travelling tips

Ironically, the best site for booking a flight is not one that actually books flights, like Expedia, Orbitz or Travelocity. What you want instead is a meta search site that scans the fares of multiple airlines and travel booking sites simultaneously and sends you to the source to book the fare you want.

Kayak.com is the best option, but even this mega meta searcher doesnt pull up departure info and prices for every airline. To fill in the gaps, check Mobissimo.com and DoHop.com, which are good for locating flights overseas (within Europe especially), and Momondo.com, which says it scours more than 650 websites for the cheapest fares possible.

To root out cheap fares you might otherwise miss, check the website of the airport that youll be flying into; it will list all the carriers that offer service there, including charter airlines that dont show up in online flight searches. Also, look closely at low cost carriers, like Spirit Airlines, AirTran and, in Europe, RyanAir, which will usually save you money on the fare but be prepared to be nickel and dimed for everything else (including hefty fees for checking bags or checking in at the airport instead of online) and dont expect much in the way of customer service.

One of the first steps to getting a good price on a flight is figuring out how much other travelers are paying. To find out, plug your route into Kayak.com, then click on the sites Fare History charts, which display the lowest fares and the overall average prices found during the month youve selected. Kayak also shows you a calendar of the best fares for your itinerary found by other users in the past 48 hours. While theres no guarantee youll get a steal, at least youll have a ballpark figure of how much you should be paying.

Yes, its more inbox clutter, but if you subscribe to the e newsletters of the airlines, hotels and car rental companies you like to use, youll often find out before the general public about promotions like last minute hotel discounts, weekend rental specials and flights that can suddenly be booked for fewer frequent flyer miles. The prime deals are always snapped up quickly, so any edge helps. Note that for many of these promotions, you must enter a special code when booking and if you dont, youll be charged full price.

Unless your travel dates are absolutely set in stone, use flexible date searches for flights. Just about every airlines website offers the feature in which you can retrieve prices for a few days before and after your selected dates as do major sites like Travelocity and Kayak. It tends to be cheaper to fly on days other than Friday and Sunday, but dont assume anything. Flying just one day earlier or later than your ideal date could mean saving an easy $100.

Once you have an ideal flight price in mind, track airfares with a service like Yapta.com or Hotwire.coms Trip Watcher. Simply register your route and dates, and when the fare drops to a price youve chosen, youll be alerted via e mail. Its way less time consuming than the old method of doing a new search every few days or every few minutes.

Its a basic rule of economics if you want a deal, eliminate the middleman. Major booking engines like Expedia have been dropping their transaction fees, but even so, when you book directly with an airline or a hotel, you get same or better prices 99% of the time and better service 100% of the time.

Most airlines and booking engines sell packages that lump together airfare, hotel and sometimes meals, airport transfers and activities into one price. The vagueness of the combo approach favors airlines and hotels because it allows them to quickly fill up planes and rooms without announcing how low theyre willing to go. Certainly, packages can be incredible deals, but occasionally theyre not. To be sure, check DealBase.com, which will break down most packages and tally up the bill for each individual component of the deal.

Hotels and car rental companies will discount drastically to use up inventory, so keep shopping even after you buy. That $60 a day rental car you reserved might end up being $30 the week before your rental date, or you may get an ocean view hotel room for the price of the garden view you reserved. Always review the cancellation policy first, of course.

Southwest, Alaska and JetBlue will refund you the difference (as a credit for future flights) if the fare for your flight drops after you buy your ticket. Other airlines consider it an itinerary change and apply a fee of $50 to $250.