Web Sites Can Help You Save Money on Your Vacation This Year
September 16, 2003
Contributing writer: Robin Nobles
This year with the tight economy, we may need to tighten our pocket books a little before taking a vacation. Believe it or not, the first thing I'm going to tell you to do has nothing to do with the Internet and everything to do with saving money, getting the best travel plans, and saving yourself a tremendous amount of time: find a local travel agent.
A travel agent has the capability of looking for possible flights with all the airlines leaving from any of the airports near you. If you search online, you would have to visit each of the major airlines and search through each of the airports to come up with the same information. Do you have that kind of time?
You can certainly use a large travel site like Travelocity, but again, you have to search the airports separately, and you have little flexibility with your flights. You may like the flight times for leaving on your trip, but you don't like the return flights, and you often can't change them.
So, while I highly recommend going through your local travel agent for airline reservations and vacation packages, you can still find many ways to save money on vacations on the Internet.
For example, at FindVacationRentals.com, you can find discounted vacation rentals and condos up to 70% off. Myrtle Beach rentals begin at $29, and Key West rentals begin at $75. Once you pick your destination, the site will search through its database and offer suggestions for you. You can see pictures of the rental property with more information about the general area, and you can even book your reservations online.
SkyAuction is an interesting site where you can bid on what you want to pay for hotel or airline tickets. The site is particularly useful for last minute trips when you can't seem to get good deals anywhere else.
You can also bid on hotel rooms, airline tickets, rental cars, cruises, and more at Priceline.com. When you use services like this, keep in mind that they're able to offer these prices because you have to be willing to travel at times that might not be convenient in order to get the best deals.
At CheapTickets, you don't bid on hotel rooms or travel vacations. Instead, their database will try to find the cheapest tickets for the dates of your choice.
Finally, be sure to visit The Top Ten Travel Resources site, which will give you tips for frequent flyers, travel safety, tourism offices, trains, and even travel guides. Need more frequent flyer miles to get some free tickets? Purchase them at this site. Looking for stores that sell travel supplies? You'll find it all at this unique Web site.
Copyright 2002 Robin Nobles. All rights reserved.
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Robin Nobles, Director of Training, Academy of Web Specialists, has trained several thousand people in her online search engine marketing courses and is the content provider for (GRSeo) Search Engine Optimizer software. She also teaches 3-day hands on search engine marketing workshops in locations across the globe with Search Engine Workshops.
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