check back on the site to see if they have added new things. And from the looks of it they're gearing up for something.

One of their recent press releases talked about a partnership with Forbes to create ForbesTraveler.com, a travel site focused on luxury travel. At first glance, it doesn't look like SideStep had much to do. But after a closer look, and reading the press release about it, I found that SideStep is powering Forbes' travel search. The integration was seamless and clean. I guess this is what they meant by "Syndication Platform".

Since the technology industry moves at such a quick pace, I can only see that SideStep's site will expand to provide users with a quality experience that is unrivaled throughout the travel space. I look forward to seeing what they do next.