Details

Industries

Advertising,E-Commerce,Internet,Internet of Things,Search Engine,Social Media,Travel

Founded date

Apr 1, 2006

Number Of Employee

101 - 250

Operating Status

Active

Airfarewatchdog.com is a discount airfare compiler that uses live agents (as opposed to automated web crawlers) to find the best deals. The company offers access to discounts from carriers such as Southwest Airlines that other competitors do not, and gives users access to deals that carriers only allow to be posted on their own sites. Airfarewatchdog.com does not offer booking services, but _does_ offer links to such services. The company makes money primarily by selling advertising and through sponsorships from booking sites.

George Hobica, a travel expert who had previously run a series of blogs dedicated to finding the best deals for flyers, founded Airfarewatchdog.com. He believed that people could often find better deals on flights than computer algorithms. Airfarewatchdog.com’s analysts have a background in travel and discount trolling. The company received a fair amount of coverage early on for finding “fat finger fares”, which become available as a result of typos and other mistakes by carriers.

Airfarewatchdog.com has evolved from a blog to a more robust interface with multiple features. There is a deal of the day, a list of the 50 best deals, and a blog offering insight into the world of discount flying. The company also offers users a newsletter product, Free Airfare Alerts, which emails deals for user-selected arrival cities, departure cities, or both. It also offers website publishers a fares widget to embed in their site with information from airfarewatchdog.com concerning discount flights to or from a particular area.

Airfarewatchdog.com operates independently. It is a part of [TripAdvisor Network](http://www.crunchbase.com/organization/tripadvisor), which is part of the [Expedia Network](http://www.crunchbase.com/organization/expedia), which is in turn owned by [IAC](http://www.crunchbase.com/organization/iac).