How to get the Best Deals to Your Places of Interest?

Does the thought of getting the best deals for your traveling occur in your mind? I think so, right?

While the ideas of shop around seem the best way, but there are things that you need to take note of in order to get it. Well, you need to know that online prices can be dramatically different from site to site, room cost alone may vary by as much as 100% or more, what is more not all chains or carriers are represented on all sites, especially for those discount or smaller airlines like Southwest. Another thing is you may be surprise to know that you may find the cheapest fare on a hotel-chain web site.

Based on experience, the following may help:

1. Your travel agent may still be able to get you better deals, simply because it is their business to know their way around.
   
   
2. Check out online travel companies’ international web sites. It is good to know that many airlines, car rental, online travel agents like Expedia, Travelocity have foreign web sites. If you can purchase directly from it or through friends or family living abroad, you might be able to get a better deals. How to find out whether they have international sites? Just scroll down to the bottom of the Home page, or alternatively changing the “.com” suffix to “.ca” (Canada), or to “.fr” (France), for example.
   
   
3. Try to compare prices. Web sites like Expedia and Travelocity is a good place to compare prices for airfares, hotels, cruise and rental cars from many places. Likewise, Fare Buzz has wholesale contract with more than 60 airlines, while Wegolo is well known as a source for cheapest fares for budget airlines and so on.
   
   
4. Credit card privileges. If possible, visit your credit card company’s web site to check on hotel deals or promotions. You may think that what for since your credit card does not give you frequent-flier miles for purchases, but you should not overlook the eligibility of those attractive discounts on travel products or services that you could get which may end up help you save a lot!
   
   
5. Book on an auction site. If you are flexible and don’t particularly care which airline you fly, and can forgo those frequent-flier miles in a particular program and if you bid wisely, there are deals to be on auction sites such as the one “name-your-own-price” site like Priceline and LuxuryLink. Always pay attention to those details like hotel ratings and locations as what you defined of a hotel near airport may differ from what defined in the auction sites and be careful of what you are committing as changes are not allowed once a bid has been accepted.
   
   
6. Membership with an organization. Well, it sound strange but if you are a member of the American Dental Association or some others, you can take advantage of low rates that they have negotiated with hotels, cruises, car rental companies and others. So don’t miss this and always check with your membership organization before your journey to your places of interest!
   
   
7. Airline affinity credit card. If you are using this to rack up miles, it will be good to charge everything you can and pay your balance in full each and every month. Know why? Because if you don’t pay in full, the interest or finance charges will quickly add up to more than any savings you would get from obtaining a free airline ticket.
   

Whatever it is, as far as money savings traveling tips is concerned, I would say that it is no harm to negotiate as it really pays to haggle for a price below the published rates. For example, some hotel would consider giving you a discount if you pay by check rather than by credit card and some would even give you a bonus such as an extra night’s stay or so, but play on your strength.