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Online Travel Agencies?
dbright asks: "I am currently planning my upcoming honeymoon, and I was wondering if I should try getting my tickets, and/or making travel arrangements online using one of the many available retailers (cheaptickets.com, priceline.com, etc...). I wanted to ask Slashdot readers about experiences with any of these companies, and their thoughts on making arrangements online."
I know I'm not answering your actual question here, but I would think twice about trying to save a couple of bucks on your honeymoon. Go the safer, more traditional route for something this important and you can gamble with some fly-by-night online agency for a future trip that is a little less important. Imagine if something goes wrong because of the travel agent, your wife is not going to very happy with your decision to go with a relatively new (a few years experience) online agency.
GMD
watch this
That's what Google is for!
If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe. -- Carl Sagan
What works for me is to find a good price or two searching online, then take these to a real, in-person agent and say can you get me something like this or better....and the in-person agent can often do better!
I am going to go back to using the "Preview" button when Slashdot goes back to loading at reasonable speed. Until then, thank you for being able to read my typing.
Making trouble today for a better tomorrow...
I haven't done Priceline for airline tickets yet, but Priceline for hotels is awesome. Pick your area and dates, then pick the best star rating they have available.
In another browser window open Expedia.com and see what all 4 star hotels (or whatever the best shown by priceline is) are available in the area. Pick one you like, make a note of the average price per night in Expedia.
Go back to the browser window with Priceline and bid like half, maybe 60% of whatever the best price at Expedia is.
Wait 15 minutes, see what happens. I have stayed several stays at 4* spots (Austin / San Antonio) for $65 and $60 a night.
Glonoinha the MebiByte Slayer
I've used Priceline.com for some reservations for my wife & I. We have been very happy with them (We got a great deal on a room in Downtown San Francisco during a holiday weekend - Our price was nearly $300 less than the asking price for the rooms, and a great deal on a resort suite in Palm Springs). I wouldn't use them for your honeymoon though.
If you do use an online travel agent, I would recommend using one where you know EXACTLY what you're getting before you pay, especially for your honeymoon.
SkyAuction.com
I don't work for them, but I've had nothing but good experiences taking trips arranged through them.
Amazing prices. And even after the trip is over, you'll be wondering what the catch was.
Okay, I have used Travelocity for airline tickets for years with no real troubles. You can definitely save some real cash this way.
But...
For something as important as a honeymoon, I don't think I'd do it. See, the way that online ticket pleaces work is that they offer tickets with all sorts of restrictions (both on time and on convenience). Let's say something happens to your schedule and you want to delay a flight. Well, many of those cheap tickets can't BE delayed, at least, not without fees that often exceed the price you paid for the cheap tickets. No, for something "mission critical" like a honeymoon, do yourself a favour and go with a real (and respected - ask around) travel agent. A travel agent will be even more valuable for the non-flight portions of the trip (hotels, destinations, etc.), as a good and experienced travel agent will often have personal experience with destinations. If you can, go to a travel agent that specializes in your chosen destination(s).
Good luck and have fun!
My wife and I have used Priceline numerous times. We end up paying 35-40% of sticker price. Once my wife had gotten a room in Denver $35/night for two nights and ended up having to stay another night. That last night cost her $120. The downside is that you can't use Priceline to check prices; if they accept your price you are locked in (as in non-exchangable / non-refundable).
Recently I traveled to Guatemala. I used Hotwire to establish a low-price benchmark and then Pricelined bottom up until I was within $20 dollars of the Hotwire offer before I accepted the Hotwire price. I assume that Priceline would have accepted my offer at about the same price that Hotwire gave me up front. The next best offer, Orbitz, et al, was several hundred dollars higher, like $450 vs $700.
So unless you think you might have to cash it in at the last minute, I'd suggest you go ahead and do a deal. By the way, you are flying on the same plane with the same services as those who bought tickets through more traditional channels.
There's a program called TravelAxe that searches multiple travel sites for price comparisons. Got a pretty good deal on a hotel in Vegas with it.
Don't think it works for airfares, tho.
Go to beta.itasoftware.com and do your search. Pick the itinerary you like, and drill down to get the exact fare codes, then call the airline and ask for those tickets.
The only things it won't give you are: "web fares" -- special promotional fares limited to certain (web) travel agents -- and tricks the airlines try not to allow, like buying two tickets and using half of each at a time to avoid weekend stay restrictions and the like.
Of course, never buy a one-way ticket, they always cost more than throwing away the second half of a round-trip.
I just went to United Airlines website last time I scheduled my tickets for a flight to Chicago, and noticed that they're pretty comprehensive.
This sig no verb.
