Booking.Com Flights Review – Is It Any Good? (2024)

The Broke Backpacker is supported by you. Clicking through our links may earn us a small affiliate commission, and that's what allows us to keep producing free content 🙂 Learn more.

Booking Flights From Booking.com

Basically, Booking.com functions as a flight aggregator. It scours (or even scans) different flight options from a myriad of airlines and travel providers and then collates them into neat little listicles. If you have ever used Skyscanner then you probably know exactly how this works already.

However, booking.com goes one step further as their service provides a seamless experience, enabling travellers to plan and book their entire trip within the same platform. Whereas Skyscanner usually forces you to exit the site and head over to an unknown 3rd party page to complete your booking…

Booking doesn’t.

How Does It Work?

Let’s break it down and examine how the booking.com flight finder function works in some more detail;

1. Visit the Booking.com Website or App:
   • To start, simply navigate to the Booking.com homepage (or open the app on your mobile) and look for the “Flights” tab.
2. Enter Flight Details:
   • Fill in your departure and destination cities, the travel dates, number of passengers, and preferred class of service.
3. Search and Compare Flights:
   • The platform will then (and pretty quickly) pull flight data from various airlines and third-party providers, presenting you with a comprehensive list of options. You can filter and sort these results based on price, duration, number of stops, and more.
4. Select and Book:
   • Choose the flight that best suits your needs. Review the details, enter passenger information, and go to payment. After booking, you’ll receive a confirmation email from booking with all the necessary details.

But how does it REALLY work you might be asking?

Well, booking.com’s platform interfaces in real-time with hundreds of different flight companies’ databases, but it is by no means totally comprehensive. There may sometimes be flights out there that the app does not pick up. This also happens with other aggregators though.

Then by some strange piece of witchcraft, booking allows you to complete payment inside their platform and they then pay the airline/3rd party broker on your behalf and pass on your details while you do it.
It is fair to assume that booking.com is not doing all of this for free and is taking a commission but the question is who is paying that commission – you or the airline?

We will come to this later…

What Makes It Special?

Ok, so what is the point of this? Skyscanner has existed for years so why does anybody need booking.com to do flights? Why don’t they just stick to what they’re good at, hotels?

Well, what sets Booking.com’s flight booking feature apart, is its flawless integration with the platform’s extensive accommodation and travel services. Users can effortlessly bundle flights with airport taxis, hotel stays, car rentals, and even local attractions.

And what’s more, they can often unlock exclusive discounts and deals while they’re at it such as the Genius Level discount which gives users a percentage saving on many different bookings.

Additionally, the platform’s comprehensive reviews and ratings system helps travellers make informed decisions, ensuring a higher level of satisfaction and confidence in their bookings.

Getting Travel Insurance For Your Trip

Booking that holiday can be a large expense you’ve been saving up for a long time. With great anticipation that once in a lifetime trip is just around the corner now you’ve finally decided on your destination and made the leap to book that flight and hotel package.

With all that at stake, plus all the unexpected things that can happen whilst travelling overseas, the next thing on your to-do list is to get yourself some top-quality travel insurance from Safetywing.

These guys ooze professionalism and unlike many insurance companies that are happy to take your money and run, Safetywing are the real deal.

ALWAYS sort out your backpacker insurance before your trip. There’s plenty to choose from in that department, but a good place to start is Safety Wing.

They offer month-to-month payments, no lock-in contracts, and require absolutely no itineraries: that’s the exact kind of insurance long-term travellers and digital nomads need.

SafetyWing is cheap, easy, and admin-free: just sign up lickety-split so you can get back to it!

Click the button below to learn more about SafetyWing’s setup or read our insider review for the full tasty scoop.

Visit SafetyWing Or Read Our Review!

Booking.Com Vs Skyscanner

So how does booking.com compare to a leading alternative such as say, Skyscanner?

Well, there is only one way to find out isn’t there….FIGHT!!!!

User Interface:

• Both platforms offer intuitive interfaces, but Booking.com’s integration with its existing hotel booking service may offer added convenience for users already familiar with the platform.

Flight Options:

• Skyscanner has been a dedicated flight aggregator for many years, often providing a wider range of flight options. That said Booking.com is rapidly expanding its flight database and catching up in terms of variety and competitive pricing.

However, it absolutely has to be said that Skyscanner still has some HUGE edges over booking.com here.

Firstly, it allows users to search for flights from and to any airport in an entire country whereas booking makes you choose from the outset. Secondly, Skyscanner has the fun and fantastic “Anywhere” option allowing users to browse for travel inspiration.

Additional Features:

• Booking.com allows you to bundle flights with hotels, car rentals, and other travel services, potentially offering better deals and a more streamlined booking experience. Skyscanner, while also offering hotels and car rentals, remains primarily focused on flights.

Price:

• Rather than give away the answer, why don’t you instead join us in the next section when we go head to head in the battle of Skyscanner vs Booking…..?!

