A Travel Pro's Money-Saving Secrets

Christopher Elliott
National Geographic Traveler

The travel industry does not make it easy for consumers to save money. Airfares, hotel rates and car rental rates fluctuate daily... hidden fees unexpectedly inflate bills... and historically high gas prices and a weak US dollar have made it even harder to plan inexpensive vacations. Still, there are ways for savvy travelers to save money...


Skip the hotel room. With hotel rates at all-time highs, lodging alone can burn through most of your vacation budget. Rather than overpay, consider these money-saving alternatives...


Time-share rentals. Time-share owners sometimes rent out their places when they cannot use them themselves. They often ask a fraction of what a hotel would charge for comparable lodgings. To find a time-share available for rent, check time-share rental and exchange Web sites, such as RedWeek.com and TradingPlaces.com. Also, search the Craigslist.com site for the region you intend to visit under the “Housing” section.


Home exchanges. Home-exchange organizations, such as HomeExchange.com and Homelink.org, help members swap homes for a week or two. These programs work best for people who live near popular tourist destinations. Membership in a home-exchange organization typically costs around $100 per year, but the savings on the accommodations more than pay for the membership if you take even one trip each year.


Campgrounds. Many people imagine dirt floors and outhouses when they hear “campground,” but some facilities offer clean, up-to-date cabins or rooms for rent so that guests sleep indoors, often for considerably less than a hotel would charge. Some rooms and cabins even include private bathrooms and wireless Internet access. Local visitors’ bureaus can help you find campgrounds in the region.


Shop online for package deals. You may have wondered if the package deals offered by online travel sites really do save you money. Often, they do. Expedia.com, Travelocity.com and Orbitz.com purchase airline tickets, hotel rooms and rental car reservations in bulk at low rates -- and pass some of their bulk-buy savings along to customers who buy these services together.


These package deals can be considerably cheaper than anything you could find by purchasing airline tickets, hotel rooms and rental cars separately. Occasionally a hotel-and-airfare package actually is cheaper than airfare alone.


These sites’ package deals tend to be most attractive for travel to common vacation destinations, such as Hawaii, New York City, Orlando and Las Vegas.


Make a low bid for a rental car on Priceline.com before reserving a car. The Web site Priceline.com lets users bid for rental cars and other travel services. The site either accepts these bids or rejects them -- you have nothing to lose by bidding, because there’s no charge to do so. Priceline.com is particularly likely to provide great rental car rates.


The tricky part is deciding how low you should bid. Rental car prices vary greatly from city to city and even day to day, making it hard to determine a fair price.


I start by finding the best rental rate I can through major rental car company Web sites and 800 numbers. (Rental car companies often offer better deals over the phone than they do online.)


Next, I search for rental car deals on Hotwire.com, a Web site that often has very attractive rates. I take the best price I have found and bid 30% less on Priceline.com. Often, my bid is accepted. If not, I accept the best deal I have found
elsewhere.


Also: Consider reserving an economy car, even if you would prefer something larger. Rental agencies often run out of economy cars and provide free upgrades to customers. This is not worth trying if you absolutely must have a larger car.


Upgrade your airline legroom for free. You might not have to ante up big bucks (or frequent-flier miles) for an upgrade to first-class legroom. Simply reserve a coach seat in the emergency exit row. This row typically has several more inches of legroom than other coach rows -- sometimes even as much as first class -- to make it easier for passengers to exit in the event of an emergency. A few airlines charge extra for exit-row seats, but most don’t.


When I am unable to reserve a seat in the emergency exit row, I ask the gate agent to place me on the waiting list for this row as soon as I check in for my flight. You must be able-bodied to sit in the emergency exit row and physically able to open the emergency door.


Bulkhead seats -- the seats at the front of a seating section -- typically also have extra legroom. However, bulkhead seats often are reserved for people with disabilities, families with young children and frequent-fliers.


Helpful: Buy airline tickets as early as possible this year. Many of the major American airlines are considering mergers. Airline mergers tend to reduce competition and increase prices, at least for a while. It is better to lock in today’s fares.


Eat lunch out but dinner in. Many restaurants charge about twice as much for dinner as they do for lunch -- even though the food is the same and the portions comparable.


Trim vacation costs by eating lunch in the fancy restaurants you want to visit but dinner in less expensive restaurants or even back in your room if you have a kitchen or can bring in takeout.


Look out for hidden fees. Virtually every company in the travel industry these days seems to be tacking on “hidden” fees. Cruise lines impose “fuel surcharges”... car rental agencies have become stricter about fuel “top off” fees... hotels add “concierge charges” or “resort fees.”


