REVIEWED: Gopili travel search engine
New pan-Europe website offers fares across planes, trains & coaches, but has limited sources
Getting from A to B is the bread and butter of travel, but booking a joined-up trip has so far been impossible. Isn’t that what travel agents are for? Sure, but who wants to pay someone to do a cursory search and come back with options that suit them, not you? Step forward Gopili, which makes up for in cross-transport flexibility what it lacks in a decent name.
Clearing house
Still, what’s in a name? Having a poorly-named meaningless brand hasn’t hurt Trivago if its advertising spend is any indication. In this competitive market comes Gopili, which claims to act as a clearing house for trains, planes, coaches and even ride-shares between European cities and beyond. The search engine claims to find the best travel rates in one click for more than 80,000 journey options – and its based on the French version, Kelbillet.
Clean design
The design is clean, journeys are saved as tabs for easily and quickly revisiting, and the site works quickly. However, in our tests it relied largely on the eBookers website. Save for a few UK-centric searches that added National Express coaches and European train website Loco2, it was all eBookers.
Limited sources
With the ride-share pages still ‘under construction’ and its journeys being fed largely via eBookers, Gopili finds itself struggling to find a niche for travellers after a one-stop service. However, the design is great and the ambition worthy; Gopili isn’t there yet but it could be worth keeping an eye on. A Skyscanner it is not.