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Getting
FLIGHT Satisfaction |
| Imagine the daunting task
of searching more than 80 million airfares that are changing almost daily.
Also the great deals more |
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Computerized
Reservation Systems (CRS)
If you run into steep pricing quotes when shopping for airline tickets,
do not despair, You Always Have Other Options. Here's our
recommended procedures and web CRS tips & tricks to get
you there for less than the rest on your plane.
- 1)
Check different times, then nearby dates, then nearby airports.
![[F]](http://www.aforum.com/Images/i1/topic.gif)
Airport Codes & their Cities make notes of
all the possible airports and 3-letter codes for the most accurate and
hassle free searching.
- 2) Look for which airlines are serving your
destination and check the site for specials/ promotions for these
destinations. Expedia
as well as Travelocity
have more of this type of information than any other sites.
Having low print cost per page (spelled HP laser printer) can help
keep information overload under control.
- 3) If you have been able to identify
seats on your flight that sold at a great promotional price but are
no longer available then save that information for calling the
airline later. Identifying the lowest cost seats sold on your
flight can result in better bargain shopping service from your airline
reservation agent.
- 4) Go visit the other CRS sites. There
is a growing difference even among the same systems because there is
an increasing number of separately negotiated marketing arrangements
to favor certain choice selections in the top spots and other
promotions. We recommend you give consumer oriented onetravel.com
a whirl
- 5) Surf the airline web site. There's
lots of internet specials these days. If you don't see your rate try
calling them especially if you have information or codes for the lowest rate
available on the flight which will trigger a true lowest price search
for you.
Airline & Airport Web Site DIRECTORIES
Arranged in our best and then the rest format with
800 numbers too
- 6) Try an auction site or visit your
travel
agent If your trip has multiple legs a mistake can be very
problematic and expensive to correct, use a travel agent. If you're
flying a busy corridor then your chances of getting a match at a reverse
auction site are good.
fodors.com/traveltips/airtravel/
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| Business
Travel |
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 frequentflyer.oag.com/
|| oag.com || 2000
Reader Poll Results.|| Site
Search
the world's leading independent provider of travel
information products and services.
E-Travel.com
Oracle, the world's 2nd largest software
company plans to book a 1,000,000 tickets in 2001 in its 2nd year on the
web
 Home
Travel This
section has everything you will need to plan your next getaway infotec-travel
List of Links
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| The
Rest |
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Travelscape
mostly specializes in advertising its low price guarantee on some
pretty ordinary pricing for hotel rooms but does have a full CRS system to
take a go
Tripweb.com
(SystemOne/Amadeus)
Guaranteed lowest published fare price or double the difference, System
One is the most popular CRS because it is #1 with with travel agencies
and includes the most flight data. Requires log-in
travelforless.com/
Since 1996, Search over 500 airlines (including over 1.3 million
discount airfares
 Tiss.com Travel Information
Services (Travelocity-Sabre)
Sign up to enjoy their fare tracking
service which will e-mail you or your pager with time sensitive rates
meeting your criteria.
 TravelSecrets.com
|| tricks
|| Secrets
Searches the tiss data base and we liked
their interface better. Log on quickly as guest
BestFares.com
Discount Travel Magazine -- Online
Snooze You Lose fares, Internet offers,
late-breaking travel news, and much more. Become a subscriber to get full
content.
Itinerary
available on-line by.Sabre
the leading CRN airline database makes
your
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Savvy
Shopping Tips |
Imagine the daunting task
of searching more than 80 million airfares that are changing almost daily.
Also the great deals are fleeting capable of expiring suddenly. it has been
this way for too long now but the web is changing the game dramatically.
With persistence and savvy you can achieve dramatic savings or enhancements
for little if any extra cost except your time. We like to remind you, that on the web:
"You Always Have Other Options" and we detail them here.
