Here are a couple of low cost tips for two of the biggest items that make up your travel budget - flights and hotels. The problem with a service like Hotwire and Priceline, as powerful as they are, is that they never tell you what the name of the hotel is until you actually pay. If it's a little tough for you to trust in their judgment, how about giving the site Getaroom a chance.? This travel site is for enthusiasts of cheap travel and is a new concept by the people who first created Hotels.com. Now Priceline and Hotwire keep in close touch with all the good hotels; when the hotels expect rooms are going to go empty, and take dozens of rooms off the hotels' hands for a stea. The hotels are usually happy to not have to remain as advertised on this website says going for a song. Getaroom however clears out the mystery; it tells you exactly what hotel you will be staying at, before you pay.
The way it goes is, you get on the website, and you choose the place you want to go to the date you wish to be there. They'll give you a list of all the hotels that offer special unpublished prices. You can't get those prices right there on the site; instead, you have the phone Getaroom, and they will tell you about the supersecret low prices. The hotels won't allow anyone to actually permanently publish those prices on a website; how would the hotels ever sell their rooms at their real prices if the discounted ones were plastered all over the Internet? I tried making reservations for a hotel in London; the going rate was $300 a night; Getaroom got it for me at $230 a night. Getaroom has been getting a few complaints from the hotels though, who are terrified that news could leak of all of these cheap travel deals to be had at their establishments - and tarnish their reputation. From now on, Getaroom plans to not put out the price you'll pay, phone or no phone. You'll know the name of the hotel, and you'll know that you'll get a certain discount over the going rate; but they won't tell you what price you're paying until you actually pay. If you've been running with Priceline and Hotwire in the opaque travel market, you have fresh choice now with another cheap travel company - Travelocity.
But let's go with something a little more spicy next; there's been a scam doing the rounds that's been trying to get its hooks into people who try really hard to put together a cheap travel budget. Let's say that you are on Expedia, and you've just finished buying tickets for your next vacation. Just as you are about to finish it though, a window pops up and asks you if you wouldn't really like to shave $20 off your next purchase on Expedia? If you answered, "Hell Yes!", you certainly shaved a good bit off your confidence in your judgment.
When you click Yes, what you do is, you sign up with a travel savings website that's going to charge you $12 off your credit card every month. So how exactly do they get your credit card number? Do they have spyware? Not likely. Did you say that you were on Expedia when that window popped up? Expedia, along with Orbitz, Travelocity, US Airways and many other travel sites has roped in these fraud-driven websites (one of which is called Affinion) and accepted massive payoffs to give them your credit card number. The government is putting an end to this, and many of these websites are "voluntarily" withdrawing from these arrangements.
And finally, here's something of interest for cheap travel enthusiasts. The Senate is mulling a decision to ban airlines from charging any extra fees for carry-on bags. But until they actually bring that down through, could there be a cheaper way to get your luggage from a to B.? Consider this - the major airlines charge at least $25 for each piece of checked luggage. They realize that you could ship it by FedEx ground for about half that? Of course it isn't quite the same, and it can take a week to get there. But it's just a reminder of how ridiculous these fees and charges are getting.