What is Digg?45 Comments
- SirDaShadow, on 10/12/2007, -6/+4541 diggs, no comments and it's already slow, so here it is:
This is the second post (part b) of the series “15 Tips for Cheap Travel.” You can follow along in these posts by subscribing to the feed. You can also navigate the site and see other related posts by choosing “Travel” under Categories.
Wouldn’t it be nice to just go to one website or call just one phone number and find the cheapest plane ticket? Maybe someday this will occur. For now, the best way to find a cheap plane ticket is to spend some time doing research and checking multiple websites. I’ve divided this section into “fixed vs. flexible.” (If you haven’t read the post on planning your vacation you can find it here.)
If you have Fixed Dates and a Fixed Place: (i.e. you want to go to Boston from Washington DC on July 3rd to July 10th)
When you have fixed dates and a fixed destination the best option is to use Aggregators. These sites search hundreds of sites find the cheapest flight out there. My favorites are:
* Kayak http://www.kayak.com/
* Sidestep http://www.sidestep.com/
* Farechase http://farechase.yahoo.com/
* Mobissimo http://www.mobissimo.com/
It doesn’t hurt to also try a few traditional online travel agencies including: Orbitz, Expedia, and Travelocity. If you use these be sure to book through the airline’s own website though (see tip 3 below)
If you have Fixed Dates and a Fixed Place, and your dates are within the next few weeks also check Site59 which finds package deals within the next two weeks. Even if you don’t need a hotel at your destination, sometimes it finds an entire package cheaper than you can find a flight alone.
If you have Flexible Dates: (i.e. you can go anytime in July or you can leave within 1-3 days of a particular date)
If your dates are within 1-3 day spread (i.e. you can leave July 1st, 2nd, or 3rd): Use Kayak
If your dates are very flexible (i.e you can leave any time from now until July): Fare Compare, Farecast, and Travelocity — All have searches available by the month
If your Destination is Flexible: These sites find cheap airfare to many places from your originating location.
* Kayak Buzz http://www.kayak.com/buzz
* Airfare Watchdog http://www.airfarewatchdog.com/
* Farewatch http://www.gofox.com/flights/farewatch.php
* Mobissimo http://www.mobissimo.com/
* Farecast http://www.farecast.com/
If you want to see a Price History: Fare Compare http://www.farecompare.com/ , Farecast, and Kayak
A really cool feature: You want to Search by Activity: Check out Mobissimo Activity Search
Mobissimo lets you search by activity. You can search for flights by region (Europe, Asia, Latin America, Carribean, Middle East/Africa) or by other activities like beaches, spas “forgotten wonders,” opera houses, wine tasting, and more. It’s truly amazing.
General tips for finding cheap flights:
1. Plan in Advance. The further out you know your travel schedule, the more time you will have to watch airfare prices.
2. Be patient, but not too patient. If you’ve been researching for a while and a good price comes up, get it immediately.
3. Buy direct from the Airline’s website (if you can). Most major airlines now guarentee the best prices on their own sites (though occassionally this isn’t the case.) There are two reasons to book directly with the airline you will be flying. First, many sites (including Orbitz and Expedia) charge an additional fee if you book through them. The major airlines don’t charge this fee. Second, and more importantly, you will get better service if something happens. Just recently my dad was returning home from a trip and his flight got cancelled for no apparent reason. Even though I always tell him not to, he still books through Expedia. Well, let’s just say their customer service wasn’t up to par. Luckily the airline he was flying with was still willing to help him, but this isn’t always the case.
4. Check Southwest.com. For some reason, Southwest Airlines isn’t searched by the flight Aggregators. If you are flying somewhere that they fly to, check their website for prices.
5. Be flexible. If you are able to leave on Thursday and return on Monday you will often get better prices than if you fly Friday to Sunday.
6. Don’t listen to the people who claim they can beat the system. (And their correction) Just like the stock-market, there are all sorts of people who claim they know what they’re talking about and they’ll tell you to only buy on certain days and certain times, etc. Go with your gut. If you’ve been researching prices and you feel that you’ve gotten the best one, you probably have.
