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Online Travel Bargains Written
for CBC Ottawa's Radio Show, CBO
Morning Ok, so I'm a little bit neurotic about planning ahead. It's May, and I'm already trying to figure out what to get my mom for her birthday in October. Part of me wants to just give her what she thinks she wants-probably a Canadian tire gift certificate or something like that-but the other part of me wants to surprise my mom with a birthday trip to either Paris or New York City--two places my Alberta girl mommy has never ventured to. Since I have lots and lots of time to plan, I figured I had might as well see what I could do as far as booking an inexpensive trip for me and mom this fall. And, of course, being my eternal geekgrrl nethead self, I decided to start looking online. According to current hype, the Internet is now "the" place for travel bargains. There are sites out there that let you bid on airfare, name your own price, book discounted hotels, and so on. As per usual, one must take all these claims with a leetle tiny grain of salt-caveat emptor might as well be the unofficial slogan for e-commmerce. However, after an extensive surf, I found a few sites that might be of interest to us Canadians (especially those of us who want to take their mom on vacation) Airfare: I did not, however, find any cheap flights to either of my destinations on AC. Even with five months notice, a ticket to Paris from Ottawa is still over $800. I did, however, find some cheaper flights to Paris on Canada 3000's website at www.canada3000.ca. Now, if you're willing to take more of a chance on your flight, you might want to check out some of the newer travel sites online. I find a site called skyauction.com (www.skyauction.com) particularly interesting. On this site, you can bid on airfare all around the world. There is no minimum bid, so you can grab some great deals, if you get the chance. When I checked last, round trip tickets from Canada to Europe were going for $200-300 US plus tax. However, there are a few caveats to using Skyauction. First, you must remember that the prices are in US dollars, so the deals may not be as great as you think. Secondly, you don't know what airline you'll wind up on when you bid on a Skyauction flight. If you're particular about your airlines, give it a miss. And, the most annoying thing about Skyauction that I found is this-you can bid for up to two tickets at a time, but you may not actually win both seats. For example, if I want two tickets to London at $201, and someone wants one ticket at $202, I'll wind up with one seat, and the other person with the other, rather than me getting both seats. If you're making plans with a friend or spouse, this could be quite aggravating, especially because if you win an auction, you are obligated to buy the flight. Incidentally, I had very little luck with the infamous Priceline.com (www.priceline.com), made famous by those cheesy TV spots featuring William Shatner. Priceline.com lets you name your airfare price-and different airlines bid on your service. Unfortunately, when I keyed in "Ottawa" as my point of origin, I was given the choices of Ottawa Illinois, Kansas, and Ohio. If only there was Priceline.ca! There are a number of other US based airfare sites that claim to get you great deals such as cheaptickets.com, and lowestfare.com. These are fine if you are travelling from the US, but they can be rather sketchy on deals originating in Canada. Once again, the prices are in US dollars. Deals: A Canadian package deal site that's worth mentioning is Exit.ca (www.exit.ca). Exit.ca still has a few technical glitches to work out (including an godawful download speed), but it's a good place to find last minute sell offs on tropical type vacations-airfare inclusive and in Canadian dollars. Exit.ca is also a good site for finding cheap charters within Canada. I must also here mention the Last Minute Club (www.lastminuteclub.com)-made popular in the 80s with cheesy ads in the Globe and Mail featuring the guy from Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. The current incarnation of the Last Minute Club features a spiffy website where you can book your tropical hols online. The only caveat is the fact that you must pay a one year membership fee of $40 in order to participate.
Travelocity is plugged into the international travel agents network-SABRE-and because of that, is very extensive in its listings of mainstream airlines and travel deals. Travelocity.ca offers a neat feature called the "Faretracker", which lets you know when fares to a particular city go up or down. However, the faretracker does not seem to care about charter or offsale prices-it didn't find my cheapo Canada 3000 flight anywhere. Also, unfortunately when you plug into Travelocity's package deals, everything reverts to US dollars, and uses big American cities as the points of origin. Expedia.ca is brought to you by the fine folks at Microsoft, and lets you do the same sort of stuff you can do on Travelocity-check flight prices, book hotels and book cars. Once again, when you dig a little deeper, Expedia.ca taps into the content from Expedia.com and reverts to US dollars and origins. I cannot tell you how much this annoys me! I found that Expedia was OK for flight info, but more of a resource for general "guidebook" information, including these cool 360 degree tours of major travel destinations. That I liked. Other Stuff: I am also partial to Arthur Frommer (of the tour guides)'s budget travel homepage at www.frommers.com. On this site, Frommer indexes travel deals, offers some content from his travel guides, and has this wonderful cantankerous travel critique column, in which he editorializes on just about anything. One of his articles went on and on about how us North Americans should be getting European amounts of vacation time-5 weeks-I wish!
Sites discussed in this column:
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