|
Original link:
http://biz.yahoo.com/weekend/sites_1.html
You can satisfy
your wanderlust without overspending -- and these top Web sites will help you
find the best values in travel bargains.
Airfares
You find more bargains if you search multiple sites, and
Travelzoo's SuperSearch is the perfect place to start. The site doesn't sell
tickets itself. Instead it uses the customer feedback it has collected to direct
travelers to the search engines deemed most useful for a particular itinerary.
Type in your travel plans, and the site generates a short list of links to
online travel agents, such as
Travelocity,
Orbitz and
Expedia, as well as individual airlines' sites. (But note that it doesn't
include discount carrier Southwest Airlines.)
Ready to buy today? Consult
Airfare Watchdog, a Web site run by travel journalist George Hobica that
every morning posts fare sales offered by airlines. The deals, usually limited
to departures from about 30 domestic cities, often disappear quickly, so you'll
have to book them right away to take advantage.
Also go directly to the Web sites of
Southwest Airlines and
JetBlue Airways, which don't submit their fares to Expedia, Orbitz and
Travelocity.
For international flights visit LowesTravel.com, which offers tickets on more
than 60 airlines.
If you're flying between countries within Europe, you may save by flying on
discount airlines, such as Ryanair and Germanwings -- the European equivalents
to Southwest Airlines in the U.S. For a list of the discount airlines that serve
Europe, visit the travel advice Web site
Attitude Travel. Note that these airlines are best for traveling between
countries, not within countries. For travel within countries, consider traveling
by train. You'll find itineraries and pricing at
Rail Europe.
One tip: Any time you schedule multistop flights through a booking agency, be
careful to allow sufficient layover time to navigate unfamiliar international
airports. Layovers of more than an hour are generally advisable, but online
travel sites will often let you buy tickets for flights with connections you
can't reasonably make. At chokepoint airports, such as Paris's Charles de
Gaulle, it's a good idea to allow a 90-minute layover.
Hotels
The best bargains for lodging can be found through
Hotwire and
Priceline.com. The hitch: They don't disclose the name of the hotel you're
booking until you buy. (They also sell airline tickets and rental cars this
way.) The rates offered for four-star hotels are usually the best values. Our
gripe is that neither site refunds your money if you cancel.
At Priceline, you submit a bid after specifying a star class and a neighborhood
in a metro area. You can boost the chances that you'll submit the lowest
possible winning bid by checking the message boards at
Biddingfortravel.com, where recent Priceline users note their successful and
unsuccessful bids.
If you prefer to know the name of the hotel before you pay, your best bet is an
online travel agent.
Expedia,
Orbitz and
Travelocity offer comparable deals on hotel rooms for most destinations. But
many hotels offer special Internet-only rates on their own Web sites, so be sure
to check a hotel's own site after you have searched at your favorite online
agency.
For international travel, check out
LateRooms, a British-based site that has last-minute bargains at 50,000
hotels in countries such as Canada, France, Germany, India, Ireland, Italy,
Spain and the United Kingdom. It quotes rates in the local currency but offers a
currency-conversion calculator to help you figure the prices.
If you pay upon checkout at an overseas hotel, the clerk may offer to convert
your bill into U.S. dollars. Resist this offer because hotels usually offer
less-favorable exchange rates than you can get at ATMs or on your credit card.
What's worse, if your credit card charges you a fee (typically 1% of the bill)
for currency conversion, the card will likely still require you to pay the
currency-conversion charge even if the hotel has done the currency conversion on
its own.
For bed-and-breakfast getaways at discounted prices, sign up for free weekly
e-mails from
Bedandbreakfast.com. Every Wednesday you'll receive a list of B&Bs offering
discounts of typically 20% or more off regular rates for the upcoming weekend in
the city, state or region you want to visit.
Car Rentals
The big three online travel agents (Expedia,
Travelocity and Orbitz) present car-rental information clearly, and we've found
they're equally skilled at fetching low rates. But, as with hotels, the best
deals are with
Priceline.com and
Hotwire. These two services do not disclose the name of the rental-car
company until you buy. Still, you at least know you're booking through a
respected chain: Priceline brokers cars from only five companies -- Alamo, Avis,
Budget, Hertz and National. And Hotwire rents cars from Avis, Budget and Hertz.
