Finding bargains online

We now book more travel on the internet than ever – but are we paying too much for convenience? LOUISE GOLDSBURY reveals where to find the bargains online.

According to a recent report*, people aged between 50 and 64 spend almost twice as much on package holidays as under-30s. While many of us happily spend more because we want good quality and value, or because we are loyal to our favourite companies, there are those of us who are overpaying because we don’t know where to find the bargains.

So how can you find the best value deals on the internet? One option is to search for key words on Google (www.google.com.au) and click on the websites listed, comparing as many as you can mentally and emotionally handle. You could try searching for "cheap flights", "last minute specials" or "travel discounts", but it's best to be more specific: "Europe seniors airfare August" or "Queensland hotel bargains off-peak".

Or you could let Get Up & Go do the legwork and check out the following websites, which I have found to be among the best.

Accommodation
Hotels are prime ground for online savings, using the internet to quickly sell off vacant rooms. If you can wait until just before your holiday, you can often find a five-star hotel room online for a two-star price. You can find a site that lists sales at hundreds of hotels, or if you have a favourite hotel brand, sign up for their e-newsletter and check out their website for specials. Many properties offer seniors discounts on top of online discounts.

Choice Hotels (representing the Comfort, Quality and Clarion brands in Australia and New Zealand) offers seniors discounts of between 10 and 20 per cent. You can also register to receive the latest deals in its e-newsletter, Choice E-scapes (www.choicehotels.com.au).

Accor (www.accor.com) has introduced an online booking service for Seniors Card holders, offering exclusive discounts of up to 47 per cent off the daily rack rate at hotels and resorts throughout Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Fiji and French Polynesia. To receive Accor's guide to online savings, the Seniors Hotel Directory 2006, email your address to seniors.australia@accor.com.

For last-minute rates at a range of hotels, try Hotel Club, which lists 8,500 hotels in 36 countries. Thanks to the site’s strong purchasing power, you can expect to save up to 70 per cent off normal rates. Hotel Club guarantees that every hotel reservation made through the Last Minute Deals section (lm.HotelClub.net) has the lowest rate publicly available on the internet. If you find a cheaper deal, Hotel Club will match that price and refund you the difference (conditions apply).

Cheap flights
Virgin Blue (www.virginblue.com.au), Jetstar (www.jetstar.com.au) and Qantas domestic (www.qantas.com.au) offer a few dollars off fares if you book online instead of over the phone. These sites usually have web-only deals that you won’t see advertised anywhere else. Be the first to know by signing up for each of their e-newsletters.

Seniors fares are also available with many international airlines, depending on the season and destination, but these can usually be booked by phone too. Check out JAL, Gulf Air, Austrian Airlines, Cathay Pacific, Emirates and Royal Brunei Airlines.

A price comparison website is useful as it presents a large selection of travel companies in one search, listing all their flights, times and prices, so you don’t need to go back and forth between lots of sites.

Webjet (www.webjet.com.au) and Harvey World Travel (www.harveyworldtravel.com.au) both compare flights for Qantas, Virgin Blue, Jetstar and regional Express, but each charge a processing fee of almost $15. I found they listed a couple of cheaper fares than were shown on the airlines’ own sites, so it only works out cheaper to book with them if the flight costs $15 less.

Tours, cruises and cars
Intrepid Travel has an Impulse Deals section on its website (www.intrepidtravel.com/impulse) that offers a 20 per cent discount on a range of trips for near departures. These deals are updated weekly, so if your timing is flexible, keep checking regularly and you could save several hundred dollars.

To register for the latest deals from Trafalgar, AAT Kings, Creative Holidays and Insight Vacations, go to Travel Sneak Peaks (www.travelsneakpeeks.com), which previews each companies’ current specials.

For cruises, ecruising (www.ecruising.travel) has a good reputation in the industry as it is Australia's leading cruise-only travel agency. This means many cruise lines provide exclusive specials to be promoted in ecruising’s weekly newsletter, which has apparently gained a cult following.

To book a rental or lease vehicle anywhere in the world, go to Holiday Autos (www.holidayautos.com.au), which offers a five-percent discount if you are a member of a motoring club, and a further five per cent off if you are a Seniors Card holder. For campervans, Camper Travel (www.campertravel.com.au) compares more than 20 vans from different companies in Australia and New Zealand, and offers five per cent off online (if you mention Get Up & Go).

Service, trust and usability
For many of us, good service and ease-of-use can be as important as cost. In the Airlines and Travel Report 2006 – a study on how travel companies serve their online customers – Expedia (www.expedia.com) and Marriot International (www.marriott.com) achieved the top rating. Ranked equal first, these two websites were above average in usability, communication and trust. Travelocity (www.travelocity.com) came third.

The "most trustworthy" sites out of 42 airline and travel firms studied in the report were Expedia, Intercontinental Hotels and Southwest Airlines. The "most usable" sites were Royal Caribbean Cruiselines, Celebrity Cruise Line and Continental Airlines, and the best sites for one-on-one communications were Cheaptickets (www.cheaptickets.com), Travelocity and Orbitz (www.orbitz.com).

For a site that compares all aspects of travel on one screen, Webjet is hard to beat for convenience, but it does charge fees for processing these special deals. You can research, compare, book and pay for plane fares, hotel rooms and hire cars in one transaction, using one or several credit cards. But just watch those fees adding up – it could cost you more in the end.

* Source: www.travelsupermarket.com