Hubs and I have a wedding in Orange County, California this September. This is a double bonus for us because…
- We will get to see friends from college.
- The kiddos will be staying with Grinny and Nana.
- Orange County is dangerously close to my favorite place on earth, Santa Barbara County Wine Country.
Since we will be so close to my favorite place on earth, we are taking a couple of extra days to hit some of our favorite wineries and make it into a little “kiddo-less” vacation.
When I start planning for a vacation, I look at a couple of different websites to help us get the best bang for our buck. Here are my favorites:
Southwest Airlines
We are faithful flyers of Southwest Airlines. Hubs’ uses the Southwest Airlines credit card for his business and between that and our flights we are able to usually score one to two free tickets per years. They also let you check up to two bags FREE. Which is a big deal if you are trying to ship wine or souvenirs home. Also, Southwest guarantees their flight prices. If after you book, your flight price goes down, contact Southwest and they will credit you the difference. Here are some details on becoming a Southwest Airlines Rapid Reward member.
Hotwire
Sign up for the Hotwire Travel Ticker. I can only remember one time in our history of traveling that I didn’t use Hotwire to book our rental car and hotel. In my opinion, it has the LOWEST prices for decent hotel chains (like Holiday Inn, Marriott, Sheraton, etc.). If you sign up for the ticker, you can tell it to be on the lookout for your destination and it will alert when the price is right. Using Hotwire, I’ve never paid more that $65 per night for a room – ANYWHERE.
Yelp
Check out Yelp. It is a website where common “joes” like you and me can rate their experience at restaurants and attractions. Since it is consumer-based, you will get all sorts of information about the quality of the food and service and overall price. We used Yelp on our past vacation and ate at some of the best restaurants for next to nothing.
While this list isn’t exclusive – these are the top three things I do to save money when planning for a vacation. Now it is your turn – what money saving websites do you use to plan your vacation?
I sometimes check out Ebates to see if the hotel or airline I want to book is on there. I booked my most recent vacation through expedia using Ebates. Thanks for the tip on Yelp. I haven’t heard of it!
I’ve used many tricks to book trips as cheap as possible. Kayak is my friend to get an idea of what is a good price, so I can then explore priceline and hotwire, as well as booking on my own through the hotel’s reward program. Don’t forget betterbidding.com to make sure you have a good idea what hotel you’ll get on priceline/hotwire. I’ve not been disappointed, but you want to know what you’re getting into with that $24/night 3* hotel at the main gate of Disney. (It was a Best Western and it was fine.) And if you’re going to book through priceline or hotwire don’t forget to link there through upromise or some other reward place.
Last summer we had a driving trip and there were a few nights when we didn’t know where we’d be. So, since everyone knows walking up to the desk and asking for a room is the sure way to pay the highest price, we took the lap top and sat outside of a McDonalds for the free wi-fi at least once.
For cruises and independent excursions/transportation in various ports I love the message boards at cruisecritic.com. Independent is usually cheaper, but always better (smaller groups, more sights seen, whatever…)
FE,
Thanks for the hint about betterbidding.com – I’ll be using that soon as we start make plans for Cali. Great suggestion.