Priceline lets you specify dates, type of car, pick-up location and the price
you're willing to pay. If a rental car company accepts your bid, Priceline will
reserve the car. Note that, as with hotels, once you book your reservation, you
can't cancel for a refund.
Hotwire also lets you specify the dates, type of car and pick-up location. The
site then fetches rates. Select the rate you're willing to pay, and Hotwire will
book you with the company of its choice.
If you plan to rent a car abroad, first take a look at
Auto Europe, a rental-car rate wholesaler. This Maine-based company returned
better rates than other online booking sites (for comparable vehicles) when we
searched for cars in England, Greece, Ireland and Spain. Plus, this wholesaler
staffs its customer-service hotlines (toll-free internationally) 24-hours a day.
Be wary that the rental-car chains -- separate from AutoEurope - may attempt to
tack on bogus charges. You may not be expecting additional charges on your
credit card because you have already prepaid through Auto Europe. Eye your
credit-card bill after an overseas trip and use Auto Europe to dispute any
unnecessary charges. (You can also face this problem when you book directly with
the rental-car company.)
Most cruises are still booked through traditional travel agents. Yet
CruiseCompete offers discounts of up to 25% off standard cruise rates. At
the site, 166 travel agencies vie to give you the lowest prices for dates and
ports you specify, whether well in advance or at the eleventh hour.
The most useful cruise-review site is
Cruisemates. We especially like its advice columns, which are written for
people of different ages and interests. For example, parents looking for a
cruise that will entertain their teenagers can turn to the advice column and
message board run by teenager Dan Polulak. a frequent cruise-goer.
Package Deals
In many cases, you can score the best bargains when you book airfare, hotel
rooms or cars as part of a package.
Site59 does the best job of putting together last-minute vacation packages.
It caters to travelers planning just a week in advance of departure.
The best custom vacation packages are offered by
the top three online travel agencies: Expedia, Orbitz and Travelocity. These
sites now let you choose which hotel, flight and rental cars you would like to
combine, rather than offering packages where the individual parts are already
chosen for you. You may see big price breaks with these vacation packages
because airlines, hotel chains and rental-car companies like to bury discounts
in packages that don't break out the prices and spark a price war.
If you long for a luxury resort package, you can place a bid at
Luxury Link, which offers discounted stays. You must, however, be flexible
about your travel dates: You pick the dates from a limited range only after you
pay.
A travel newsletter can help you stay on top of vacation deals.
SmarterTravel.com can send free newsletters directly to your inbox.
Buying travel insurance from Web agencies or providers, such as cruise lines, is
usually a crummy deal because of price markups and restrictions on how the
policy claims can be filed. The best value policies we've found are those sold
directly by the leading travel insurance company,
Travel Guard.
To save money at airport parking lots, visit the aptly named
AirportDiscountParking.com, which will direct you to the bargain lots.
Frequent fliers may want to sign up for the free newsletter from the
Travel Insider, a consumer advice Web site. The newsletter is useful for
frequent fliers who travel about once a month or less.
Students on the go can find bargains at
StudentUniverse. The company negotiates with major providers in the U.S. and
abroad, such as United Airlines and BritRail, to provide discounted travel. The
site offers impressive deals on rail travel and hostels, but be aware that the
domestic airfares they offer are often higher than those offered by the major
travel Web agencies.
For round-the-world airfares, you'll often find the best prices at
Airtreks. The site provides has an online calculator for estimating to cost
of multistop trips.
One More Tip
After you search for fares on a travel Web site, clear the cookies, or data
files, that the site adds to your Web browser. Keeping cookies sometimes means
you'll pay more for travel. Say, for example, you visit a Web travel agency and
view or purchase a $100 plane ticket from Chicago to Omaha. The next time you
visit that site, you could be quoted a higher rate than the lowest available
because of your searching and spending history. Find detailed instructions for
deleting cookies under the "Help" option in your browser menu.
Home
Articles
Best Books
|
|
|