Smartphone Booking Apps: When You Save, When You Don't

Most of the major airfare and hotel room search engines are madly scrambling to create apps for smartphones and tablets. The latest to do so is the Danish aggregator of airfares known as Momondo ( www.momondo.com ), which announced a free-of-charge app this past Monday. It's a very simple and intuitive interface, giving you your answers in as few screen-taps as possible while also making available several excellent filtering options -- you can sort results by price, duration of flight, or departure airport, and you can filter results based on the number of stops you're willing to endure, the time of day for departure and/or arrival, and the airlines canvassed. For all the details, go to Momondo's website, where there's a full explanation on the website's main menu page (you can also find details at iTunes). 

But apps aren't always as effective a tool as you would have by simply using your laptop to access the website on the internet. The latest observer to discuss the problems of some apps is travel expert Jason Cochran, who is also a good friend of mine. On a recent, several-day roadtrip through the southern states, Jason used Priceline's app ( www.priceline.com ) very effectively to obtain low-cost hotel rooms for his overnight stays. Approaching a particular stop, he'd whip out his iPhone and score big discounts off the normal prices of the hotels at which he wished to stay.

But on one occasion, he discovered that the Priceline app permitted him to bid a price no lower than $56 for an overnight room. Using that app, he could only scroll down a price chart to a minimum of $56 -- but no further than that. By contrast, by simply accessing the internet on his laptop computer, he could pull up the normal Priceline.com and bid (by clicking on "desktop site") as little as $45 for a room -- which turned out to be a successful offer. That advantage caused him to forego any further use of the Priceline app.

So it's clear that these new, miraculous apps aren't always as effective as the former computer technology. Be forewarned.

You can read more about Jason's problems with the Priceline app in his Twitter feed ( @bastable ) where he recently recorded the events of his southern trip.