 |
Cheap Travel: How to Find the Lowest Price on Air, Hotel and Car Rental
On this page we highlight some internet sites & agencies that can help you with your cheap romantic travel ideas.
We also give you some tips for shopping and buying discount airfares, hotels and rental cars.
3 Sites With Low Rates on Romantic HotelsPriceline.com tops many surveys for the cheapest hotel rates. We particularly found an advantage in using Priceline when staying in expensive cities such as New York, Chicago, and Boston. We’ve seen 4-star properties in Miami sell in the $50/night range, and some mid-town New York City hotels for around $80.
Skyauction.com has got all kinds of hotel deals, and some at enormous savings. You may not find the destination you want, but then again you just might! We just browsed through their "winning bids" section and saw 7 nights at a Poipu resort in Kauai that went for just under $200!
Quikbook.com is a interesting place for hotel shopping - while the rates are not quite in the Priceline/Skyauction range, they tend to specialize more in unique hotels, smaller inns and a few luxury properties. They have romantic places to stay in about 70 major cities in North America, and in many cases your credit card is billed only after you check out, a very nice policy.
Cheap Travel Sites for FlightsIf your romantic vacation is starting with an online fare search for cheap flights, we think SideStep.com
For a more extensive comparison of discount flight websites, we've got another section on our site you should check out:
Car Rental Search Sites
You won't find a lot of variance on car rental rates anymore, as the margins have diminished in recent years. It's probably best to just browse a site like Orbitz Car Rentals
To fully flush-out all possibilities and find out more on rent-a-car comparison sites, we've got a full page just on that here:
5 More Tips for Finding Cheap Travel Online1: To save the most money, shop around. No matter how good the price looks, don’t buy the first one you see. No single travel or honeymoon website offers the cheapest of everything. That goes for flights, hotels, packages and so on.2: Subscribe to e-newsletters from various sites. Many of them come out weekly and are great for last-minute deals. If you don’t want them all piling up in your inbox, set up a separate e-mail account (no charge at Yahoo! or Hotmail).
3: Flexibilty can save you lots. Mid-week or Saturday flights, and evening departures can cost less. In some cases, the off-season and shoulder seasons are cheaper by as much as 1/2. If you’re in a big city like New York City or Los Angeles, check fares from different airports in the area. Prices can vary alot just by moving the departure date by a few days too.
4. Sign up for a frequent-flier program if you haven't already. You don’t need to be a businessman to benefit nicely from these. In fact, the majority of people we know getting award flights are “recreational” travelers only!
5. Read the fine print and look over everything twice before buying. Is the itinerary what you want? Do you understand everything about the change/cancellation fees? Will you need trip cancellation insurance? (strongly recommended)
Return from Cheap Travel to Discount Vacations
|
There is a dizzying choice of cheap travel available today online. So where and how can you possibly find what you’re looking for at the best price?