| Vol.
I, No. 7 | May
Day / Mother's Day | Apr.
20th, 2001 |
Auto
& Travel
Links to Auto & Travel On-Line . Links
to Auto & Travel On-Line The
amount of info on the web is enormous, as anyone who's ever tried to run a
search can attest to. And, to put it all in context, best estimates say
that only a fraction, maybe 20 - 40 % of what's out there is actually making its
way to the search engines.
Well ...
Here at DownStreet, we'd like to try to help. So each issue, we
post a few links in Auto & Travel to sites that might interest you.
Sometimes the links will be related to one another ... sometimes
we'll just offer up a somewhat random sampling. Sometimes they're about
Vermont sites, sometimes not. In either case, we think we might be able to
help you find the kind of site you've been looking for.
Of
course, while we can't vouch for the fact that every link we provide will be of
interest to everyone, we do our best to filter out the noise and the
bustle. ...
We hope you enjoy the following sites as
much as we do. Links
to the Best Sites for Cheap Seats {continued} We'll
run these links one more month, since some of you may be looking for last minute
seats for the kids' Spring Break or other Spring-time travel plans. ... As
we mentioned in the original article they accompanied, February's Travel Here
& There -- Finding
the Cheapest Seats for Your Flight -- from test runs of more than 50
internet sites, we found the three lowest-fare sites for airline tickets that,
for our money, are your best bets -- Priceline, Lowestfare, and MSN's
Expedia. What follows, then, are our reviews & ratings of the
three. ... But if you haven't read the original Travel
Here & There article, we
urge you to do so first. There's some useful info there that you'll want
to look at before you go hunting for your cheap seats. ... Priceline.com
- Name Your Own Price
Not
so long ago, before the market tumble last Spring, Priceline.com was trading
on the floor for more than $100/share. As of this writing, it was
ticking somewhere around $2.75. ... You won't find savings like
that at Priceline, but you will find some, and sometimes substantial
savings.
.
The Priceline site is
reasonably easy to figure out & navigate. Its 'model' for getting
tickets is different from the others, however, in that you actually make an offer
of what you're willing to pay for the tickets. Plug in departure &
destination sites and dates, then name your price, and off you go.
Before you actually confirm that you want to submit a bid at the price you
entered, Priceline will scan its database of more than 6 million tickets
sold and let you know the odds of landing tickets at the price you're
offering -- for tickets with the identical itinerary, including
dates. If you want, you can up the odds by bumping up your
offer. But don't necessarily use Priceline's next suggested price --
shown on the little graph that appears. Experiment with different
prices to see the different odds first. But be aware that, sometimes,
when we tried to plug in different offers and clicked on the 'Calculate'
button, instead of being shown the odds again, we were re-directed to
Priceline's other tool for tweaking your offer -- a list of current airfares
from Travelocity. {If you want to check current fares, we suggest you
use either of our other two links for this month -- Lowestfare.com or MSN
Expedia. Both consistently returned significantly better lowest fares
than Travelocity.} ... Once you've plugged in your info, within 15
minutes, you'll know if you scored.
.
The
real trick here is to know both what you're willing to pay and what
sort of odds you're willing to bet on. And it is a bet.
Why? Because if your offer isn't accepted, you can't go back
and simply raise your offer for the same itinerary. You'll have to
change airports, dates, or other particulars first. Nonetheless, when
we were still getting best prices over the phone of more more than
$450/ticket for a trip to Florida, later that same day, we nailed two
round-trips out of Burlington to West Palm Beach for $250 each at slightly
less than 4:1 odds. We even went back later and tried the same thing
for a rental car and ended up saving more than $6/day on the rental for a
compact, with the same odds.
Rating: ****1/2 [4-1/2 stars]
. Lowestfare.com
This
is a straightforward site with fares every bit as good as, and sometimes
better than, MSN's Expedia site. Unlike Priceline, but like Expedia
{below}, Lowestfare offers a straight-up ticket purchase. In other
words, whatever price you see, that's the price you can pay -- right then
& there -- for the tickets you want. ... When you get to
their site, just look for the Lowestfare.com Fare Finder over on the right
hand side. ...
.
From there, you
can plug in departure & destination airports and dates, then search ...
or you can go directly to the "More detailed search" by clicking
on those words. We did the latter. And while all our phone calls
landed nothing better than that $450+ per ticket, Lowestfare found us two
seats for $265 each ... only slightly more than the price we offered and had
accepted at Priceline. {If we'd've found this site earlier, we might
have been tempted to drop our Priceline bid just a little lower.}
... The detailed search lets you plug in times as well as dates, as
well as the number of passengers and their ages. Then you're ready to
instruct it to Search for the 10 Best Fares ... the 10 Best Time Matched
Fares ... or the 5 Best Fares and 5 Best Time Matched Fares.
.
Timing
seemed to have a lot to do with the best fares we found. When we
plugged in the identical info for the flights we got through Priceline --
for mid-March -- again, the cost was only $15/ticket more ... for the
same airline and the identical flights. But when we tried to score
tickets further out -- for the kids for the 3rd week in April -- the best we
found was $100+/ticket more for a 3-legged flight to Boston & Cincinnati
before getting to West Palm Beach ... while the U.S. Airways flights --
identical except for date to the ones we landed through Priceline and found
here at Lowestfare -- were coming up at twice the cost.
... Nevertheless, while you may want to watch your timing, Lowestfare
is our top choice for buying tickets outright instead of making an offer
first.
Rating: ****1/2 [4-1/2 stars] Expedia
Travel
For
buying tickets outright, the Expedia site is roughly the equal of Lowestfare,
and the methods are pretty much the same ... although Expedia's Express
Search, which appears at the top of the opening page, lets you also specify
"Morning, Noon or Evening," as well as the number of passengers,
right off the bat. ...
.
If you
click on Expedia's "More flight search options," you can plug in
more detailed info, including specific times, the age(s) of the passenger(s),
and a variety of others preferences -- like ticket class, specific airline,
only direct flights. avoid most change penalties, and no advance purchase
restrictions. You can then "Build your own trip flight by
flight" {which is the recommended option "When time really matters
..."}, or "Search by best available fares" {"When price
is your priority ..."}. ... In addition, you can also jump
from this page to ones which allow you to search for one-way tickets, or for
itineraries with multiple legs.
.
For
those of you interested in the lowest fare, we didn't find a lot at Expedia
to lift above Lowestfare.com. But for those who want more options and
customization for an itinerary that isn't based always or only on the lowest
fare, then Expedia is definitely worth a visit.
Rating: ****1/2 [4-1/2
stars]
. *******
******* If you know of any links
that you think are worthwhile, why not send them along to ...
links@downstreetmagazine.com
... If we agree, we'll be happy to include
them in an upcoming issue to pass the word along. ...
Thanks. *******
******* .
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