How to Use Hipmunk
In a previous post, we made a short introduction to the website Hipmunk and some basic steps on how to use the site. In today’s post, we will go into a more detailed analysis of the website. Hipmunk is extremely helpful to individuals who are looking for flights based on certain criteria, like the type of airline carriers they wish to fly with or something as simple as the price of the flight. You also have the option of combining some options to find the best flight as a whole.
Another great function offered my Hipmunk is its ability to sync your Google Calendar to your potential flight itinerary. Let’s sync my Google Calendar with Hipmunk and take a look at the example below:
It is a little bit difficult to see, but you can see that around 10:00 AM on Thursday, July 9, I have a conflict on my flight itinerary. It turns out I have a Coffee Date on that day and I will not be able to fly during that time. I will need to use the sliding bar function at the top to adjust my time to allow myself to leave after the event. Sometimes, we may be caught up in so many tasks at once that we end up forgetting one or two. With this function, we can be ensured that we won’t be booking a trip when a distanced relative is having a wedding that day (and you were invited)!
With Hipmunk, you can activate the Fare Alert button by adding the specific itinerary to your Fare Alerts. Every day, you will be informed of the itinerary’s current fare price and eventually, you will be sent a timeline of the price fluctuations in the last few days. You can use this monitor the difference in fare prices and decide on the best time to make a purchase on your tickets.
Again, when searching for hotels, you can filter the hotel chains you wish to book with and ones you do not wish to book with. This is very useful for frequent stayers at specific hotel brands.
Another great feature about Hipmunk is that you can turn on the Neighbourhoods function and it will allow us to see the specialties of each neighbourhood. Here you can see I have hovered over a neighbourhood in San Francisco called Russian Hill. At the bottom of that is a small history lesson (I mean a guide) of the neighbourhood and things we should expect to see there.
Just like the flight search, we can also sync our Google Calendars to see if our hotel or the places we have planned to go to are close in vicinity. We can also set the Walk Score function in Neighbourhoods to see if the locations we wish to go to are within walking distance. A lot of the times, we always find ourselves mindlessly walking around to find our destination. With the Walk Score function, you can now organize your day and ensure that you’re not wasting precious vacation time.
Hipmunk not only offers a flight and hotel search, but it takes it to another level and offers a little more in helping you find the most appropriate hotel for your travel needs. Additionally, with the Google sync calendar function, you will never run into a situation where you have conflicting schedules.