Archives: Travel Deals

A Round Up of the Most Popular and Best Travel Sites

Posted on by Chris

When you’re planning a vacation what are your ‘go to’ travel sites?  Tripadvisor is probably one of them, along with Expedia, Travelocity, or maybe Priceline?  These are included in ebizMBA’s list of the Top 15 Most Popular Travel Websites.  Rounding out the top 10, besides the four mentioned, are Yahoo Travel, Orbitz, Kayak, Hotels.com, Travelzoo and Hotwire.  A site that is missing from the list, but is better than them all, is one called Hipmunk, according to Forbes writer Bruce Upbin.  He believes it is the best travel site on the web because it does the best job in presenting hotel and flight information and provides the best user experience.  You can read his review of the site here.  Budget Travel also recommends Hipmunk.  The travel site is on its list of 8 Cool New Tools for Finding the Perfect Hotel.  Also on the list, along with a description and tips on how to utilize each site, are:

BackBid (backbid.com); DealBase (dealbase.com); HotelSweep (hotelsweep.com); Momondo (momondo.com); Room 77 (room77.com); Room Key (roomkey.com); YourRoomKey (yourroomkey.com).

And finally, consumer advocate (and former travel agency owner) Clark Howard has his list of favorite travel websites.  Many of the ones listed above are included here, but there’s also some additional ones such as SideStep.com, Mobissimo, and FareCompare.

What travel site do you recommend?

Hipmunk’s mascot (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Can those Daily Deal Sites Save You Money on Your Next Vacation?

Posted on by Chris

Daily deal sites such as Groupon, Eversave, Living Social, etc. frequently offer travel deals, but you have to read the fine print.  I recently examined two Orlando area deals to see how much money I could save if I purchased one of them.

The first was an offer from Eversave for a two night stay (2 adults, 2 kids, king room) in a resort in the theme park area.

The Eversave price was $199.  The regular room price was $202, and even cheaper if you could travel between 6/20 and 12/22.  If you sat through a time share presentation, you could purchase this deal for $79.  However, each Eversave purchase came with a $100 Universal Studios gift card.   So is this a good deal?  Only if Universal Studios is on your itinerary or you’re willing to go through the hell that is a time share presentation.

The second was a Groupon for a condominium resort in the theme park area (2 bedroom, sleeping 6).  I calculated for a 7 night stay.  The Groupon rate for the week was $529, while the regular rate was $623.  However, you had to book by 9/15 and travel by 10/20.  So the Groupon could save you $100 only if these dates match your travel dates.

Further searching on Craigslist led me to another theme park area resort where you could get a 3 bedroom for $623 (the same price as for the 2 bedroom above) for the same dates.

So while those daily deals may not necessarily be big bargains, it’s still worthwhile to check them out.   Just be sure to read the fine print and  do your research before purchasing!

 

Universal StudiosOrlando’s Islands of Adventure at Universal Studios