 | |||||||||||
|
To print article, click Print on your browser's File menu. Go back | |||||||||||
|
|||||||||||
 | |||||||||||
| The Basics | |
| Save big with last-minute travel deals | |
|
Here are five ways to save on airfare, top-notch hotels and luxury cruises, including a little-known strategy for scoring deals online. By Kiplinger's Personal Finance Magazine Talk about a killer commute. San Franciscan Cindy Teasdale has been in a long-distance relationship with Bill McGowan of St. Louis since February, and the two get together twice a month. Cindy, who has become the couples travel planner, has learned how to game the system so that making last-minute travel plans actually saves them hundreds of dollars versus booking well in advance. Her latest coup: a luxury-hotel-and-dinner package for one-third off the regular price. Now is a good time to brush up your own vacation-booking skills. Late autumn is prime time for 11th-hour bargains because, at most locales, its between the peak and low seasons. Last-minute discounts are plentiful, so its worth your while to do a little searching online. For this story, we define "last minute" as within two weeks of departure for most destinations or up to a month before a cruise sets sail. (The typical weekend vacation is booked seven weeks in advance.) In July, Cindy, 29, invited Bill, 34, to join her at her parents cottage in Charlevoix, Mich., for a minireunion with her siblings and their families. She also wanted to spend one night of the trip at the Grand Hotel, on nearby Mackinac Island. But she didnt want to pay full price. Since February, Cindy had kept an eye out for special rates posted on the hotels Web site. But as the date approached, rates remained stubbornly high.
Undeterred, Cindy called the hotel the morning of the day she was scheduled to arrive. Because of late cancellations, the rate had dropped by a third. She and Bill stayed in a corner room with a view of Lake Huron through the bay window -- and enjoyed a five-course meal for two (including steak, escargot and tuna tartare) -- for $297. The best rate available before their arrival day was an Internet special for $440. That evening, the couple sat on the hotels front porch -- billed as the worlds longest -- and sipped kir royale (champagne and creme de cassis). Says Cindy, "It was well worth waiting for, and we felt we got so much more bang for our buck." Related news and commentary on MSN Money You, too, can find a great bargain if you use the following strategies for booking spur-of-the-moment trips for business and leisure. Package deals Airlines hike fares a week or two before most weekday flights depart. They figure that many business travelers will pay through the nose to fly on short notice. But there is a way around the high prices: Buy a vacation package that includes a hotel and rental car along with your flights. Airlines discount unbooked seats at the last minute by bundling them into packages, which dont list the fare reduction separately. For example, in early August, American Airlines was offering a Friday-evening flight between St. Louis and San Francisco. The fare on three days notice was $880, and that was typical of the best offered by other airlines. Cindy bought a round-trip ticket on the same American flight -- also on three days notice -- as part of a vacation package that included a compact-size rental car, all for $456. She found the deal at Site59.com, a Web site that tracks last-minute weekend packages. To get the price, Cindy didnt actually have to use the rental car -- although she didnt save any money by skipping it. Site59 and many other companies that sell packages let you keep the plane ticket and ignore the rental car or any other part of the package without penalty. (If you need lodging anyway, check for a package that will offer a better deal than buying a flight and hotel room a la carte.) Site59 advertises that it offers packages starting 14 days before departure (and as late as three hours before departure). If you want to book a package for a holiday weekend, you will often find deals up to 17 days ahead of your departure. Premium lodging A hotel may lower its rate at the last minute if it is not fully booked. Capitalize on the hotels bad luck with a two-step plan: First, reserve a room at an inexpensive chain hotel that permits cancellation up to the day you arrive. For example, Marriott hotels allow you to cancel standard bookings (as opposed to rooms reserved at special clearance rates, which have tighter rules) without penalty until 6 p.m. on the day of arrival. Next, a day or two before you arrive, call the hotel you would prefer to stay at and ask for the lowest rate. If you score a great rate at your preferred hotel, cancel the first reservation. An alternate strategy is to check the hotels Web site for special deals, such as a free third night. Hotels are offering free nights more often because theyre under pressure to keep guests for longer stays without starting a price war by lowering daily rates, according to Nancy Dunnan, editor of the TravelSmart newsletter. The reason: Americans are not staying as many nights per trip as they once did. Keeping guests longer increases the chances that they will buy profitable add-ons, such as room service and those $20 macadamia nuts in the minibar. If the hotel is run independently or is part of a regional chain, call the front desk and ask the clerk for an extra nights stay free -- even if the hotel isnt currently advertising one. Independent and regional-chain hotels, which lack the marketing power of national chains such as Hyatt, may be more willing to bend to fill an unexpected vacancy. When you call, say something like, "I already have a reservation at another hotel at a cheaper rate, but Ill book with you if I can get a third night free." This strategy wont work with national chains, because they discourage their hotels from negotiating directly with guests. Another last-minute strategy may be the most fun of all: Try an inn or a bed-and-breakfast instead of a hotel. These mom-and-pop operations are often more flexible about discounting to fill vacancies than national hotel chains, says Dunnan. To find 11th-hour bed-and-breakfast getaways, sign up for free weekly e-mails from Bedandbreakfast.com. Every Wednesday, youll receive a list of places offering deals of 20% or more off regular rates for the upcoming weekend in the city, state or region you prefer to visit. For instance, on three days notice you could have recently booked a weekend stay in a first-floor room at the Bayberry Inn, in Newport, R.I., for $125 a night, versus the regular rate of $215 a night. Low-cost cars Rental-car companies put unreserved cars on fire sale at the last minute, but they prefer not to advertise these low rates. Their solution is to offer discounts via blind-booking Web sites, such as Hotwire.com and Priceline.com. For example, in August, Cindy wanted to book a car for a spur-of-the-moment trip to Chicago. On three days notice, Alamos Web site was offering a three-day rental for $112, after taxes and fees. But Priceline.com accepted her bid of $14 a day, for a total of only $57. The entire process took her about 15 minutes. Priceline.com brokers cars from five companies: Alamo, Avis, Budget, Hertz and National. The auction service lets you specify dates, type of car, pick-up location and the price youre willing to pay. If a car-rental company accepts your bid, Priceline will reserve the car. Priceline also lets you pick a rental-car provider and pay the listed rate, but its name-your-own-price deals usually save you more money. Choosing the rental-car company, however, could save you time during your trip. For example, Avis and Hertz usually own the lots closest to airport terminals so that the companies can cater to their business clientele. At Hotwire.com, you can specify dates, car type and pick-up location. The site then fetches rates. Select the rate youre willing to pay, and Hotwire will book you with the company of their choice. Hotwire rents cars from Avis, Budget and Hertz, but you wont know which company is offering your nonrefundable rate until youve paid. For example, on two days notice, Hotwire offered a rate of $60 (not including taxes and fees) for a two-day weekend rental of a midsize car. At the same time, the lowest rate offered directly from one of Hotwires partners was $83. Quickie cruises Sometimes, early birds -- people who book a year in advance -- cancel at the last minute, making bargain-priced cruise cabins available. To find these deals, stop at discount travel site SkyAuction.com. For example, SkyAuction recently put up for bid an inside cabin for a seven-day cruise on the Queen Mary 2 from New York to London, sailing Sept. 2. The winning bid for the cabin (and a return flight) was $966 per person, double occupancy, and was announced nine days before the voyage. Taxes and service charges added $323 per person. Early-bird prices for a comparable deal were 46% higher. Tips for better fare browsing After each search for fares on a travel Web site, clear the cookies, or data files, that the site adds to your Web browser. (Click the browsers Help tab to learn how.) Keeping cookies sometimes means youll pay more for travel. For example, if you check a Web site for airfares multiple times, the sites cookies may tell your browser to show you the fares youve already seen, rather than the latest deals, or perhaps show you more pricey fares. Clearing your cookies could uncover price breaks, such as a recent $49 savings on a round-trip ticket from Seattle to Honolulu on Northwest Airlines on one days notice. A search on Northwests Web site turned up a fare of $406. A repeat search, keeping our computers cookies, found a fare of $455. After clearing the cookies, a third search again dug up the $406 fare. Similar searches for fares from other airlines, and at other travel sites, uncovered similar discrepancies. An alternative is to redo your search on a different computer. In a recent test, one computer search found a $750 ticket for the Seattle-Honolulu route on Northwests site, but another PC came up with a $406 ticket for the same itinerary. The difference? The first computer had already been used to search Northwests site and had cookies stored on it; the second was free of the sites cookies. But theres no guarantee that switching computers will get you a better bargain than clearing cookies. In repeat tests, we found no pattern. By Sean ONeill, Kiplingers Personal Finance | |
MSN Money's editorial goal is to provide a forum for personal finance and investment ideas. Our articles, columns, message board posts and other features should not be construed as investment advice, nor does their appearance imply an endorsement by Microsoft of any specific security or trading strategy. An investor's best course of action must be based on individual circumstances.