Pilot vs. Travelocity: feature comparison, ratings, and FAQ

What is Travelocity?

Travelocity is an online travel agency. People use it to book hotels, flights, rental cars, and packages on one site. It is built to complete a booking rather than plan the trip around it, and it books as a middleman rather than directly with the hotel.

What is Pilot?

Pilot is a trip booking and planning app. You plan the whole trip in one place, a flexible itinerary, a map of your stops, and notes, and you book your hotel in the app at private rates straight from hotels, the kind usually reserved for travel agents. Where Travelocity completes a booking, Pilot plans the whole trip around the stay, instantly reserves your room with its hotel partners and has a real person confirm each booking with the hotel, and keeps the planner free.

Is Travelocity legit?

Yes, Travelocity is a real and long-running booking site. It launched in 1996 and is now part of Expedia Group, so its hotel, flight, and car inventory comes from the same source as Expedia and Hotels.com. The thing to watch is not whether it is legit but how it is rated by customers: Travelocity sits around 1.4 on Trustpilot, where reviews reflect how a company treats people after the sale, with recurring complaints about charges added at checkout and slow refunds. Pilot is a newer trip-planning and hotel-booking app rated 4.7 by 50,000+ travelers, and it lets you book your stay at a private rate straight from the hotel, the kind usually reserved for travel agents, and real people on support.

Is Travelocity free to use?

Browsing and booking on Travelocity is free; like any online travel agency it earns its money from the bookings themselves, through commissions, markups baked into the price, and fees that can appear at checkout, plus sponsored placement from properties that pay to rank higher. Pilot is free too, including the entire trip-planning suite, and it earns from hotels when you book rather than from charging you to plan. The difference for your wallet is at checkout: Pilot lets you book at a private rate straight from the hotel, while Travelocity is built to sell you the booking.

How does Travelocity make money?

Travelocity earns commissions on every hotel, flight, car, and cruise it sells, marks prices up, can add fees at checkout, and sells sponsored placement to properties that want to appear higher in results, which is why the top option is not always the best deal for you. It also runs Travelocity Rewards, a cash-back program that keeps you booking through the site. Pilot earns from hotels when you book directly and does not sell sponsored placement, so results are ranked for you, not for whoever pays the most, and the planner stays free.

Can you book hotels on Travelocity?

Yes. Travelocity lets you book hotels directly, along with flights, rental cars, cruises, and packages, drawing on Expedia Group's inventory. Pilot lets you book hotels directly too, over 3,000,000 of them, at private rates straight from hotels, the kind usually reserved for travel agents,. The honest difference is scope: Travelocity also books flights and cars, which Pilot does not. Where Pilot wins is the hotel booking itself, a private rate reserved instantly with hotel partners and confirmed with the hotel by a real person, plus a whole trip planned around it and real support if something goes wrong.

Does Travelocity charge hidden fees?

Travelocity is widely reported to mark prices up and add charges at checkout, like service fees, resort fees, or taxes that were not obvious when you started, and refunds can take a while. That pattern shows up in its roughly 1.4 Trustpilot score. Pilot lets you book your stay at a private rate straight from the hotel, the kind usually reserved for travel agents, with no sponsored results, and you can always reach a real person on our team if a charge looks wrong.

Is Pilot a good Travelocity alternative?

For booking hotels and planning the trip, yes, with one honest caveat. Pilot lets you book hotels like Travelocity does, but at private rates straight from hotels, the kind usually reserved for travel agents, with no sponsored results, and with real people on support instead of an outsourced center. On top of booking, Pilot helps you plan your whole trip: a flexible day-by-day itinerary, a map, notes, and real-time collaboration with your group, which Travelocity does not do. The caveat: Travelocity also books flights, rental cars, and cruises and draws on Expedia Group's larger inventory, so if you need all of those in one app it still has a role. For planning a trip and booking the stay, Pilot does more, for free.

Travelocity vs Pilot: which should I use?

Use Pilot to plan a trip and book the stay: private rates straight from hotels, real support, and your whole trip, the plans, the group, and the booking, in one place, for free. Use Travelocity if you need to book flights, rental cars, or cruises alongside a hotel in a single app and you are willing to accept the markups, checkout fees, and slow refunds that tend to come with it. For the hotel and the planning, Pilot lets you book at a private rate straight from the hotel and keeps the whole trip together, which a booking-only site does not.