Opodo.co.uk > Reviews (43)

Opodo.co.uk is a travel site set up by a variety of european airlines, including British Airways. Having taken the rather daring step to attend the wedding of a very good online friend in Pittsburgh the hunt was on for a cheap airfare to the US, matters were further complicated by the fact that my traveling companion - him of the dubious passport pic agreed that a trip to New York would be a great idea. With some trepidation I started to look for a cheap and I mean cheap flights. A search on Google came up with thousands of flight sites but most of these did not have the ability to check multi stop flights ie you could look for a return or one way ticket only! Given that I am not a patient soul I wanted to find my bargain flight with out emailing zillions of people! Sites like Ebookers did email back fairly quickly but some 3 weeks later I'm waiting on replies from Lastminute.com and Deckchair.com!

Opodo was actually found by looking at the long lists of travel sites on Ciao and Dooyoo. On first viewing this site I was pleased to find it was set up by a consortium of European Airlines - it made the thought of parting company with a rather large sum of money that wee bit safer. Yes I know most travel sites are ABTA members but a site founded by multiple airlines just feels a bit safer than giving my money to Jim's cheeeeeep flights of Stoke!

On first view the site looks to be some what basic, with a very simplified navigation system using a tab system to look at areas like Flights, Holidays, Hotels car Hire, Travel Guide, Opodo offers and Travel manager. One bug bear of mine is the fact that it opens additional windows for a variety of searches e.g. holidays, hotels and car hire.

Now my primary use of the site as I stated before hand was to find a multi stop flight to the US. From the home page I took up the option of advance flight search and was pleased to find out that with in seconds I could indeed price up the Multi destination flights I wanted. After a few false starts I began my hunt for that elusive cheapo flight.

Multi stop flights are booked in stages and you can throw the flight book up to 6 separate flights to be added onto the one ticket. Having entered London to Pittsburgh I was greeted with a deluge of assorted flights! The European bent ot the site was pretty obvious when it was suggested that I flow to Pittsburgh via Prague and New York! One amazing journey suggested I tried Prague, Chicago, Washington DC then Pittsburgh - er no ta! In the end I realized that it was probably going to be cheaper all round if I used an American airline due to most of the airlines allowing a stop over in the ticket price. I then re-searched using the search only for these airlines facility. This actually made the search easier as there were far fewer flights to look at! Finally an itinerary was found at some £30 cheaper than I think Ebookers and some £70 cheaper than expedia.co.uk. Being a bargain hunter I did call into my high St travel agents just to see if they could beat the price Opodo was quoting, they came out at around the price Ebookers was quoting!

Once you have selected you flights you can save them in your handy travel manager section to be reviewed at a later date, unfortunately for me I managed to delete rather than save my flights when I signed up for this option on the site. But it does appear to be a rather useful option so you can go back to look at saved travel arrangements.

Booking day finally arrived a time was set to book this. So one sunday evening I along with my traveling companion and the blushing bride all logged onto YM to get the booking done! Funny how when you're about to part company with several hundred pounds the site plays up on you! after what seemed an eternity it appeared that both my traveling companion and I were on the same flights. Using their secure server the flights were paid for by credit card an email was sent to my email address confirming the booking. The following day another email arrived stating that my tickets had been dispatched to me and if I did not receive them I was to contact opodo as soon as possible to get free replacement tickets. On the Tuesday my tickets duly arrived a quick scan showed that they were all in order!

Given the fact that I would need hotels both in Pittsburgh and New York I had a quick scan of the available hotels. Unfortunately Opodo might have come up with the cheapest flights but their hotel prices were not as competitive. Also the search facility was not the easiest to use by a long chalk.

The handy travel guides give you a brief taster of a variety of holiday and City destinations around the world,it is a rather limited look at your destination but non the less a good starting point to search for further information. unfortunately these guides are some what limited and information like Visa requirements are not readily available

Contacting a human is relatively easy with out having to play hunt that elusive telephone number or email address. Prior to booking I did try to ring their customer services unfortunately this wasn't well manned and I did give up but it was after 8pm on a sunday night when I called them!

Given the ease of use and the speed in which my tickets were posted out to me, even though it was not via registered delivery I would definite recommend this site. Now all I have to do is hope the Passport agency is as quick issuing me with a new passport!