OK, a lot of people don't read the articles before posting, but not reading the synopsis?
<Irony>Sure, everyone loves the obligatory "why didn't you google first" comment</Irony>, but common!
"1984" was ment to be a warning, not a guidebook. You hear that Kim Jong-il!? BushCo?!
Regarding STA, by the way, don't be scared off by the emphasis on students -- they have lots of good deals. Besides, they'll give a student card to anyone with a student ID dated after 1850.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
I've gone with some of the online places, and they've all been a hassle to deal with except for one. Icelandair.com rules, if you're going to Iceland or Europe, look into their site and sign up for their Netfares club or whatever it's called to find really good deals.
Other than Icelandair, I've found comparable ticket prices through normal travel agents, and they seem to care a little more about your trip than a hacked IIS box talking to a shotty SQL server 2000 database with the slammer worm on it.
It's not worth saving a couple of bucks through an online site if you have the money. It's typically not any more expensive if you call around, and you'll get better service.
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Dude, you're freshly married. Screw the honeymoon. Just get your whore a cheap hotel and get some. She will totally give it up and you may as well get it before she turns old and frigid after a couple years.
In fact, she will probably be so thrilled to finally be hitched (like most bitches are) that she will bend over and let you ram it in the brown eye.
Read everything on Hotels.com and its affiliate websites. My wife and I were convinced that we were getting oceanfront rooms based on the website description, but the hotel had us reserved for oceanview rooms when we arrived (oceanview is a complete joke). We complained and got upgraded without any hassle, but here's the warning again: read everything. Know what you are buying!
Be very very very careful about Priceline. They tell you most of this at some point, but just to be clear:
1) Once your price is accepted, you have no control over which airline or what time the flight is.
2) There is absolutely no cancelling, changing, or ANYTHING after you've bid.
Even in the case of a medical emergency, you simply cannot get them to change a flight no matter what. I was in LA on a vacation, got incredibly sick and ended up with an ear infection. The doctor told me to NOT fly no matter what. Even with a letter from a doctor, neither priceline nor the airline would let me change my return flight. When I finally was well enough to travel 48 hours later, a last-minute one-way flight back home was $1500. If I took a later flight so I got a lower price there, I still was stuck paying for a hotel for longer, also at last-minute prices.
Priceline will be cheaper than almost everyone else, just be aware of the risk you're taking.
I use Travelocity for everything myself. They usually come within a few percent of the best price I can find through traditional bookings.
If you fly enough to shell out the $75 for their "Preferred Traveller Elite" program, you get tons of perks. You also get 800# where you can call and talk to someone IMMEDIATELY, no waiting. The people who answer that special number will also pretty much do anything you want them to. I even got one guy there to call up a tiny tiny airline(so small they don't list with SABRE), and try to haggle a price for me for a charter flight.
Why? Well, The travel agent got us the same price. And she pointed out a few things about cruises we didn't know. And she had a bottle of wine sent to our table during the cruise. Experience does matter, and if you find someone who knows there business, then you can do well going with a real live person.
And everything I said matters even more if you are going into unchartered territory, like somewhere you have never been to before.
But, price does rule, so if you know what you want, and you are sure that you can get a better deal online, then book away.
Just don't torture yourself on your honeymoon with some leave at 6am --- take 7 connections --- got it from priceline flight.
www.avacal.com -- the home page of pete shaw
Others have debated the pros and cons of Priceline.com. For a good synopsis, as well as *awesome* tips on how to use Priceline, checkout the Bidding for Travel Forum. It IS possible to submit mutiple bids, figure out the absolute lowest price, and avoid problems. They also have link to Priceline good for $10 off per airline ticket and $25 off vacation packages.
Not to sound like a commercial or anything, but I would go with Orbitz IF you are strictly looking for airfares and such. Within the last couple of years, I have stopped trying all the different sites for fares, and now I just use Orbitz. I even used relatives who were travel agents before that, but they couldn't really find anything cheaper than the online stuff for just airfare.
But if you are looknig for like a tour package, like adding a good hotel, car and other activities, use a travel agency. They have the abliitity to link up special deals that they have with certain hotels and car rental places.
As an example, I recently went on a trip to Maui. After looking high and low for open hotel rooms, special deals on those travel sites and lots of googling, my friends and I just gave up and went to a travel agency. That day we had our tickets, hotel, and car all set up, with special deals for some snorkeling, etc if we wanted to do those things.
Hope this helps!
0- Eamonman Proud member of DNRC
This is your honeymoon... don't take any chances unless you like your couch :)
A good family friend of ours is a travel agent.. she booked our honeymoon and a couple of other trips. What is great is that she knows *us* and what *we* like. We just need to tell her where we want to go and when and she does the rest. She finds the right hotels, etc... to suit us.
