This is an extended post on some of the tips I think are useful when you are looking for the best holiday or airline ticket deals. So far this year, I have traveled to: Vanuatu, Sydney, Adelaide, India, Singapore and recently booked a 2.5 month trip to Central America. You’d think I would know a thing or two about booking holidays. This is Part 1: Getting the best deal!.
The Options.
When looking for travel deals, there is no better place than the internet. There are literally thousands of sites out there who offer some great deals, but there are also some real shoddy ones too so you have to be careful. Here is my motto: be prepared to shop around, check regularly because airline prices change on a daily basis, and ensure you trust the person whom you are buying from.
Unlike me, many people are still uncomfortable making large purchases on the internet. This is understandable, however it does not mean the internet is out of the options.
Tip 1 - Do your research?
I used several sites to compare travel prices to Central America. These include (but not limited to):
- Expedia.com.au
- Flight Centre
- Escape Travel
- Travel.com.au
- Singapore Airlines
- American Airlines
- Thai Airways
- United
What I found that depending on the dates you put, prices can vary by up to 200-300 dollars. That’s a massive saving! This is stemmed from varying taxes, fuel prices and surcharges. Furthermore, always be prepared to check individual airlines 
as well, because sometimes they are way cheaper than booking through an agent.
Tip 2 - Shop around physically!
Once I assimilated my quotes from the above sites, I chose the best ones. I was quite flexible with the dates of travel, therefore I could really afford to get the best price. Traveling during weekdays is generally cheaper than weekends. Know your peak and off peak seasons. For example: Traveling in mid November to North / Central America is considered off peak, but once you hit late November prices jump rapidly (i.e.: Christmas). From my research, I found traveling on Tuesday and Wednesday (so called mid week fares) to be the cheapest.
My next target with these quotes were travel agents. I tried Flight Centre, Escape Travel, and Harvey World Travel. You would be surprised how much each agent varies, even when its their own company. I received three very different quotes from Flight Centres within 3 blocks from each other in downtown Melbourne. The difference between the cheapest and most expensive was 700 bucks!!!
Tip 3 - Set your limits, and preferences
From day one, I had my preferences set. This means selecting the best route for me, number of stop overs, and also the airlines I am willing to fly. These were: 1) Non stop to LA, 2) Via Pacific (or maybe SE Asia, but definitely not China), 3) Qantas / United / Thai / Singapore or American Airlines.
Tip 4 - Be firm.
I find the art of negotiating quite simple. It’s my territory, I negotiate and no one else does. That means, I set the price limits, I set the rules, and I am prepared to walk away. So I went to the cheapest Flight Centre quote, and literally said: “I have this quote from this website, can you price beat it. If you can, I will buy the ticket right now!”. This usually works. The agent wants to make a quick sale, and immediately knows you are not to be messed with. Of course, I had evidence to back up my quotes. You can’t simply make up unreasonable quotes, because you will find they have access to all the quotes you have managed to source.
Summary
Okay, so far you have managed to get the best quote, and are now sitting right in front of the agent. Once you are happy with the deal and the price match / beat has been achieved, then what do you do? I will follow this up in my next post….which will definitely be interesting. Stay tuned!
Which online site would you recommend as having the most consistenly cheap prices? It really gets tiring to check all these different sites regularly.
During my research I found expedia.com.au to be most consistent, and travel.com.au (which I have not included in my post, because I did not extensively use it). I basically got a quote from expedia.com.au and went straight to the travel agent.
There is a lot of variability because of two most important factors: 1) taxes and surcharges charged (these can vary on a daily basis), 2) fuel surcharges and costs (can vary depending on the hour).
I noticed that even with expedia.com.au, price varied depending on the time of day, day of the week. Generally, weekends are more expensive. Monday and Tuesday are the cheapest. Of course peak and off peak rates also come into account.
However I would certain try a few different sites including airline companies to get the best price.
I checked websites regularly, mainly because I was arranging my finances before I bought it. If had I bought it earlier, I would have saved about 20 bucks extra. This was because I waited approx 10 days before buying it, by that time fuel prices shot up. My next blog post explains a bit more about how to save money (how to avoid credit card surcharge, but still collect points etc).
I am an avid reader of current news, and you will find some great tips and websites in the travel section of your newspaper.
[...] can find these posts in my Getting the best travel deal posts here and here. In this post, I will address some hidden costs which you could be saving when travelling [...]