When booking, what site to use?

[adidas]

Ive tried these so far.

expedia.ca
bookit.com
orbitz.com
cheaptickets.com
priceline.com


seems like expedia.ca is the cheapest but the reason being, they dont include "resort fees" and baggage fees.

Anyone know of any other sites for cheap flight+hotel to vegas jun 22-27?

[msommers]

kayak

[adidas]

kayak is giving me an outrageous price.

hotel ~1000/5 days
flight 430/round trip

Unless im missing something, the total ends up being more than doing a package deal through one of the already mentioned sites.

[Stealth22]

The annoying radio jingle made me do this. Try iTravel2000.

[D'z Nutz]

Nobody uses hotwire anymore? I've had a lot of success with them.

[BokCh0y]

i use travelocity.com

[RickDaTuner]

to get the absolute cheapest, I use Cheapoair.com they seem to find combos of the cheepest flights, or even find carriers that the other sites don't seem to publish.

[ExtraSlow]

for Vegas, you can try vegas.com, if you like paying in USD.
I've looked around, and you're not likely to find anything cheaper than expedia for Vegas for a package deal.

[cmyden]

Here's the low down on booking a trip to Vegas. There's only really 3 unique sources of prices.

Everything else is just a brand that's trying to convince you their prices are unique. They're not.

Here are the 3 things you should do.

1. Take a look at WestjetVacations.com packages. These are the packages that every Canadian based travel site (or agent) is trying to sell you (ITravel2000, RedTag, FlightNetwork, FlightCentre and Westjet themselves).

The prices will be identical everywhere you look, so don't waste your time trying to compare.

Westjet packages will be bundled with a nice direct flight, which will come into play in the next step.


2. Compare the Westjet packages above with the packages on Expedia.

You can try Travelocity/Bookit/Orbitz as well, but you're essentially wasting your time for the most part. All of these sites are simply mashing together the latest airfare prices (which come from the same source) with the latest hotel prices (which come primarily from the same sources).

On rare occasion one of these companies will have hotel inventory that they've purchased in a block that they can offer at a cheaper price, but for the most part they will be identical.

*Major caveat* By mashing together the cheapest flight option first, a lot of times these flights will not be direct unless you change your flight option after searching.

It's hardly fair to directly compare the price of a package with a direct flight (such as from WestjetVacations) against a flight that has stopovers.

The other caveat is comparing the hotels. You can't compare a Westjet package at the Bellagio against an Expedia package at Circus Circus.


3. Build your own flight + hotel package. To do this effectively means getting the best deal on a flight first. To do that, use:

http://matrix1.itasoftware.com

(month long search)

And then search for the flight on Kayak.

Then look for a hotel option on Kayak or Expedia, add up the numbers, and see what it works out to per person, after *all* taxes/fees for flight + hotel.

Compare that to the numbers from the package prices in 1 and 2.

Again, take flight quality and hotel quality into consideration when comparing prices.


By doing these 3 things you will have exhausted all your options. Every other price you encounter is just a re-branding of one of these 3 sources of prices.

[nancy121]

All the sites mentioned here like Orbitz, Kayak, Priceline etc. are good ones. What one should do is to check the deals available at various sites and them select the best among them. It is not that you will always get the best deal with Kayak or Orbitz or Priceline. Best is to check all these and pick the best deal after a thorough research of all the aspects.

[adidas]

I ended up using priceline for the hotel and booking the flights separately which ended up being cheaper than picking a round trip fare.

[Gainsbarre]

Originally posted by RickDaTuner
to get the absolute cheapest, I use Cheapoair.com they seem to find combos of the cheepest flights, or even find carriers that the other sites don't seem to publish.

I was trying to purchase a ticket to an destination later this month, but the major sites that I'd normally use (expedia, cheap tickets...) would not offer flights to this city, likely due to political reasons.

Cheapoair had one of the lowest prices for the flight I was looking for, but I read many negative reviews of them online, where people would purchase a ticket online, only to get a phone call a few hours later telling them that they're being charged a few hundred dollars more than what they thought they were paying. My own experience was finding a flight for C$1,923 (including all taxes), and then giving their 1-800 number a call to find that the price was now C$2,092 (huh?). I couldn't trust them, so I booked through a local travel agent instead.

[snoop101]

For booking hotels I used hotels.com on our trip to Europe last month. I liked it a lot. I used booking.com one time and the hotel didn't even have our reservation and just gave us a room. hotels.com also has decent reviews right on the site for the hotel your booking.

[thrasher22]

Originally posted by Gainsbarre


I was trying to purchase a ticket to an destination later this month, but the major sites that I'd normally use (expedia, cheap tickets...) would not offer flights to this city, likely due to political reasons.

Cheapoair had one of the lowest prices for the flight I was looking for, but I read many negative reviews of them online, where people would purchase a ticket online, only to get a phone call a few hours later telling them that they're being charged a few hundred dollars more than what they thought they were paying. My own experience was finding a flight for C$1,923 (including all taxes), and then giving their 1-800 number a call to find that the price was now C$2,092 (huh?). I couldn't trust them, so I booked through a local travel agent instead.

