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Top 6 Online Travel Booking Tips | April 25, 2008
By Andrew Rideout
1 Be flexible. By and large, if you are less specific about times and dates, you are more likely to save money. An identical flight two hours earlier or later could be a few hundred bucks cheaper. Traditionally, flights are more expensive on weekends or holidays and the cheapest day of the week to fly seems to be Tuesday.
2 Before you book, take a few minutes to look for promotion codes. There are numerous Web sites that do nothing but categorize different promotional codes (many of which are unadvertised). Nearly every online travel site has a field for promotion codes or bonus vouchers. Try opening up a separate browser window and entering “free (name of site) promotion codes” and test out a few of the results. Sometimes they are expired or incorrect, but five minutes of searching can sometimes save you more than 10 per cent.
3 There are still many leading travel sites that only deal in U.S. departures, so make sure to confirm Canadian departures.
4 There are several smaller sites or applications that deal exclusively in trip comparisons. Some of them, like Sidestep, need to be downloaded; they will then pop up every time you go to a travel site. Farechase and Qixo are solid offerings, or you can subscribe to the fee-based bestfares.com if you book online frequently.
5 Almost every site has an online newsletter, but your e-mail inbox could be overwhelmed with knock-down prices on random flights to places you’ll never go.
6 Sites like hotwire.com offer an auction-based process similar to eBay. However, there are a few catches. For instance, you won’t know what airline you fly until you actually pay for the ticket, and you won’t be able to select your flight times.
1 Be flexible. By and large, if you are less specific about times and dates, you are more likely to save money. An identical flight two hours earlier or later could be a few hundred bucks cheaper. Traditionally, flights are more expensive on weekends or holidays and the cheapest day of the week to fly seems to be Tuesday.
2 Before you book, take a few minutes to look for promotion codes. There are numerous Web sites that do nothing but categorize different promotional codes (many of which are unadvertised). Nearly every online travel site has a field for promotion codes or bonus vouchers. Try opening up a separate browser window and entering “free (name of site) promotion codes” and test out a few of the results. Sometimes they are expired or incorrect, but five minutes of searching can sometimes save you more than 10 per cent.
3 There are still many leading travel sites that only deal in U.S. departures, so make sure to confirm Canadian departures.
4 There are several smaller sites or applications that deal exclusively in trip comparisons. Some of them, like Sidestep, need to be downloaded; they will then pop up every time you go to a travel site. Farechase and Qixo are solid offerings, or you can subscribe to the fee-based bestfares.com if you book online frequently.
5 Almost every site has an online newsletter, but your e-mail inbox could be overwhelmed with knock-down prices on random flights to places you’ll never go.
6 Sites like hotwire.com offer an auction-based process similar to eBay. However, there are a few catches. For instance, you won’t know what airline you fly until you actually pay for the ticket, and you won’t be able to select your flight times.