Sure it might cost a little more, but it's worth it in my mind.
I'd recommend finding a travel agent that will get to know you and your tastes... it just makes things simpler in the long run.
It's too easy!
Geek... Honeymoon...
Fill in the blank.
You should just hand me the karma now.
If you really want to get where you're going instead of rotting in airports and suffering canceled flights, use either a real, live travel agent -- or someone like Travelocity/Expedia.
:)
I've had very, very bad luck with flights from Priceline/Orbitz/Hotwire.
Basically, with the auction/super-duper-discount flights I've had the following problems:
* Flight departure time changes drastically multiple times before the day of flight. Sometimes you get a notification email. Sometimes you don't (always confirm your flight the morning of). Sometimes you get shifted between flights.
* Sometimes up to 3 connections that take you on ridiculous routes and quintuple your travel time ( Jacksonville to Raliegh to DC to Miami?)
* No way in hell you'll sit together if it's a full flight.
* The usual delays, bad food, getting bumped, canceled flights, etc that you can expect even paying full price.
Bottom line: it's your freakin' honeymoon. You want to be minimizing your chances for catastrophe, not adding to 'em.
You really don't want it to be in your fault if you spend half of your trip stuck in Atlanta because you saved $20 a head on tickets. Start the marriage off with a bang, that would.
You are going on a geek cruise aren't you?
You asked about making reservations online. Are you trying to save a buck, or trying to shoot for convenience?
Like many people, I've made many reservations, happily and without problem I might add, using Travelocity or travel.yahoo.com. That's a good way to save a buck or two.
If money is less of an object, and you're shooting for convenience, call up a travel agent. Pull open the yellow pages and look for "travel" in your metropolitan area. That's what I did for my honeymoon in October 2000. I conducted most of my business over the phone and through e-mail with my agent (contrary to what most services tell you, the agents get kick backs roughly equal to what yahoo or travelocity do), and only had to go to the office to pick up the tickets. I wanted to get access to some extra services, like a premium floor at the Contemporary 2 at DisneyWorld (I couldn't figure out how to do that over the web 2.5 years ago). But calling up and talking to a travel agent helped me get flight arrangements, park tickets at a discount, and set up a private car so we didn't have to hunt down a taxi to take us to and from the hotel.
Yes, you might possibly be able to save a few bucks, or use this novel "Internet" to help you make all the decisions yourself. Or, a travel agent who does this kind of thing professionally may be able to help you out and find you options you didn't know you had. Maybe you pay the same. Maybe you pay more, but get better accomodations.
Choose carefully. Your bride will remember this experience well -- and tell her friends about it. Heck, you probably will, too.
Oh, and Disney World was great. If you go, go first to Epcot Center's gift store and let it slip that you're on your honeymoon. They used to give out bride and groom mouse ears. Once you have those, you get to the front of LOTS of lines. And October is a very temperate, less busy time of year to go.
I wish you many happy years.
They fall down badly if you travel a slightly unusual itinerary such as:
For this type of route, with enough patience, you can still do much of your research on Travelocity. But you need to apply trial and error combinations of individual segments, then call the airline to get the REAL price, which is often quite a bit lower, especially in the discontinuous example.
Another reason to actually call the airline rather than book online, is that they occasionally offer you a lower fare that is technically unavalable because the cutoff date has passed. I guess they have some discretionary flexibility. I don't know why they voluntarily do this, but it's happend to me more than once. British Airways is particularly good about this.
Online Trave, cool, I'm gonna book my VR trip tomorrow. How much longer before I can just upload myself.
Really, go to a local travel agent for this trip. This is not your average vacation, it's your honeymoon. When you go through a real live travel agent, you end up with this nice neat packet containing all your tickets, information, transfers, luggage tags (they handled it from the airport to our hotel room). The agent can tell you things you won't have heard of elsewhere, and can steer you clear of crappy stuff. With a wedding going on, the last thing you want to have to worry about is all the details of the trip
Here is a true story. My wife and I just went to Hawaii last month. Unfortunately, traffic at Logan airport was insane, and we actually missed our flight out. We grabbed our cell phone, and left our travel agent a message at about 7 am. We got to Hawaii about 5 and a half hours late, due to rerouting to all new flights. When we got there, a nice woman had our names on a sign right at the gate to meet us. She gave us leis, got our luggage taken care of, and escorted us to our hotel. We were completely taken care of, because our agent wanted to make sure we were ok, and that we had a good time when we got there. Let's see priceline do THAT.