I must have lucked out when i used cheap-o-air, after booking I read a lot of reviews like that.
A similar thing happened to me when I booked with flight center last year, apparently the problem is because most sites are booking through another site/carrier, their listings get outdated, and the cheapest flights have already sold out.

I've used most of the sites mentioned in this thread (for flights only, I always hostel when traveling) and have had similar experiences with almost all of them and Orbitz is my favorite. The rare time I've needed help they're fairly helpful, nothings gone wrong, and they usually have the best prices.

[RickDaTuner]

Originally posted by Gainsbarre


I was trying to purchase a ticket to an destination later this month, but the major sites that I'd normally use (expedia, cheap tickets...) would not offer flights to this city, likely due to political reasons.

Cheapoair had one of the lowest prices for the flight I was looking for, but I read many negative reviews of them online, where people would purchase a ticket online, only to get a phone call a few hours later telling them that they're being charged a few hundred dollars more than what they thought they were paying. My own experience was finding a flight for C$1,923 (including all taxes), and then giving their 1-800 number a call to find that the price was now C$2,092 (huh?). I couldn't trust them, so I booked through a local travel agent instead.

Wow man sorry to hear.

I used them quite a bit, and have never had a problem. although getting on the phone with them take around 2-3hrs.

I guess I need to buy the flight insurance when using them from now on.

[03ozwhip]

i was looking into vegas a week ago and it seems that most websites that were mentioned wont do a direct flight anymore. whats that about? vegas.com is where i found it to be cheapest his time. usually i use expedia but not if its not a direct flight.

[Stealth22]

I checked multiple websites when booking my trip for this summer, including iTravel2000, Kayak, Hotwire, Orbitz, Cheapoair, Expedia, Travelocity, Flight Centre, and Flight Network.

Out of all of the above, the two cheapest were Cheapoair and iTravel2000. iTravel2000 was $5 cheaper than Cheapoair, and the rest were at least $150 more expensive.

Ended up booking with iTravel. I've used them before, they are pretty reliable.

A lot of sites tend to quote one price, and then say "Oh, sorry, your price has changed by $100!" when you go to book the fare. iTravel2000 did come up with that message, but it only increased by two bucks. I went on Expedia five minutes after booking my flights, and searched up the exact same routing. When I pretended I was going to book the EXACT same flight I had just got from iTravel2000, the price magically increased by nearly $300. I went back to iTravel2000, and the same flight was still there, for the same price, albeit with the same two dollar increase.

[cmyden]

Originally posted by Stealth22
I checked multiple websites when booking my trip for this summer, including iTravel2000, Kayak, Hotwire, Orbitz, Cheapoair, Expedia, Travelocity, Flight Centre, and Flight Network.

The 3 in bold are all accessing their prices from the exact same database. One is essentially wasting time checking all 3, along with any other Canadian based travel site that is powered with the Softvoyage backend.

For the record, that also includes (among others):

BELAIRTRAVEL.com
BOOKITFORLESS.ca
ESCAPES.ca
EXITNOW.ca
FLIGHTCENTRE.ca
REDTAG.ca
SEARSTRAVEL.ca
SELLOFFVACATIONS.com
TRAVELCUTS.ca

A lot of sites tend to quote one price, and then say "Oh, sorry, your price has changed by $100!" when you go to book the fare. iTravel2000 did come up with that message, but it only increased by two bucks.

Softvoyage powered sites are notoriously bad for doing this. Basically, they have to cache prices (so the server isn't overwhelmed), so the price you're initially seeing isn't a 'live' price.

It's only after you go to the next step in the booking process that it makes a call to the server for the 'live' price. If that price is different, it changes. Oddly enough, it's rarely a lower price (although it does happen).

But for airfare only, you're much better off using Kayak who's prices are about as close as you can get to being the actual 'live' prices from the airlines. Kayak however, does not display many prices from the Canadian charter flights.

Orbitz and Expedia occasionally have issues with a price changing, but it's a lot more rare than with the Canadian based Softvoyage-powered sites. It's usually only when a flight sells out at a certain price level during booking that Orbitz/Expedia will have an issue.

[Stealth22]

Hmm, useful info to know.

Strangely, I don't remember seeing the fare I got from iTravel2000 on either Flight Centre or Flight Network. But nonetheless, thats quite interesting, thanks for sharing.

In the end though, I know I searched a lot, and I got the cheapest fare I could find. Being able to pick the airline, routing, etc is important to me (I hate flying on crappy or old planes, and I prefer non-stop flights), but my friends and I weren't willing to spend $800-900 a ticket for that luxury. Oh well.

[core_upt]

cmyden - thanks for the info! That's pretty amazing.

For hotels I have been using booking.com a ton in Europe. I find it to have the lowest rates, plus enough reviews (which I find really helpful), everything mapped and a clear cancellation policy outlined for each place.

I've also started using Airbnb.com - kind of like couchsurfing, in that you are staying in people's homes, but you pay to stay. It has been good for finding more home-like accommodations when you want to have a living room, kitchen, etc. Really good of you are staying somewhere for at least a few days and want to save some cash versus hotels. Also great for getting in late and leaving early - you can get a room in someone's house for a fraction of the cost of a hotel since you only need it for a few hours to crash.