Planning Your Next Trip? Do It Right!

Most everyone has heard of the internet.  If you don't have a Hotmail or AOL e-mail address, you might even be aware of travel sites like Travelocity, Orbitz, or Expedia.  Ideally, you have heard of Kayak for all of your flight, car, cruise, and general "where-the-crap-should-I-go" queries.  It is also helpful for aggregating hotel information internationally, but I do not recommend this site for domestic hotel stays (more on that in a moment).

Truth is, many of these sites access data from the same travel database company, Cambridge-based ITA Software.  Incidentally, Google recently purchased the company for $700 Million [Google Travel, anyone?]). Therefore, until Google creates some ridiculously amazing travel tool, the only differentiating factor between searching for your travel deals from Kayak, Orbitz, Expedia, Bing, or others is the user experience and interface.  This is where Kayak beats the pants off the rest of these jokers.  The experience begins as you would expect, but once the query is complete, you can apply filters to just about every detail related to travel (take off and landing times, dates, stops, airports, airlines, flight quality, trip duration, layover duration, etc.).  Also, my experience has shown that Kayak uses additional international carrier data that doesn't show up elsewhere.

If you're looking for a deal on domestic US hotel stays and you're flexible with hotel brands, there is no other substitute worth looking at besides Priceline (Name Your Own Price, to be exact).  The quandary with naming your own price is having a frame of reference on where to begin.  Using forum sites like biddingfortravel.com or betterbidding.com will give you a general idea on what prices are winning which star ratings in different city zones.  Would you believe that the average price paid for a 4 Star hotel in New York City is $132.56?  Did you know you can stay in a 3.5 Star hotel in Los Angeles for $61.18?

Truth is, the bidding process can get emotional and a little tricky at times, but using Priceline will save you far more cash than an extra 100,000 loyalty points could ever offer for paying retail.  The good news?  I am involved in developing a travel website that will hold your hand through every step of the bidding process. Using current and historical data and pricing trends, it will prompt you on the starting bid, bid increments, and bidding strategy.  Brilliant!!!  You can be sure I'll post on this later, so stay tuned!

If you're planning a trip and you're not a fanatic of Excel, it may be worth your time checking out TripLittle.  This free service will walk you through the whole process of budgeting your trip, creating your itinerary, and planning your packing list.  It's very simple to use, and it just might remind you of something you hadn't considered.  Perhaps you forgot that the price of fuel in Europe is $9.00 / gallon. :)

One more thing to consider as you're planning your next amazing trip:  Once you've aggregated the costs of flight, hotel, car rental, food, souvenirs, and all that other junk, the "Total Cost" at the bottom of the list may surprise you.  What may surprise you even more is looking into the cost of a Cruise instead.  I recently priced out the cost of a three week trip from the US to UAE, Jordan, Israel, and Egypt.  Not including museum, touring, and souvenir costs, it would be about $5,800 per couple (and that includes spending 14+ nights in my guest bedroom, free of charge).  I looked at that and thought to myself, "self, that seems like a lot."

So, just for kicks, I decided to price out a three week Mediterranean Cruise, along with flights to and from Barcelona.   The result?  $6,500 per couple, including airfare, two nights in a hotel, cruise price including taxes, and $500 each for tours and souvenirs.  And get this, you would see Morocco, the Canary Islands, Madeira, Spain, Italy, Greece, Egypt, and Malta!  I won't speak for you, and maybe you're just dying to visit me and Dubai and the Emirates Palace, but I would take the Cruise over the trip any day of the week.  Cruises are saweeeeet! My two cents, anyway.

One last word - last minute cruises generally go for a song, so if you can stomach a little ambiguity about where you want to cruise, try to book within 30 days of departure for the best deals around.  Also, go through the hassle of visiting CruiseCompete.com - I got a quote from them substantially less than any other travel site for my Mediterranean cruise last Summer.  In October, there was an 18 day Royal Caribbean cruise departing from Dubai, touring Oman, India, the Maldives, and porting in Singapore for $499 US.  Who in their right mind could pass up an opportunity like that???

Happy traveling!!!

Kayak
Priceline
BidWizard (Our new hotel booking site - coming soon!)
TripLittle
CruiseCompete

Questions?  Other helpful sites?  Let me know in the comments!!!