Scan the fine print of rental contracts and other travel documents for fee disclosures before signing. If you feel that a fee is not justified, say so -- you may be able to get it waived.


If fees are not stated in your documents, explain that you were not told about these fees and request that they be waived. If this request is denied, dispute the fee charge through your credit card company after your trip.


Consider using a travel agent for complex itineraries or a cruise. In this era of book-your-own-ticket Web sites, most consumers consider travel agents unnecessary. But an experienced travel agent can save you money on complicated international trips with numerous stops.


When consumers book complex trips on their own, they often suffer missed connections or other unforeseen complications -- these problems can be very expensive to resolve. Working with an experienced travel agent makes problems less likely and gives you an emergency on-call problem solver if something does go wrong.

Also, travel agents who are associated with large consortiums often have access to special rates for cruises and hotels that you couldn’t find on your own.

E-mail this Article


Bottom Line/Personal interviewed Christopher Elliott, host of the television series What You Get for the Money: Vacations on the Fine Living Network. Based in Winter Springs, Florida, he writes a travel column for MSNBC.com and serves as ombudsman for National Geographic Traveler. www.elliott.org.

The Swine Flu....All In Our Head?

I’m sitting here tonight wondering if being born a “thinker” is a blessing or a curse. I received an email from the CDC this evening restating the “level 5” status as the numbers of confirmed “H1N1” cases continue to rise.

Quite frankly, I’m puzzled by a lot of supposed “facts” surrounding this whole outbreak,--oh yeah,--I had better correct myself and say “pandemic.” Subsequently, it was with some interest that I read an article suggesting that pandemics start in our heads. Literally. Something called the Elliott Wave Principle. Hmmmm…..well, I suppose it’s possible……doctors now regularly dispense with such advice as “reduce your stress level” to people with heart problems; the now old “mind-body” connection once would have been considered heresy.

Well now. Being a thinker is no fun. It causes me to wonder how in the world “H1N1” suddenly re-appeared after 90+ years? Anybody have any ideas?

Then there’s another way to view the Elliott Wave Principle. Maybe it’s the other way ‘round. So many people died that the economic downturn was a result of, rather than the cause of the pandemic. And then, of course, maybe it’s all bull sh**. Maybe it’s a bunch of hype over nothing more than the flu. It’s true,--each time the “flu” hits, it has always mutated from the previous strain. This makes flu shots fairly ineffective in my humble opinion.

Regardless, I keep asking myself the question,…if it’s “much ado about nothing”……then why? This takes my mind in really weird directions. In my ideal world, there are no boxes, so nothing is “off-limits” to, well,…..think about. Thinking outside the box, I like to, as Hercule Poirot would have said, “exercise my little grey cells” by going to Alex Jones’ website. I don’t care if you’re not a thinker,--visiting his site is guaranteed to make you think, question and speculate. Unless you’re brain-dead, that is.

Or, how about a conspiracy theory? A good way to inject people with………what? Alaska is ready. They’ve already had a “practice-mass-dispensing-vaccine” day. A what??? Yep, you read that correctly. Hope they didn’t use up all the needles.

Mom was right. Time will tell. In the meantime, I think I should try to get at least 7 hours of sleep each night. It might keep the wolves,---I mean pigs and birds, from my door.

Happiness

"I am more and more convinced that our happiness or our unhappiness depends far more on the way we meet the events of life than on the nature of those events themselves."--Wilhelm von Humboldt

Money For Your Old Electronics and Gadgets

Looking for a way to get rid of old computers, monitors, cell phones, digital cameras etc.? Help keep things green, (maybe even earn some extra money!) and recycle at Gazelle.com or MyBoneYard.com

It's Fun to Know: What Are the Odds?

No longer content with the odds (tens of millions to one) of winning the lottery, more and more Americans are buying fewer lottery tickets. Sales of lotto games and scratch-offs are down 5 percent in California, 7 percent in Florida, and 10 percent in Indiana.

Industry watchers contend that spending on the lottery has fallen due to the recession, along with dips in other types of discretionary spending. But the states aren't sitting back and taking it. They are actively recruiting new vendors and extending discounts to customers, including buy-one / get-one-free coupons.

(Source: USA Today)

Smile and Move

Dare to believe.......

“Nothing splendid has ever been achieved except by those who dared believe that something inside themselves was superior to circumstance.” Bruce Barton (1886–1967) American advertising executive, U.S. congressman

Click here to download in PDF format.