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Why Bargain Travel Sites May No Longer Be Bargains (backchannel.com)
Aggregators like Expedia have made us lazy -- and we may be missing out on the best deals. From a report on Backchannel: Most of us rely on metasearch engines, like Priceline, Expedia, or Travelocity, which typically use dozens (sometimes as many as 200) of online travel agents, called OTAs, and aggregators to find the best deals. (A metasearch engine and an aggregator are interchangeable terms -- they both scour other sites and compile data under one roof. An OTA is an actual travel agency that actually does the booking and is the lone site responsible for everything you buy through them.) We rely on these sites because we assume they have the secret sauce -- the most powerful search engines, tweaked by superstar programmers armed with the most sophisticated algorithms -- to guide us to the cheapest options. With a single search, you can feel assured that you are paying a rock bottom price. Over time, however, the convention has flipped. As competition among the sites heated up, the hard-to-believe cheap fares required some filtering. A too-good-to-be-true fare ($99 to Europe from California) usually came with a catch (the $400, indirect, ticket home). And as the business models that on which these aggregators rely are getting tighter, the deals are getting worse. How can you be certain you're getting the lowest quote? The short answer is, you can't.
I can tell you from working in the hotel industry... the lower priced rooms are the worst rooms. Either they're the most worn, something's wrong with the A/C, or they're adjacent to noise sources. A much better recipe for a pleasant hotel stay is to find a hotel in the general price range you're looking for, then go to the hotel site and select a room based on your budget.
I've found the best overall savings are if you stay loyal to your preferred airline or hotel chain. Get on their rewards card or miles / points system, and book directly through them. You get the best deals, and a lot more support if anything goes wrong with your reservation. Try getting help from an airline or hotel company if you book through a third party...
Just because I can hook a shark from a boat, I do no offer to wrestle it in the water.
They will advertise cheap hotel rooms but those have the worst views of the garbage dump.
That's a pisser. I'd rather pay a little more and get the best view of the garbage dump.