Rapid Travel Chai

I recently met Jared of Thrifty Traveler and he immediately made me smile: (1) from my hometown, Minneapolis, (2) eager to teach travelers to find deals, and (3) has great site and companion premium service.

Free Cheap Flight Alerts:

Thrifty Traveler has added a free cheap flights alert service. Give it a try.

Thrifty Traveler Premium:

Jared’s specialty is finding fare deals that cover US departures down to regional airports. Here’s a 25+ city deal to Cancun from yesterday. First deal I have seen for Fresno!

My prior go-to site, The Flight Deal, focuses on 12 major US cities. Its companion site, Fare Deal Alert, adds 10 more.

Jared is sweeping the country for deals that do not require positioning flights to major airports. His free blog posts a selection of these deals along with a wide variety of travel news and tips, while the premium service covers more deals and more cities with email alerts.

Thrifty Traveler Premium service is $69.99/year. The new Premium+ tier is $89.99/year and adds premium cabin fare deals, award alerts, and text message notifications option. All sign-ups get a 30-day free trial.

(Disclaimer: I am trialing the service for purposes of this review. I am not compensated for sign-ups.)

My Take:

The email frequency and quality of deals in my trial is impressive.

Flight deals is an exploding area with many services starting up. Some seem only to rip off deals from other sites (and many blogs have converted much of their posting to touting these deals with minimal ‘hat tipping’ to the original source).

From what I can tell, and what Jared has represented to me, he does his own research and builds his own tools to find deals.

The emails are well formatted, clearly showing the deals in a glance. Added tips, destination info and booking buttons are helpful.

$69.99/year is a minor charge in the grand scheme. There are various monetization approaches and I have no problem with Jared charging for his service, which is now his full-time job, leaving behind the world of bank examination. People finding ways to earn a living that fit their passion and helps others is to be applauded.

I plan to keep Thrifty Traveler Premium and I encourage you to give the 30-day free trial a try for yourself.