Online Travel Agencies

While enjoying your vacation should be fun, with so many options these days, the planning part has become increasingly stressful because the possibilities are so endless it’s hard to know where to start.

And then you find yourself asking, “did I get the best deals, see the right things, or miss out completely?”. It always feels like there could be a bigger and better option, creating FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out).

Gone are the days where you just went to a travel agency and they said “here are your options, here is what I recommend” and then you book your trip and boom, your vacation is planned. Well, I suppose some people still use travel agents but with the advantages of online discounts/searches they have become less and less utilized for the most-part.

So that leaves us creating our own itinerary, piece-mealing together the transportation, hotels, excursions, etc. – or going with a company that does it all for you (sometimes the best choice) but you will certainly pay for all that expert decision making.

There are also some very unique, unconventional alternatives to traditional travel or traditional accommodations, which the internet has allowed us to find more readily.

After struggling with high costs or confusing sites, disappointing experiences with misleading hidden costs, we have tried to assemble what we believe are the best resources for your needs.

These will vary by individual, so pick accordingly.

What To Look Out For Using OTAs

• Hidden Fees
  • • Hotels: I recently booked a trip out to Las Vegas. This is new since the last time I was there: all the hotels I looked at have a $30.00 or higher resort fee. This is not an optional fee, is is the cost of “staying” at the resort. Smells pretty rotten if you ask me. So now hotels can get away with misleading people into thinking the room costs $150.00 a night, which might seem like a fair price, but by the time you get to your check out page, after “resort fees” and taxes, you are up to $250.00 a night. Be careful to make sure this price is accounted for in your budget and that you know the total price of the room with all the fees. Also factor in that most hotels charge a room tax and a state tax, required by law.

   

  • Airlines: It’s crazy to me that things like sitting together with your family is now considered a luxury that you have to pay extra for with a lot of airlines. Make sure you know what comes included with your flight. Airfare typically does not include luggage of any kind, so you might have to pay for even being able to carry on your purse (depending on the airline’s policies). Extra legroom is always an upgrade fee anymore, and food/beverages will most likely cost extra as well.

• Delays While traveling to Ireland we had a connecting flight with a 2 hour layover in Boston. The original flight was delayed by just over 2 hours, making it impossible for us to make the connection. The end result was a trip that should have taken 11 hours turned into 24hours of travel. Using a popular aggregator site for this flight, they were completely useless in helping us get transferred to another flight. After being on hold for a half hour the representative repeatedly told us that he showed our original flight was on time. Not only would they not make arrangements for us quickly so that we could potentially make the connection, they didn’t even have the information that the flight was delayed and didn’t believe us when we told them we were standing at the airport counter for that flight, which was delayed. From this experience I learned how important customer service is and that they can actually help in a situation like this. To avoid dealing with these issues you can book your flights directly through the airlines, or make sure you understand how the company is willing to help you in a situation such as a delay/cancellation.

• Understand Your Destination’s Geography  This one is hard when you’ve never been to a place before, and one of the most confusing pieces for me going to a foreign land. You don’t understand how big the areas are, or where the best spots are (for you) that you’ll want to be close to or the worst spots that you want to avoid. You don’t know if you can walk somewhere or have to take transportation, or if transportation even exists or if it’s so remote there’s nothing around. Will you need a car, can you take a bus, train, etc.? Those are the things that if you could speak to someone they could advise you on the best areas, etc., but doing it online you will have to figure this out by reading blogs or reviews. A site like TripAdvisor can help here since they have a lot of recommendation articles on every destination out there, and a large community where you can ask questions and get quick answers from the public.

• Cancellation Policies  Usually if you are booking directly through an airline or hotel site you can cancel up until a certain point (like a day or a few weeks before you travel). Using a third party company these options are sometimes more restrictive, if they are offered at all. Some places do not allow you to cancel any part of the trip, at any time. You can still use Travel Insurance in a situation like this, and if you pick one that reimburses for cancellation, as long as you meet the required criteria for what they will reimburse you for, you can still get a refund if you have to cancel your trip.

Online Travel Agency (OTA) Options Explained

Tips and Tricks for Traveling

✔️  Start searching early if you have a strict schedule and destination to adhere to, OR wait until the last minute (see our list above for the best sites for last minute deals) if you can be flexible with travel dates and destinations. Usually these last minute deals are not ideal for large families, but couples and solo adventurers can find excellent getaways if they are willing to choose from a random discounted destination.

✔️ Southwest often has very low flight prices, but they do not send their information to search engines so you will need to look them up separately as they don’t show up in travel aggregators’ lists.

✔️ Look into a credit card which offers miles for air travel. We pay a majority of our bills using a travel credit card and then pay it off immediately at the end of the month to avoid any interest charges. We get a lot of our flights throughout the year free of charge or for only a small tax/luggage fee.

✔️ Take advantage of great deals or what is known as “mistake pricing” by signing up for emails from Scott’s Cheap Flights. Their team of 25 people manually scour the internet daily for the best deals and accident pricing. Accident or mistake pricing is when airlines and travel agencies post deals at a mistakenly low rate but still have to honor the deal.

✔️ When traveling to another country, always purchase travel insurance. Many sites will offer this for less than your booking site, we recommend comparing various plans to make sure you are covering all the items you want. A site like Travel Insurance will return quotes from different companies.

✔️ Learn what and how to pack – read our article on How To Pack Like a Pro. This will save you from extra baggage fees which seem to get higher by the minute. Be strategic and careful with what you take so that you’re not stuck paying for and hauling more things than you need to bring.

✔️ Most travel engines have a hidden feature where you can type in “anywhere” or “everywhere” as the destination to return that websites’ top deals.

✔️ We recommend doing your searches using an incognito-mode browser window. If you are unsure how to open an incognito window, read this how-to. The reason to do this is that it is possible travel sites could change prices based on your location and cookies, so using “Incognito Mode” prevents targeted, dynamic, price inflation. Cookies in a normal browser save your search data in order to recommend the right advertising, know your location, and see how often you search for the same things. Some travel experts claim this can have adverse effects on flight/vacation prices.

✔️ Using the sites we listed or your other favorite travel websites, do some comparison shopping on best prices and try to figure out if there are certain times like off-peak seasons that may be much cheaper (if you can consider altering your dates). Being flexible with your flight days (weekdays are typically cheaper than weekends) can often pay off in a big way. Most travel sites have an alert system that you can configure so that you can ask to be notified when a specific set of criteria has a price-drop – allow them to contact you if this is something you can hold out for and you may end up with a much better rate than purchasing a spur of the moment ticket.

✔️ Most discount travel sites are just presenting other company’s information, so be sure to read reviews on the specific hotel/airline/excursions you are considering. Do not assume the company reviews (i.e., Travelzoo’s) are enough to verify the services purchased through them will be good. While the sites we have listed try to enforce high standards with their participating vendors, they are not always able to quickly react and drop vendors who have recently lowered their quality. We recommend doing your own research on each service included.

✔️ Understand all refund policies. If you have questions, contact the companies and get clarification before you travel or purchase. This is much easier to do before hand rather than after the fact, and should give you a sense of their customer service quality as well as judge their speed of communication if you try to reach them.