July 07, 2006

New travel sites for cheaper, smarter booking options

A handful of new travel booking web sites have come online recently and old ones have added new bells and whistles to make you feel like you've got more control over your detiny before hitting that "confirm reservation" button.

A few notable new ones:

FareCompare.com - Tim Leffel's Cheapest Destinations says: "First of all, you can just enter your own city and get an incredibly cool view of flight prices to anywhere in the world. ... Then you can drill down and check individual routes not just for one specific date, but what prices are like across weeks and months, from a slew of different airlines."

FareCast.com - Kottke.org says: "It shows you the price history of a particular ticket and tells you what the price forecast is...if the price is trending up/down, how much confidence they have in that prediction, and whether you should buy your ticket now or not. FareCast also shows you price differences based on time of day, so if you've got a flexible schedule, you can fly in the cheap early afternoon rather than the expensive early morning."

Mobissimo's Activity Search - Mobissimo's MobiBlog says: "In case you missed it, Activity Search has a cool new feature that allows you to see the cheapest fares for the last two weeks for you chosen activity. So, for example, you choose NYC to beaches, or SFO to Beaches , or LAX to museums and you'll get a list of the cheapest fares from searches over the last two weeks."

BumpTracker - Upgrade: Travel Better says: "There is a cottage industry of sorts out there, with flyers intentionally booking flights at predictably busy times, with the hope that the airline will offer a bump. In fact, some people try to be bumped multiple times on the same day. It's all within the rules. As long as you're flexible and are willing to fly later than the time you booked, you could make out pretty well with such a scheme -- free tickets, vouchers for travel, or even cash, depending on where your flight is heading."

CouchSurfing.com - World Hum says: "The popular Web site that connects travelers with fellow travelers and places to sleep around the world suffered a huge data loss the other day, which caused founders to believe the site might be too far gone to recover. But the site’s supporters rallied, and CouchSurfing 2.0 is now online."

ParkSleepFly - Upgrade: Travel Better says: "The site collects hotel rates that include long-term parking in the rate. It's a great site that gives a nice overview of airport hotel options with the park-and-fly option."

UpgradeSuccess.com - Upgrade: Travel Better says: "UpgradeSuccess.com is building a searchable database of upgrade requests and their successes and failures for the major US airlines. The data are still pretty thin. ..."

Related:
List of travel site snafus you should know (USA Today)
Best and worst airline booking sites (Jaunted)
Family travel sites getting better (NY Times)
Monitoring airfares via RSS (NY Times)

July 7, 2006 12:10 PM in Arrivology, Cheap Stuff, Hotelology, Techology

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