Bargain Travel!

0 Comments | Insight on the News, Jan 11, 1999 | by Eli Lehrer

When it comes to travel by cruise ship, Logan advises going for the cheapest accommodations available. Most modern cruise ships, she says, open all of their amenities to everyone anyway. "The inside cabins on the lower decks are more comfortable if the ship hits rough seas" she says. "I figure I can go four times for what someone in a suite pays for one time." Parsons also points out that increased cruise-ship capacity promises bargains in years to come. "There are a lot of big new ships coming online and the number of people taking cruises isn't increasing nearly as quickly as some people thought it might." Indeed, searching for a cheap cruise may be the best bet for those who seek a bargain on a trip to a warm climate.

For those without Internet access, many of the best deals prove very difficult to find. The best advice experts have to offer is to find a good travel agent. "Travel agents are like any professional service, there are good ones and bad ones" says Deiner. "The best bet is to try to find one who is willing to spend time working on your specific needs." Logan warns that many very good travel agents will try to push more-expensive vacations even when there is no commission involved. "They believe that you'll be more satisfied" she says. "You need to make it clear that you want to save money."

Ticket consolidators and hotel-room consolidators, who buy large blocks of tickets and rooms and resell them at lower prices, also can help, particularly for those who can match their schedules with the available rooms and tickets. Flying as an air courier, which often requires membership fee's, also can be a good deal for people with a lot of flexibility. Couriers typically give up their baggage allowance (which is filled with parcels) in return for a massively discounted ticket; most often one from a large U.S. city to a large European one. Courier companies often charge membership fees, although a few, which generally don't advertise and do require references, pay couriers who are willing to depart within a window of a few weeks. The volume of courier flights, however, proves very limited so, with the possible exception of New York City to London trips, even a very flexible person may simply be shut out of the courier trade.

E-mail fares, which nearly all airlines send out on Wednesday, offer rockbottom prices -- round trips for as little as $19 and rarely more than $99 for people willing to depart on Saturday (a notoriously slow day for airlines before e-marl fares came along) and return before Wednesday. The e-mail fare listings also include discounts on rental cars and hotel rooms. In general, people anxious to get away from home lap them up by Wednesday morning.

USAirways spokesman David Castelveter says that the airline has no firm rules for picking e-mall discounts and targets flights with lots of unsold seats. The airline rarely offers an e-mail discount to the same place for two weeks in a row. A look through a few months of e-mall fare deals from a variety of airlines shows some other trends. On the whole, midsized northern cities such as Providence, R.I., and Syracuse, N.Y., have the best e-saver fares, while larger cities are less commonly found and small towns almost unheard of.