I travel fairly frequently, and have come to learn that both are valuble tools, depending on what you want to accomplish. As many have said, if youw want a well-planned door-to-door holiday, go to your local travel agent. For the most part, they're good and honest people. They'll get you what you need and organize it all, although you (obviously) pay for that priviledge. Almost every family holiday me and the crew go on is done up by our not-so-local travel agent. That's another thing: get reccomendations from friends re a good one. Ours is a bitch to get to, but Chris has never failed us, and has found some amazing stuff for us.
On the other hand, if you just want to get from A to B, do it yourself. Anytime I fly accross the pond I just pull up all the online sites, route myself through a major US hub, and get home cheap. Granted, changing in DC is a pain, and the trip may take a bit longer, but that's why God invented Melatonin. And any small intra-European jaunt is straight to easyJet/Ryanair. If it's within Europe, you don't need a travel agent - flights are all online, and most of Europe speaks one of English/French/German, or has a working knowledge of one them.
My experience: if it's simple, DIY. If it's complicated and/or really expensive, use a travel agent. And make sure they're bonded (ATOL in the UK, I think IATA is international).
Cue The Sun...
When we're traveling for business or to a place we're familiar with, we almost always book online, but for a pleasure trip to an unfamiliar place, real live travel agents are invaluable!
ALWAYS use Priceline.com for hotels and rent-a-cars.
NEVER use Priceline.com for airlines, also NEVER use HOTWIRE or any other pig-in-a-poke service for airlines. You will be royally screwed.
Recommended for airlines: AA.com. Orbitz.com (and also for rent-a-cars when Priceline comes up empty).
Travelocity.com for hotels, only if Priceline comes up empty.
I was trying to book a trip from Houston to Chicago and had a few web sites going at the same time to compare prices. Once I got everything entered in, Expedia quoted me a price about 20% cheaper than all the other sites. I clicked through the purchase system, entered my address, credit card, etc...and when I finally clicked the very last "Buy This Now" button, a new page came up saying the price had jumped another $200, making it more expensive than all the other sites (which I had closed after seeing the Expedia quote).
Needless to say I was very pissed about entering in all my credit card info BEFORE seeing the real price, and I went over to another site to book the trip. I won't be using Expedia for anything in the future because of this.
I went to Kauai, see http://hompage.mac.com/Kauai2003 for some photos, anyway, I had a great experience with expedia. We paid a little less than $900 per person for room and air from Denver, CO, and we stayed for 8 nights/9 days. We didn't stay at a luxury hotel, but a Hawaiian owned little place. I was right on the beach, one of the quieter and nicer places I have stayed in. They had a website that I checked, and I also searched the web for reviews about the property. I have also purchased Las Vegas weekends from expedia.com, and trips to San Diego as well. I have had nothing but good experience with them, and I think that their pricing is hard to beat, but I do check around before I buy. If you look at the hotel properties in expedia, they usually list the hotel's phone number too, and you can always call them. One more thing is that I have went on numerous trips through expedia, and I have yet to have a reservation problem, I dont even carry my expedia numbers or print outs or anything anymore. One word of warning is avoid hotels.com. I tried to book a room for my father through them, the hotel had no idea he was coming, then his card was charged months later. A few hotel desk employees have told me that they do not like hotels.com, so... Anyway I would go with whoever gives the best deal.
Business travel where you are going to go sit in a hotel on a specific itenerary, ALWAYS book online with priceline
I have mod points and I am not afraid to use them
Just becareful of hotel accomodations not being as advertised. Someone (either Orbitz or the MGM Grand) made a mistake and I got a lower quality room than I booked. The hotel stood firm that they would not honor the description I printed off from the Orbitz reservation, but Orbitz said all I needed to do was requst a refund and fax the bill. Maybe a one-time glitch. Maybe a consistent scam.
But for flying Orbitz is very good. consistently low priced. Also check iflyswa.com -- Southwest Airlines. You can only book on their site, but they've got good rates for flights and vacations.
Always use a credit card and have more than enough available credit not only for purchases but also for the "holds" put on your card when a hotel/car rental company "authorizes" your card. The credit hold surprises many people because they do not automatically expire if you pay cash at the end of your stay/rental. It's best to have a couple of cards available to you because you do not know what might happen, as the parent to this post related.
I have friends who use priceline exclusively for travel and they swear by it. But knowing my temper if anything went wrong in the tight, constricting parameters defined by priceline, I'd be swearing AT it.