Booking The Same Flight With Skyscanner and Booking

Ok so for this contest what we are going to do is search for the same flight on the same date on both platforms and see which one is the cheapest. Is Skyscanner still the best way to book flights, or have we got a new sheriff in town?

I live near Manchester (the original and better one) so let’s use that as the destination airport. It’s currently summer so let’s see about a return trip to Spain for 7 days going 2 weeks from now… A Classic British holiday!

Of course, if we were just using Skyscanner we could enter Spain as our destination and find the best bargain but as booking.com does not facilitate that function we have to pick a particular Spanish destination. And that destination is going to be Alicante (cos who doesn’t want to go to Benidorm in July?)

And the results are in…

Skyscanner

Booking.com

On the booking.com site, the top recommended flight was £207.15 (Jet2 on the way out, EasyJet return) whereas on Skyscanner the “best” pick (Ryanair all the way) was £223.

However, I must say that the flight times were better on Skyscanner than on booking, so I would personally have used the Skyscanner pick for the sake of the £15 difference.

When I scroll down booking.com’s results, I see that they don’t even seem to offer the Ryanair flight at all.

Let’s analyse the results a bit closer shall we?

Here is the booking.com result…

And now for Skyscanner…

If you look at the above screenshots, you will see that I have found the exact same EasyJet round-trip offering on both platforms. We leave Manchester on 22nd July at 18:35 and return home on 29th July at 22:55.

And yet, the prices are quite different…

Whereas we can book this on Skyscanner for £184, the same flight will cost us £219.67 on booking.

So in answer to our earlier preposition about just who exactly is paying booking.coms 3rd party broker commission…well it seems that you are.

So, when it comes to finding the cheapest flights, Skyscanner might just have the edge, but I’ve not finished yet.

Using The Booking.com Flight Plus Hotel Function

OK so let’s presume that we are using booking.com to book our flight to Alicane but we also want to book our Benidorm hotel at the same time. We are using the same dates as above (22nd – 29th July).

Let’s look at what’s on offer and what it costs.

Ok, so the first thing I note is that when I enter our search criteria into the booking.com flights + hotel search, it only brings up hotels in Alicante itself and there does not seem to be a way to search for flights to Alicante, but hotels in Benidorm.

While I understand that this may be technically difficult for booking to pull off, it kinda reduces the value this function can offer. Instead, we will now have to move the goalposts a bit and pretend that we actually want to stay in Alicante itself so that we can continue with our analysis. (Maybe that’s not such a bad thing!)

The top result on offer is The Melia Alicante. The cost is £1,851. We fly out at 08:00 on the 22nd with Jet2 and fly home at 16:40 with EasyJet.

Let’s now price this package up separately inside the booking.com platform.

If we use the “flight only”, I see that this flight costs £296.26. If we use the classic “Stays” search, I see that these dates the Melia £1,791. This means that using the “Flight + Hotel” function is netting us a nice saving of £236.26. Very impressive.

Finally, let’s now see what the same flight costs inside Skyscanner.

On Skyscanner, the flight costs £247. Remember that’s £49.26 less than Booking.com were charging. But, if we add that £247 to the £1,791 it costs to stay for a week at Melia, this holiday will cost us £2,038.

And there we have it!

The booking.com ‘Flight + Hotel’ function offers some excellent value here and can deliver some fantastic savings.

Customer Support

One of the things that kinda bugs me about using Skyscanner is that it can be hard to get any kind of customer service after making a booking.

For example, if you miss your Skyscanner booked flight, or want to change it or cancel it, where do you go and how do you speak to them?

Skyscanner offers little to no customer service and as you usually book via 3rd party brokers offsite, so in reality they couldn’t offer much help even if they wanted to.

Finding out who you actually need to speak to is not always clear, and when you do find out, customer service can be mixed. On occasion I had two separate companies blaming each other and both refusing to take any responsibility or help me.

With Booking though, you only ever need to speak to booking and they take full ownership of any queries and stay as your single point of contact. In theory that makes things a lot easier and better…

In practice though…

Well, I have only ever had to use the Booking.com customer service channel concerning hotel bookings and found them, erm, a little bit on the Kafka-esque side of things. The sad fact is that Airlines tend to be bastards and that includes all of their brokers, agents and affiliates.

Pros and Cons

Final Thoughts

In summary, there is no disputing that Booking.com’s flight booking service feature is a very welcome and quite useful addition to its super strong suite of travel services.

While it may not yet surpass dedicated flight aggregators like Skyscanner in every aspect, it does offer a competitive and convenient option for travellers looking to book their entire trip in one place.

That said although Skyscanner has a lot of edges in terms of the flights-only side of things, booking.com really comes into its own when you want to search for a flight and hotel all in one.

I for now highly recommend trying it out and am interested in how it can develop in the future. Maybe then I’ll get to ride around Benidorm on a mobility scooter!