Key Takeaways
- “Have you heard of Scott’s Cheap Flights? Should I use them?”
- When friends and family far removed from the points and miles/cheap flights space ask me about a website, I know it’s gone mainstream. While there are
- Over 1 million people get his daily flight deals email.
“Have you heard of Scott’s Cheap Flights? Should I use them?”
When friends and family far removed from the points and miles/cheap flights space ask me about a website, I know it’s gone mainstream. While there are many good deal websites out there (The Flight Deal, Secret Flying, and Holiday Pirates are three of my favorites), Scott’s Cheap Flights seems to have broken through where others have not.
Over 1 million people get his daily flight deals email.
I’m a big fan of the website and their ability to often break airfare deals (I used one of their alerts to fly to South Africa). It turns out Scott is a fan of my website too so we sat down for an interview where I got him to spill the secret behind his website:
Route for Less: Tell everyone about yourself. How did you get into this? Scott: When I graduated college in 2009, I knew two things: (1) I wanted to travel the world and (2) I was never going to be wealthy. So, if I wasn’t going to let #2 prevent #1, I knew I would have to figure out some creative ways to travel without spending my life savings.
I began reading up on flight pricing economics, spending hours on various flight search engines, and learning various airfare patterns. Before long, I found an online community of fellow cheap-flight aficionados who enjoy not just travel but also the thrill of getting a great deal on flights.
Where did the idea of this website come from? Scott’s Cheap Flights has a weird origin story. In 2013, I got the best deal of my life: nonstop from NYC to Milan for $130 USD round-trip. Milan hadn’t even been on my radar as a place to visit, but for $130 USD round-trip, there’s no way I wouldn’t go.
And it turned out to be amazing! I went skiing in the Alps, caught an AC Milan match, hiked Cinque Terre, hung out on Lake Como. It was divine.
When I got back, word spread among friends and coworkers about the deal I got, and dozens of them began asking me to let them know next time I found a fare like that so they could get in on it, too. So, rather than try to remember to tell George and Esther and Aviva when a great deal popped up, I decided to start a simple little email list instead so I could alert everyone at once. Scott’s Cheap Flights was born.
For the first 18 months, though, it was just a little, fun hobby I did for my friends. It wasn’t until August 2015 that it had generated enough organic growth that it made sense to think about turning it into a business.
You’ve sort of blown up in the last year or so. What do you think have been the two biggest factors into your success? First off, thanks! We just hit one million subscribers — still hard for me to believe. The credit goes to two primary factors:
First, there’s an incredible team who runs Scott’s Cheap Flights. It’s not just me; we’re up to 25 folks on the team now. We have a team of flight searchers finding great deals around the world, and also a team of amazing customer support folks.
On an average day, we get well over 700 emails in our inbox, and most people get a response within a few hours, if not a few minutes. I think this is a major reason why more than 50% of people who sign up for Scott’s Cheap Flights found out about it via word of mouth.
Second, the startup itself had very serendipitous timing. Right around when Scott’s Cheap Flights became a business, international flight prices began to plummet, fueled by low oil prices and a bevy of new low-cost airlines like Norwegian jumping into the transatlantic market.
Whereas in 2010 it was rare to see flights from the US to Europe under $900 USD round-trip, in 2015 (and through to today), it’s relatively common to see those same flights around $400 USD round-trip, if not less.
We can’t force airlines to offer cheap flights, but we’ve been there to ride the wave these past few years and help subscribers pay half of what they used to to travel abroad.
Were there any media hits or high-profile features that really changed your trajectory? I remember hearing about you a few years ago, but now it seems everyone I know, even outside of travel, has heard of your newsletter. There was one in particular: a Business Insider article and I were taking in the summer of 2015. It helped take Scott’s Cheap Flights from a hobby to a full-fledged business by bringing in thousands of new subscribers. We’ve had hundreds of media hits in the two years since then, but as we’ve grown, each individual one has necessarily had a diminishing impact.
Perhaps a Route for Less interview will give a big new boost though!
How does your website work? How do you find these deals? Do you have team of people searching for deals? Is it an algorithm? One thing that surprises a lot of people is that we don’t have a bunch of computers running secret algorithms to find cheap flights. All of our fares are searched by hand. The secret sauce is hard work. Airfare changes by the hour, if not by the minute, and the best deals don’t tend to last very long, so finding out about them early is the key to booking them before they’re gone. Most people do
