Booking On-Line

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More than 30 million Americans will click that “Buy Now” button this year. And they’ll be billed for a projected $26.5 billion by on-line travel sites. With thousands of sites out there, what draws travelers to one site over another? Bells and whistles? Brilliant photos and streaming video?

The answer is pretty low-tech: “Deals,” says Philip Wolf, president and CEO of travel research firm PhoCusWright. Nine out of 10 on-line travel buyers say price is a major factor, according to PhoCusWright’s November 2001 telephone survey of 10,000 Americans.

Great, but how does the novice—and even the experienced Web surfer—find the best price? A lot of hunting, says Edward Hasbrouck, author of The Practical Nomad Guide to the Online Travel Marketplace. Sadly, there’s no magic address. No one-stop shopping. No single site puts an end to hours of searching or that uneasy feeling that the best deal remains hidden in a shadowy, double-password-protected corner of the Internet.

While there isn’t a single storefront that will always guarantee the best deal, there are strategies that can help you net your discount. Your hunt should begin with the recognition that you have taken on a new profession—travel agent—and you’re your own client. (Feel free to reference this story while surfing on your computer.) Learn the tricks of the trade,
and you won’t be the person in a $285-a-night room at New York’s Waldorf-Astoria right next door to a guy who’s made it known he paid $105.

So let’s talk strategy. Begin by gathering unbiased information about deals and destinations. “The overwhelming majority of sites are not working for you, the consumer,” Hasbrouck says. “They’re working for the suppliers of travel products.” Visit sites such as Smarterliving.com, which provides practical consumer advice like the best deals to Kauai and how to get around the island once you are there. Smarterliving also consolidates all on-line special fares and sends them to subscribers weekly. While Travelzoo.com distributes the top 20 Internet travel deals each week, Frommers.com provides independent destination information as well as real-life travel tips, like what vegetarians visiting Andalusia, Spain, can hope to eat. And if you trust other travelers to give you the most truthful insights, go to message boards like Fodors.com/forums, where travelers swap stories.

With reliable facts in hand, you’re primed for the hunt. Your first stop should be highly trafficked sites like Travelocity.com and Expedia.com. These have destination information and a significant inventory of flights, hotels, vacation packages and more.

Travelocity boasts access to 50,000 hotels and information on 4,000 destinations. These sites list mostly official fares, rather than steeply discounted special fares, but they give you good baseline information and can, at times, offer deals. If you prefer closing a deal quickly, you may be satisfied to stop here. But if the best value is your target, keep hunting. As Hasbrouck says, “Looking only at different official fare sites would be like comparison shopping for a car by going
to three different dealers and asking for the manufacturer’s suggested retail price.”

You now have a sense of what’s available and a general idea of what you may have to pay. If you aren’t up for
a lot of running around but want to feel like you’ve done due diligence, let “robots” do the legwork. Farechase.com and Sidestep.com scan many travel sites. Farechase scans 80 sites and Sidestep does 120; both retrieve travel products that match your parameters.

 

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