Seven years ago the online world looked pretty different. It was seven years ago when I first started researching my crazy idea to take a career break and travel for a year. As a completely novice traveler, I had no idea where to start in my research or planning, embracing the internet to see what I could find. But Google search results on various travel terms were minimal at that time – there was no such term as “Career Break” and there were few results for “long term travel”. At that time travel blogs and other places where I regularly get my travel information and do research today were non-existent.
In fact think about it – in 2005 did you even know what a blog was? Did you purchase travel regularly online? Probably not.
Today a new flight booking engine launched called – Indie Multi-country Flight Finder. It’s an Around the World Airfare Engine and multi-city/country flight finder that allows travelers to get instant prices, with no rules and book online. Surprisingly, this has not been done before. Try to book a trip online (Travelocity, Expedia, or Airtreks), with more than 6 legs. It can’t be done…. until now. In fact – Indie allows you to search and book up to a 25-stop trip yourself, from anywhere in the world, to anywhere in the world.
Just stop and think for a moment – if you could book 25 stops around the world – where would you go?!
As someone who books a lot of multistop tickets – I am thrilled to have this on the market now and part of my travel planning tools. I’ve been using the Beta for a while now and am impressed with the visual map based interface, how quickly you can get back price quotes (something that you used to have to wait for days or call travel agents for), and the competitive and often lower prices it finds.
My girlfriend Charlie, just recently gave Indie a ‘test run’ with her crazy 7 stop journey through Europe, Africa, and South America for 2013 and found the following:
“I just played around with the bootsnall search engine and it is really cool. I like it. It would take me from Brussels to Ethopia (then by land) to Tanzania to Cape Town to Buenos Aires to La Paz (by land) to Quito and JFK for like $4000! Not bad. At the first route of playing around with it — I’m impressed. It is super smart and easy to use. I particularly love the function of being able to select certain portion of your flight by land and not have to start another search all together.”
If you are planning extended travel, a career break , or are thinking about an around the world ticket, you can use it for:
1) Instant Prices
2) No Rules
3) Online Booking
A ticket can be booked in under 1 hour. You don’t have to travel in one direction. You aren’t limited to a year. There are no mileage limits. To put it simply, there are no rules. A huge change from what “was” back when I was planning my original travels.
Sherry Ott is a refugee from corporate IT who is now a long term traveler, blogger, and photographer. She’s a co-founder of Briefcasetobackpack.com, a website offering career break travel inspiration and advice.
Additionally, she runs an around the world travel blog writing about her travel and expat adventures at Ottsworld.com.com.