7. If the price goes down, it never hurts to ask. Sometimes you will buy a ticket and the price will drop the next day. It doesn’t hurt to call the airline and see if they’ll reduce your price. If they wont, don’t kick yourself; it happens to everyone: things go on sale just after you buy them.
8. Consider the time of day that you fly and how it will affect your total transportation cost. If you can use public transportation to get to an airport, make sure you don’t buy a ticket for 6am before the subway has opened. (Likewise, if someone can drive you, don’t buy a ticket that is right in the middle of their work day). If you hadn’t paid $20 for that taxi ride, you may have been able to purchase a better plane ticket.
9. (Update) Check out Farecast. Farecast is still in Beta and I just came across it today for the first time; but they have a cool little tool called Faregaurd. Farecast predicts whether an airfare that you are looking at (for only select cities in the next 90 days) will go up or down. They are so sure of their predictions that for $9.95 you can buy “insurance” which will protect your fare for 7 days from the day you buy Fareguard. You can find out more about how it works here. As I said, I’ve only just come across this site today, but after playing around with it for an hour I’m very impressed. I really like the arrows that it spits out to tell you whether to buy now or wait. They have nice maps and a good flexible search engine. This may be one of my new favorite travel sites!
(/end mirror)
Personally, I have used travelocity for 10 years now and it has never let me down. - englishpaulm, on 10/12/2007, -2/+14See also http://www.kayak.com/help/lowfares.html for their seven tips.
Disclaimer: I'm the cto/cofounder of Kayak.com. - GeneralKickass, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8That Digg button seduced me before I could get the link to open.
- adml_shake, on 10/12/2007, -6/+12Excuse me, but Bill Shatner already has my back on things like this.
- radix33, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4I agree. Negative comments are being dugg down too... very suspicious.
- lopinc1, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Hey Moneyfor, what about sites like ExpertFlyer.com that allow you to search for award and upgrade availability (without having to call the airline for those airline websites that don't show it), don't know of any other site that does that.
Disclaimer - I am an employee of ExpertFlyer.com - Rincey, on 10/12/2007, -11/+14Weird no comments, Paid to get to front of digg.com me thinks so?
- merle2, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4Priceline's Name Your Own Price might be a pain in the ass, but it is definitely worth it. They claim you can save up to 40%. I have personally saved 50% about 20 hours before a flight took off. I have found flights on there to places like JFK (from SFO) for $1 + $50 taxes. It might take you up to 30 minutes extra to figure it out, but if you can deal with that, it is by far the best deals I've found (far lower than Kayak).
- sherwinn, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3The diggs on this post continue to skyrocket, hundreds in only a few hours, while the site IS STILL DOWN! How can it get all these diggs when it's not even available? I suspect foul play.
- Flagg3, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2The tips are good, but they completely left out the most important tip for international flights: Check Consolidator fares also!
Consolidator fares are remnants of times past when people used to go to travel agents to get airline tickets. Wholesalers, or consolidators buy blocks of tickets from the airlines at set prices, and because they are bought at a specific price, they can vary widely from the fares that the airlines are currently offering. I've seen prices at consolidators vary as much as $500 more or less than the same price that the airline is selling the exact same tickets for on the same exact flight.
Some of the search engines search consolidator fares, but there are several different ones, so it's best to check as many as possible before you book.
Some good ones are:
http://www.travelhub.com
http://www.airlineconsolidator.com
http://www.onetravel.com
Yes, the sites look crappy. Apparantly, Condolidators still live in 1999. - themadscientist, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2You guys seem to be up on this, so how can I find the cheapest fare from Paris to Los Angeles in August? I don't care when I fly, I just need the cheapest I can find. A little help Diggers?
FYI- I did use all the sites, but didn't see any options to help me out. - haveacigar, on 10/12/2007, -3/+5If anyone wants free travel on trains, print out an out of order sign, and attach it to the trains toilet door. Hide until you reach your destination ;)
- TravelDugg, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I hate to put a promotion plug in the comments...but....
