Lehi Business
Lehi-based Hometown Flights, a discount flight service is seeing tremendous growth
Megan Wallgren | Lehi Free Press
Lehi-based Hometown Flights, a social media discount flight service, is seeing tremendous growth spurred by increased travel coming out of the pandemic era. The subscription service, run by Lehi resident Josh Kitchen helps find flight deals and discounts to put travel in the reach of any budget.
Kitchen began the service about seven years ago when he started sharing travel deals he found for flights out of the SeattleAirport with friends. Now, Kitchen has 1,800 paid subscribers and 26k followers on Instagram.
After getting his undergrad at UVU and finishing graduate school at University of Utah, Kitchen started working in Seattle. He and his wife had no kids at the time. “Travel has always been a joy of ours, and Seattle was a big hub for flight deals, so I was always searching for deals,” Kitchen said. He started sharing what he found on Instagram and through email.
At first, Kitchen was only sharing flights that departed from SEA-TAC, but eventually grew to include flights leaving Portland and Spokane. In 2021, Kitchen moved to Utah and started including flights from Salt Lake and the Provo area. Hometown Flights has expanded to include flights originating in nine different airports in the Western US. Utah travelers are now the biggest segment of his users.
Kitchen shares travel tips and flight deals for followers on Facebook and Instagram. He shares even more deals, as well as links for booking, through a paid text subscription service. He also shares deals on a Hometown Flights Discord channel where travelers can ask questions and share their own travel hacks.
“With text alerts, people receive all the booking deals, and they’re shared when they’re available. Sometimes these deals last only a few hours and by the time you see the Instagram post they’re gone,” said Kitchen.
Hometown Flights is not a travel agency. “I’m not a travel agent. I just notify people of the deals and send out alerts when flights are on sale,” he said.
Kitchen spends hours a day checking airline and travel sites to compile the best prices on flights. Using his own algorithm and doing a lot of manual searches, he finds 400 to 500 deals a day, but shares only the best. “A lot of the deals I share won’t be found on Google Flights,” he said.
According to Kitchen, recent changes at the Provo Airport have increased the opportunities for inexpensive travel out of Utah County. “It is truly the airport that fits any budget,” he said. Along with the discount airlines Breeze and Allegiant, American Airlines now operates flights out of Provo. “With [American] adding these flights to Phoenix and Dallas, which are international hubs, it opens Provo to pretty much anywhere in the world,” said Kitchen.
Provo’s recent remodel also makes parking and getting to gates easy. Kitchen said it’s definitely his “go-to” if flying out of Provo is an option.
Kitchen enjoys sharing travel possibilities to people on a budget. “One of the most exciting things about what I do is that I help people realize the opportunities out there. There is a misconception that travel is expensive and not affordable. There are a lot of ways to travel on a budget,” he said.
You can find Kitchen’s deals and travel tips on Instagram with the handle @hometownflights and on the Hometown Flights Facebook page. Search Discord for Hometown Flights.
