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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
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!
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...
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
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.
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.
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've seen prices triple on travelocity.ca for cars, I've given up on trying to book anything through them.