Airlines are not happy about these changes and have increasingly
added incentives for traveler to visit their
web sites. |
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"Airfares
are an intrinsically complex system, and much of that system is deliberately
obscure...The worst place to buy your ticket, if you care about price, is
directly from an airline" |
| |
Edward
Hasbrouck author of "The
Practical Nomad: on
hasbrouck.org
BUCKET
SHOPS "You'll get the best price if you shop
around, but remember that rating an around the world itinerary can take an
hour of work (for which the agent is paid nothing if you end up getting
the ticket elsewhere). So don't be surprised that the fare isn't in the
computer and can't be given off the top of the agent's head; the agent
will give only a very rough estimate of the fare unless you make clear
that you are really serious about getting the ticket from that agency if
the price is right.
Bucket shops serve a limited and specialized subset of the air ticket
market, and are mostly concentrated in a few world cities. The best places
to find them are London and San Francisco; other places with many
are Penang and Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia), Bangkok, and Athens. It's worth
looking far afield to find a good bucket shop -- the overwhelming majority
of travel agents don't even try to compete with bucket shop fares. For
that matter, most agents couldn't construct the sorts of routings the
better bucket shops specialize in (especially customized around-the-world
itineraries) at any price. |
On-Line
Travel - 320 pages (Mar 2001) Avalon
Travel Publishing; ISBN: 1566912504
Paperback
at Amazon
- 560 pages 2nd edition (Sept, 2000)
Avalon Travel
Publishing; |
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| Discount
Air / Consolidators |
| |
Consolidators means too many different things.
Here's a periodically updated article by Edward
Hasbrouck on the subject and
a word of caution from the BBBFind still
more on this popular subject at the Rectravel FAQ's Discounted
International Airline Tickets
|
 Air
Ticket Farebeater (Amadeus CRS)l l
Book a Room
l l Car Rental
l l
Named PC Computing's #1 Bargain Travel Site,
Hype only takes you so far when price is the name of the game and these
guys can often win your shopping competition for airfare. Fast
feature search for their 50,000 hotel listings. Don't bother with
their car engine, others are much more reliable.
|
|
|
 Book
online with Economy Travel! (WorldSpan
CRS) No
log-in to search
The first screen lists lowest offered which can be helpful airline info
then it can take a while for "available" but the results can
indeed yield your best deal. In association with TravelSelect. "As one of the
largest international ticket agencies, we can offer savings between 10-40%
off of published fares on 24 major airlines. Our consolidator fares do
not appear on airline web sites or reservation systems, only here! "
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 Etn.nl/discount.htm
|| SiteMap
|| Founder
Ad Latjes,
discount travel pioneer
Get your FREE Airfare & Cruise Quotes from discount Travel specialists.
Your request will result in at least one hard to beat rate sent by e-mail
within 24 hours. ETN is a huge sprawling sight with a power to the consumer
subtext.
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Comparison
Air fare search engines |
|
Arriving in 2000, better late than never. While
the huge different rates turned up would seem to be the killer app for a comparison
search engines we have found them of marginal value being both slow
and not as dedicated to lowest possible as one would hope.
 QIXO.com
Comparsion Seach AirFare Engine
Integrating many travel sites into one. Best results for us
itasoftware.com/
Check if their out of beta recommended by smarter living and claiming
comprehensiveness
Sidestep.com
the first comparison search engine with an
aggressive install that calls itself up whenever you search air sites
slowing your search for often a null search.