So after you find a great deal on the internet...perhaps at one of the sites listed in the story...post it on TravelDug.com....Yes its a Digg clone...but all the cool kids are doing it...so we figured why not. We thought there should be Digg for travel. - ariejan, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1If you're going to a city like London you may want to check out http://www.london4free.net
- suziep, on 11/01/2007, -0/+1another good travel comparison site is http://www.lowfares.com i use it to find the cheapest flights around
- travelmonk, on 12/19/2008, -0/+1Some good tips. Personally, I check http://www.journeyetc.com/ when I need information.
- Johny900, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1Very nice tips thanks a lot for that!
John - maremma tuscany
http://www.bellamaremma.com/en - EbowUK, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Denny Crane.
- victorguttmann, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Best airlines ever.
- movies324, on 12/22/2008, -0/+0Don't Worry
I found some great tips on travel ticket in here too!
Best regards,
http://guidetocheaptravel.blogspot.com - moneyfor, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1FYI just found out that my hosting company suspended my site due to "abuse of resources." I will be resolving this problem as quickly as possible.
- moneyfor, on 10/12/2007, -3/+3This is my site. Obviously I wasn't prepared for the "Digg effect", though I thought I was. I have wp-cache installed, and according to my server it's still up and running. I'm working on trying to figure everything out now. Sorry for the inconvenience everyone! Please do stop back though and hopefully everything will be working shortly.
- BentAxel69, on 06/19/2008, -0/+0you should try travel agencies, they are sometimes worth it. Also, the article is quite helpfull.
Will make use of this the next time I go on hoilday, seen that everything is on the increase these days.
Ben | http://www.africangamelodges.com - Born4Surf, on 12/04/2008, -1/+1For those in the UK, I recommend you check foreign currency exchange rates and order your travel money and travel insurance at the Post Office®.
http://www.postoffice.co.uk/portal/po/jump1?mediaI ... - ravisniper, on 06/26/2008, -0/+0Sell mass amount of tickets on sites like StubHub and Ebay without hassle using http://www.listeasy.net
- Born4Surf, on 12/04/2008, -1/+1Don't forget cheap travel insurance
http://www.postoffice.co.uk/portal/po/jump1?catId= ... - swirl12, on 09/10/2008, -1/+0Great Tips!!!!
- TravelBlogHelp, on 07/11/2008, -1/+0Absolutly best place i found was www.saveabuck.net
Awesome! - cklol, on 10/12/2007, -7/+6I like how all the comments are buried.
- sweetlife2005, on 09/17/2008, -1/+0Very useful tips! Great review... Here's some of the link i found with discount plane tickets
http://brianx.com/travel-guide/discount-airline-ti ... - Vanadium, on 10/12/2007, -3/+2Looks like wordpress. I think the owner of this site could have benefited from this: http://digg.com/linux_unix/Optimizing_Wordpress_and_LAMP_to_survive_the_Digg_effect
- sherwinn, on 10/12/2007, -5/+3IB nobody gets the humor.
- VertigoOne, on 10/12/2007, -3/+1If you buy cheap tickets, keep in mind you get what you pay for. Known that you'll probably be stuck on an oversold 50-seater CRJ-200 for 2.5 hours, they only serve Coke products and mini pretzels, there won't be any air conditioning, the lavatories will smell bad, the plane may not leave the gate on time, etc.
If you want to enjoy your flight - know who you're flying with. It may be worth a couple extra bucks to get there in a good mood. - sherwinn, on 10/12/2007, -10/+8I don't understand why this article keeps getting dugg when the page hasn't been accessible for hours.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -7/+4Easy - go to www.easyjet.com or www.ryanair.com and you're sorted.
- sherwinn, on 10/12/2007, -8/+4You blatantly copied this comment from the reddit.com post of the same article. Link: http://reddit.com/info/1d7du/comments/c1d976
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -4/+0sweeeet
- naidina, on 10/12/2007, -4/+0Has found for itself a quite good variant, for flight to India, thanks.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -7/+1kayak.com bitches
- detrate, on 10/12/2007, -9/+1www.farecast.com is pretty sweet
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