The use of travel websites has become one of the most predominant ways of booking travel. There are sites to book flights…sites to book cruises…sites to book hotels…sites to do all of that…heck, there are even sites to check all of the other sites to
make sure which site has the best price. Soon there will be sites to check the sites checking the sites for pricing!
All that being said, our primary source for booking travel is using online sources. It is a team effort with Roma sitting on the bed with her laptop and me sitting at the desk with mine. We take the time to try to identify the activities and locations we absolutely “must see” and we start planning well in advance. We want to be as well informed as possible so that when we hit the travel planning websites we are not sheep in a pack of wolves.
As such, we have put together a list of our ideas and suggestions for the frugal traveler when using travel websites to book your travels.
#1 – Research and Look Around
When buying a car in today’s day and age, you wouldn’t buy a car from the first place you visit. You’ve probably done some internet searching to narrow down what you are looking for and can answer certain questions already when you start…Do you have brand preferences? Do you have any brands to avoid? SUV? Sedan? Sports Car? Then you go take them for test drives 
and eventually decide.
You should go through a process when you are planning your vacation as well. At a minimum you should know something about the location you are going to and what you want to see. By doing your research, you can learn more about the location and discover activities you may not have thought of.
You also discover the best time of year to visit for YOU. Do you want to be there during the busiest month of the year where you have to fight for beach space? Are you ok going somewhere in the spring when the weather might be a little bit cooler to avoid the crowds and perhaps locate a deal?
You can also start to get a feel for the cost of the trip. When researching, inevitably advertisements will show up on your search screens advertising the locations you are researching. Something like “Day trip to XXXXX for $50” will appear and when you see something like that, it may serve to check out the pricing for when you want to travel. In all likelihood, that price is for unfilled slots for tomorrow or for a trip to a beach in the middle of winter. Checking out pricing for the timeframe you are looking for will help avoid sticker shock when you do go to reserve something.
#2 – Don’t limit yourself to just one website
Have you ever been on one website and book a flight or hotel just to turn around and see it on another site for less money? It is really aggravating and we suppose that this is where the sites that check prices on 20 other sites come from. When you are 
booking anything related to travel, it makes the best sense to price on as many different websites as possible and in as many different combinations as possible. If we book flight and hotel on travelsiteA.com, how does that compare to if we book the flight on one and the hotel on another?
What about the use of an agency? There are online versions of travel agencies as well where you can plan the entire trip from soup to nuts on website. We recently used one all in one service and found that they were very well priced with regards to flight and excursions but their hotels were more expensive and sub-par and we could book our rail travel directly with the national rail service for less.
#3 – Don’t limit yourself to just 3rd party travel planning websites
I’ve previously mentioned the ease of going to one website, entering your dates, and receiving a listing of all flights or accommodations for those dates. This is great for planning purposes, but once you pick a flight itinerary or hotel you might be interested in don’t be afraid of going directly to the company’s website to compare prices. Many of the direct airline and/or hotel websites indicate they provide the lowest available prices, which makes sense. After all, they have to pay commission to the other booking sites.
We’ve found two things going directly to the vendor’s website:
- Cheaper fares/reservations – not a lot but we have seen it
- No issues earning points (you have to go directly to them to use points anyway)
Again, this is an effort to find the best at reasonable prices and may not work all the time but it is worth 15 minutes of your time.
#4 – Read the fine print
Make sure you understand what you are getting yourself into. Are the fares refundable? Do you have 24 hours to cancel if you 
change your mind? Is there a minimum you have to book with an individual travel site?
As mentioned in #2, for our a recent trip, we used the all one service and discovered that their hotels were more expensive and sub-par. We tried to adjust the itinerary to remove all hotels but keep the flight and all excursions. After reading the disclaimers, we found that we had to book at least three night’s hotels through them for the pricing we were getting. We decided that the pricing was still better than we were getting elsewhere and found three night’s hotels we were OK with and used them and booked the remainder of our hotels separately.
#5 – Clear your cookies/browser history
Let me make one thing clear…We are not IT people…we are lucky that we know RAM is memory and not something you lay siege to a castle with…HOWEVER, we know enough to listen to those who know more than we do. We have been told by folks that we think are reliable that I should clear my “cookies” and/or browser history and that it is important. Apparently these websites track “cookies” and can tell if you come back and shop again. They continue to track you and it may start affecting your prices. Conceptually it sounds logical to me. Theoretically:
If you clear your “cookies” it’s as if you are new customer every time and you may get the best price because they want to win your business. If you don’t clear these “cookies”, they can track you and know that 
you want to book a specific flight (or whatever). You keep coming back and they know it and could quote you whatever price they wanted. If you looked Monday ant it was 250, Tuesday it was 255, Wednesday it was 260…etc…you may be influenced to say “Darn, the price keeps going up and I should buy before it goes up more”.
Again, we’re not IT people so we will trust our sources…Roma handles this because they just laugh at me when I ask “Are these cookies chocolate chip?”
#6 – Understand your layovers
We’ve seen plenty of flights that show up in searches with 55 minute layovers in a layover city. Knowing how large some airports are and how many terminals exist at a single airport…I don’t trust them…not at all…I usually plan for 20 minutes to get
off the airplane and if gates close a half hour before the flight, then that gives you 5 minutes to run to the next door to catch your connection. I’ve read that if the airline sells you the short layover, they have to put you on the next flight but again…I don’t trust them…not at all…Also, it screws up your itinerary.
This is exactly why you should understand your layovers. Search for the airport you will be connecting in. What do other people say about layovers there? For example, we’ve been through Frankfurt and we had to collect our bags, go through security and have our passport checked, give them back our bags and then head to our departure gate. I’ve searched and people have noted that an hour is way to small of a layover for Charles de Gaulle in Paris as well.
Understand your tolerance for how narrow of a connection you are willing to stomach.
#7 – Don’t be afraid to walk away and try again a different day
Planning a vacation is hard. Everything worth doing IS hard. But just like everything else worth doing, it is worth doing RIGHT. Looking and researching between multiple websites can be a very confusing endeavor. Everything starts to get jumbled both on paper and in your head.
It is better to put down your pen, clear your cookies and close your browser instead of feeling pressured into buying something. So walk away if you need to. You can come back to it later. Remember, checking prices and running itineraries online is FREE.