FareChase.com
Seems to favor TravelNow's rather hohum fares |
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Air
Courier |
| |
AirCourier.org
Offers last minute specials in addition to the special deals attached
to some minor extra responsibility
 Dirt
Cheap "Frommer's
Pick for Top Courier Company is the Air
Courier Association aka CheapTrips.com
|
| Caribbean &
Elsewhere |
|
Caribbean Travel Links
More Specials inc. Travel Agent Offers
|
| USA |
CheapTickets.com
Requires up front log-in but the
pricing is often the best you will find due to exclusive deals with airlines,
discount airlines not in other databases and an emphasis of serving up
the best price regardless of its availability
travel.yahoo.com/travel
Yahoo is packed with travel information for you. book mark (Ctrl-D) us in
case you get lost
TravelDiscounters.com
USA
Discounted best quote guarantee for USAIR
800-428-4322 || AMERICAN 800-433-7300 || UNITED 800-241-6522 ||
CONTINENTAL 800-525-0280 || NW 800-225-2525
DL 800-221-1212 Call them reserve your rate & then give em a shot at
saving you money
Amazing
Low Fares.com USA
Lots of excellent prices for domestic USA travel. Easy Look up in
table and then call them to book 77 of 168 hours in the week.
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| Student |
Student Travel
Visit our visually enhanced interactive listings in aforum |
| |
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Around
the World Air Tickets |
| |
 Ticketplanet.com
Our
founder stumbled onto creating the bargain, around the world airfare and
will use all our resources to get you the absolute lowest price!
airtreks.com
|| current
specials
featuring
" the most advanced multi-stop
trip building tool on the Internet "
airbrokers.com
Also Pacific Rim Loops
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Auction |
| |
One of the web's most popular activities
and a growing sector.
If you're getting too spread out consider using
AuctionWatch.com to"Buy
anywhere Sell anywhere"
Travel
Auctions at yahoo.com
Lots of available inventory to fly anywhere dirt cheap in return for
a high tab on hotel room
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Ebay Most
of the airfare requires a minimum hotel booking yet still a wide variety
of offerings including very low prices on timeshares you could exchange
for a week anywhere in the world an RCI member timeshare resort exists
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Auction
- Reverse |
| |
To
increase your odds of making a match, try submitting a request between 5%-25%
lower than the low current market price for your selected route. Standard
taxes, airport and/or passenger fees, and surcharges are included in the
price of each roundtrip ticket
Flights
purchased through Flight Price Matcher may not be eligible for frequent
flyer awards, seat upgrades, or other traveler benefits and options |
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Priceline
was the pioneer who created a whole new price point for new air travelers
who could not previously afford travel but they are not consumer oriented
and their place in e-travel is yet to be determined. This service is great for the 21 days before liftoff
when other airline ticket data bases are all rising in unison.
  No
bidding, no moaning, just great deals on airline tickets at Hotwire!
Within
30 minutes of being offered your flight but still without knowing
specific airline and exact flight times. Thus there's no cost
to taking this hot newer service for a spin
 Priceline.com!
||
Bid
Tips
To
play you must be willing to accept very little service or flexibility.
Use them after you know the lowest prices being offered on a popular route
and then try 20% to 30% less.
The Expedia 
flight Price Matcher is similar except it will give you the lowest price
matching your criteria and not pocket the difference as priceline does. You cannot reject their offer
or as they say you must " be willing to prepay for a nonrefundable,
noncancelable,
nonchangeable ticket.
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Last
minute Discounts |
| |
Each
week a number of major airlines, hotel chains, and car rental companies
offer highly-discounted, last-minute rates exclusively on the Internet
Smarter Living stores these rates in two large databases and lets you
access them for free. updated every Wednesday morning
 11th
hour vacations
Help keep occupancy rates optimal and get yourself a dream vacation
including the air. Lots deals available well in advance too.
Big Fare Cuts by air-fare.com
List of all recent 20% fare reductions listed in WorldSpan CRS
by
webflyer.com/
for frequent flyer
 Site59.com
specializing in
last-minute weekend getaways
Airline Last-Minute Fare Bargains by concierge.com
Each weekday we publish two new
travel deals that you won't want to miss.
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Questions or comments?
email the webmaster@ carnaval.com
Last Updated Dec 27, 2001
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|
Wolrdspan CRS, No login to search
WorldChoiceTravel
or USAHotels 
EuropebyAir.com
