Tag Archives: Expedia

Where o’where shall we lay our heads down?

Posted on by
Reply

We love to travel and deciding where we stay depends on how long we have and how we are traveling. If we are going on a road trip, we tend to fly by the seat of our pants and find a place as we get close to stopping for the day. When we have a limited time for our holiday and are staying more than one day at a destination, I put a lot more time into finding a comfortable and affordable place to rest our heads.

When choosing lodgings we have a couple of items that we need:                               1. Clean and comfortable beds. Since we are traveling with two adults and one child, at a minimum we need either two full/queen beds or a full/queen and sleeper couch.

  1. Access to a refrigerator, at the very least, if not a kitchenette. No matter where we travel, we always like to have a refrigerator available for our snacks and drinks. Sometimes, we like to make some of our meals as well.

  2. Good location to where we are visiting, access to transportation, and free parking.

  3. Affordable

As, I have mentioned we love to travel and in order to continue traveling we must continue to live within our means. Not a very easy task nowadays; however, because of access to the internet, budget travel continues to be possible.

My first line of attack is the local chamber of commerce; some towns have a very comprehensive site, so there is no need to go further, for example, the one for Sanibel Island. However, for some towns, you must look deeper. Since we tend to explore new areas, we depend on reviews from fellow travelers to help us make up our mind.  There are several websites that I cross-reference: Tripadvisor, Hotel.com, bedandbreakfast.com, and, an old favorite, Travelocity. Recently I heard that some reviews on Tripadvisor were planted by the establishment’s owners/employees; I have found that they generally validate other reviews but it is good to keep that in mind. In the same commentary, they mentioned that reviews on Expedia could only be done by people that have purchased the lodgings through Expedia – good to know.

Recently, I have learned about Airbnb, a community marketplace for people to list their accommodations around the world. They list rooms, apartments, homes, villas, and castles that are available for a night, a week, or for a month. They list lodgings at any price point (I saw a room for $25 a night and villa for $1300 a night), in more than 26,000 cities and 192 countries. I learned about Airbnb from a friend who was listing her apartment and loved how easy it was to get booked. Another friend loves it too and wrote me:

“We used Airbnb on our Pacific Northwest trip to stay in Vancouver and San Francisco and loved both places we stayed at. One advantage is that you can select the exact neighborhood you want to stay in. In San Francisco, I like to stay around Buena Vista Park since that’s where we used to stay when my brother in law lived there. There was a choice of several and we got a place with killer views, near the Haight and Castro. Both parties are screened pretty thoroughly and the pictures are quite representative. I would definitely use them again and would have no hesitation recommending them.”

Airbnb sounds absolutely wonderful. The search engine appears to be very user friendly and accommodations are reviewed. I can’t wait to start using them.

How do you select your lodgings when you travel? Please share and I continue to share.

Exploring the world on a fixed budget

Posted on by
Reply

I love to travel. My dream has always been to work 6 months, travel 6 months, and still have a home base. This tends to be a lot for most people to comprehend and was even difficult for my husband to digest when I first met him. But he is slowly coming around. Although, I have not actualized my travel dreams yet, we have done our fair share of traveling. I really have no complaints. Fortunately, Mathew is a great traveler too; perhaps it’s genetic.

It seems like I have always lived on limited budget and needed to shop for economical ways of traveling to support my habit. As my role as a domestic engineer has evolved, so has my role as a travel coordinator. This is okay as I have several tools in my travel chest, which have grown over the years with internet access. I’ve never been a fan of travel agents, but with the internet there is very little need for them now except if you do not have the time or inclination to coordinate your travel plans. I find that there is always an investment when you travel – whether it be time or money. The more time you invest in research and coordinating the trip, the less money you will spend on the journey itself. But if you do not have the time, you might need to spend more money.  Not a hard and fast rule, but it tends to work out that way.

The most important advice I can give you in finding affordable travel arrangements is to do a lot of research and to start early. If possible, start at least 2-3 months, if not more, before you want to travel. This is probably the most valuable advice I can offer. There are many search engines out there nowadays but one of my first and favorites is still Travelocity (my husband prefers Expedia). You can program alerts, so if there is a price change for a desired trip you will receive an email alert. Another thing I like about Travelocity is that the price they give you includes all taxes and fees, so you know the real cost of the flight. When I first started using Travelocity, they were able to get better prices than if you booked directly from the airlines, but this is no longer the case. I know people love Expedia but I have never found their prices could beat Travelocity. I now use Kayak and compare it to Travelocity. Kayak offers more options, allows you to refine your search, and is very user friendly. However, once I find the flights I want, I go directly to the airlines to book it, as it tends to save us a few dollars.  Another helpful hint is that, airlines generally release new sales early on Tuesdays, and if other carriers match existing sales, they will do so by the end of business on Tuesday. Therefore, Tuesday is one the best days to start looking for a flight.

Our favorite airline is JetBlue. They have retained some semblance of customer service; where as other airlines have discarded the idea. The seats are comfortable; they have cable TV (which is lovely during long flights) and still offer some free snacks. I love the Blue Chips. One really nice option with JetBlue is that if you book the flight and the price is reduced before you fly, you can call them and they will give you a credit for the difference. You do have to continue to watch fares, which costs time, but it could save you quite a bit of money, especially if you are booking flights for several people.

What do you do to save money on travel? Please share and I will too.