Combining travel inspiration and flight deals, Hitlist is a photo intensive travel app designed to inspire wanderlust. Although there are lots of flight deal apps out there, with minimal effort on your part, the Hitlist app allows you to act spontaneously on flight deals to dream destinations. Essentially, it transforms your travel dreams into travel plans.
Founded by Gillian Morris, Hitlist helps people travel more for less by automating the travel planning process. Tell Hitlist where you want to go and get alerts when there’s a flight deal.
Hitlist is only available on iOS devices.
Hitlist App: Inspire, Search & Book
How It Works
Through breathtaking photography and leading flight search technology, Hitlist inspires users to travel more by finding targeted flight deals. All you have to do is create a “hitlist” and let the app do the rest.
Choose Destinations
A hitlist is a list of places around the world that you would like to visit. Create a hitlist manually or choose from recommended destinations.
Connect the app to Facebook to find your friends. Hitlist then creates a list of recommended destinations to visit based on where your friends have been, where they live and where they want to go. Share your list and recruit friends to join your new adventures. Or plan an epic trip together!
Need help creating your hitlist?
The app conveniently categorizes destinations by interest. There are different categories to explore including “Most Popular” and “Weekend Getaways”. “James Bond Film Locations” and “Spicy Food Spots” are my favorites!
Here are some other fun trip suggestions:
- Premier destinations for wine
- Where you can travel without a U.S. passport
- Volcanic excursions
Since the destination photos are panoramic, tilt your phone from side to side to see the scenery. Photos are often curated from sources like Unsplash and Thrillist.
For more exclusive features, check out Christopher Rudder’s live instructional video!
The Hitlist Difference
So what makes the Hitlist app different from other flight search engines?
Unlike other sites who limit flight searches to specific days, Hitlist primarily filters by price. Since date flexibility is one of the best ways to score a flight deal, Hitlist keeps dates wide open.
You can also filter by time, destination and budget.
Flight Deal Alerts
Hitlist doesn’t reinvent the wheel but instead uses Skyscanner’s comprehensive API to scan millions of itineraries – including those of discounted airlines.
Histlist uses “magic”, a robust flight deal algorithm to track destinations and search for the cheapest flights. Flights are then scored “good”, “great” or “spectacular”. When the app finds a deal that falls into any of these categories, you get an alert via email or push notification. Alerts will show you the best travel dates at the cheapest price.
With Hitlist, you no longer have to spend hours scouring the web, unless you want to of course. So let’s say you have 40 destinations on your hitlist, the app will continuously search the cheapest airfare for each destination. This essentially cuts down your research time.
Once you get an alert, confirm your availability and decide if you want to book.
It’s that easy!
For Adventurous Weekenders
Hitlist is especially useful for wishful weekenders who are looking for a quick getaway at an exceptional price.
If you do not have a specific destination in mind, head over to the suggested “Weekend Getaway” list. This list features cities near your home airport.
The Great Smoky Mountains, Miami, and Bangor, Maine are at the top of my suggested weekend list. Between these three locations, there are 17 deals available with dates from July to September!
Other Cool Hitlist Features
In addition to the app, Hitlist offers a suite of products.
Wandertab
If mobile apps aren’t your thing, Hitlist has a Chrome extension called Wandertab.
With Wandertab, every time you open a new tab in your browser, a new destination appears. It’s accompanied by costs in real-time.
Click through to search for flights with Skyscanner.
Today I added the Skradinski Buk Waterfalls in Krka National Park to my Croatia summer itinerary!
Related: Sygic Travel: Create The Perfect Itinerary
I love this Chrome extension because it feeds my endless appetite for wanderlust. It helps me discover new places around the world. The photos are colorful, bright and perfect for daydreaming. Hit refresh to see all the amazing deals that Hitlist has to offer.
Web Interface
Hitlist also has a website that allows you to explore destinations and flight deals on your desktop. Search by continent, regions, beaches, and activities.
Final Thoughts
Hitlist is perfect for spontaneous travelers on a budget. It’s also great for planning longer trips a few months away.
The Hitlist app is easy to use and takes a comprehensive approach to travel planning – it integrates with Airbnb and Booking.com.
But here’s one downside.
After clicking on a deal, fares sometimes change when routed to Skyscanner. Flights are often more expensive or no longer available.
This can be a total let down especially when you’re super enthusiastic about scoring an amazing deal.
But don’t feel obligated to book through Skyscanner – book elsewhere if you prefer. Either way, always do your research before booking flights.
This is a collaborative post with Hitlist, all opinions are my own.
Danielle is a travel finance strategist, author, speaker and podcaster. She paid off $63,000 of student loan debt in 4 years, bought a house at 27 and has traveled to 27 countries and 4 continents. She refuses to let her financial responsibilities hold her back from living life on her own terms.
I like the clean look of the app. Glad to have discovered it here, it will come handy.
With some many apps available now it is sometimes so confusing knowing which ones to try so I love articles like this which highlight suggestions.
Looks like a great app. Love that it’s photo intensive!
Me too! It puts more visual context to a destination!
What a cool app! I love the incorporation of photos and destinations that friends have visited, neat element.
I am always looking for some great flight deals and I think I found an awesome platform. Definitely checking it out. Thank you for sharing!
Have been hearing about Hitlist but haven’t tried it yet so it’s good to read some more details. Thanks for sharing.
What’s crazy is that I can fly to Croatia from the United States for the same price I can fly to Hawaii haha. Such a cool app, I will totally add it to my list of flight sites I love because a good deal is something I’m always looking for!