P.S., I know about the credit holds and the inconveniences therein from my time as the maintainer of the credit card subsystem to a major car rental company in the US. Most travel related business (hotels, car renters, entertainment avenues) will put a significant credit hold on your account ($200 to $500 dollars) each time you "auth" with one of them. Then, when you pay cash at the end of the transaction, you'd expect that the credit hold would be removed -- it isn't. Even if the T&E company sends the code to remove the credit hold, your bank decides when to really release the funds for use. Many times we received calls from escalated complaints saying an important customer was declined at their hotel or at the airport ticket counter because of a credit hold (or series of credit holds) placed at the car rental counter. Yikes! Even though an authorization doesn't take money from your account it DOES reduce your available credit. Do not forget this!
P.P.S. If your curious, yes, I was responsible for millions of dollars every day ("settlements", that is completed transactions that are submitted for payment). And, yes, *twice* I was partially responsible for double billing an entire day's run (thousands of people). One of those times I used a field defined in the API for voiding/reversing a transaction only to find out that the credit card processor didn't honor the field and the double charge became a triple. Yes, it was too stressful messing up people's finances. Of course now I'm the author of a drug dispensing control system. At least I won't have ANGRY customers. . . :)
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
When I have to travel on business, I generally book through either Travelocity or directly through the airline's website - whichever's cheaper. When I took my last business trip, though, I flew Southwest (Manchester, NH to Chicago Midway), and I was sufficiently impressed that I'll now seek them out whenever possible.
For personal travel, I use those two, plus I've used Expedia. I won't use Orbitz because I hate their ads too much. Between them and X10, I blame them both for the proliferation of pop-ups and pop-unders.
Hotels I usually book directly through the chain - we have a friend who runs a Marriott hotel in the area, so that contact usually helps out. If you're a AAA member (or any one of dozens of organizations), there's usually discount rates available at most major chains.
However, this is your honeymoon. There's no margin for error here, so I'd use an agent to book it for you. When self-booking, there's a lot more chances to screw up. You only get one chance at a honeymoon per marriage.
-- Josh Turiel
"2. Do not eat iPod Shuffle."
Depends on where you want to go!
I like NPR's The Savvy Traveler since they usually give really good advice and pearls of wisdom. Here are a few places that I've thought about going: Australia and Brazil
III.IIVIVIXIIVIVIIIVVIIIIXVIIIXIIIIIIIIVIIIIVVIII
For airline tickets, I like Expedia. The prices are about the same, and unlike priceline, picking the time of day and connections is a huge advantage. You'll understand if you have to leave for the airport at 4 in the morning instead of 10. Sometimes that extra money is well spent avoiding extra connections and airports with bad weather. Make sure you get e-tickets to save on mandatory FedEx shipping and handling for paper tickets.
Priceline rules for hotels. Use someother service to check out what's available - note where railroads pass by, etc, and then bid accordingly in the geographic region. Oftentimes, suburbs nearby can save you a lot. I usually end up at $40-50 per night for 3+ star. Remember, their philosophy is that bad business is better than no business at all.
Electronic tickets mean you can use automated check-in. With e-ticket and no luggage, check-in to gate for United at SFO is consistently under 30 minutes (TSA trained agents help too as they are much faster than the previous private-security agents).
I think I last used a paper ticket in Peru.
sulli
RTFJ.
I've been very happy with Hotwire with hotels, rental cars, and flights. We've gotten some fabulous deals.
Yes, it's a blog. Sorry if that offends you.
A good travel agent can sometimes get you a fabulous package deal. My wife and I went to Cancun. Our travel agent put us in a very nice condo with a kitchen. There were several restaurants on-site and a grocery store. The flight was one of those charter airlines.
The point: for this I would go with an agent who has experience booking honeymoons. He/she may have a great place or a great package deal.
Yes, it's a blog. Sorry if that offends you.
That's what they hope you believe. Read the contract. It's different.
Paper tickets are primarily useful if you are traveling on a full-fare unrestricted ticket; if your flight is delayed you can go straight to another airline and your paper ticket is as good as gold. If you are on a restricted ticket, like most leisure travelers, the other airline will not accept your ticket unless your orignal airline endorses it over to them, so you'll have to stand in line at your original airline's ticket counter anyway.
If you want real flying information from frequnet fliers who know all the tricks and rules, go to FlyerTalk instead of slashdot.
That's how a travel agent feels about travel. Sure, you can MAKE travel your hobby, and learn enough to do without an agent. But you can't just say, "I've got Orbitz and Travelocity, I don't need an agent!" anymore than your mom can say, "I've got shopper.com and pricewatch, I don't need Dell or Gateway to build my PC!"
Two suggestions:
If you don't want to take any chances, book through the Ritz-Carlton.
Alternatively, look at Onesite.info's travel page