Although Priceline pioneered bidding for your vacation 11 years ago, the recession is forcing other travel operators to go on the online auction block. Online auctions allow companies to make unload some unsold inventory and make some quick cash and you can benefit by fetching a good price. Let's look at a few, shall we?

· Generous Adventures Travel Auction
This site has been around even longer than Priceline, but Generous Adventures still differentiates itself from other auction sites by donating its profits to non-profit organizations. Just think, if you bid on the "Best of Tuscany" trip (bid starting at $100), a full-day tour of Tuscany with lunch and wine tastings included, getting drunk will help others.

Check after the jump for more travel websites where you can place a bid.]]> Jennifer Kester 2009-12-10T09:09:41-05:00 http://www.jaunted.com/story/2009/6/29/141047/912

You’re a savvy traveler, and you know that when trying to book the best deal on a flight, you should check all the aggregator search engines (Orbitz, Travelocity, Expedia, Kayak, etc.) before deciding which airline and fare to go with.

The discount you get may be worth it, but we’re here to warn you about one of the perils of booking on a discount sites based on a recent experience we had with Orbitz. We were looking for a flight from Los Angeles to Paris, and we found a great deal on Northwest Airlines. Great route, quick stopovers, and plenty of empty seats to choose from. Or so we thought as we booked the seat through Orbitz and entered our seat selections.

]]> EricRosen 2009-06-29T16:57:19-05:00 http://www.jaunted.com/story/2009/5/15/144125/825

Priceline's in the news this morning for their new Bring-A-Friend bonus, where you get $100 in Priceline credit when you book two or more hotel rooms at the same time for the same trip. We also know that many of you are going to Europe this summer, and we've even gotten a question from someone about using Priceline to book international hotels. So off we go.

The formal and informal rules for booking international hotels - the bidding process and the tricks that you can use to beat it - are basically the same as for domestic hotels. You put in the price, the star-level, and the locations that you're willing to accept.

Priceline spits out whether or not they managed to get you a room at that rate. If your bid fails you get to bid again, but you have to either reduce the star level or add another acceptable location. You can't just increase your price, which is the incentive to get you to bid higher initially.]]> Omri 2009-05-15T16:47:40-05:00 http://www.jaunted.com/story/2009/5/14/165748/909

Did we really need another travel search engine? While most people with healthy internet habits may say no, deal junkies like us say there are never enough.

The latest on the scene is Voyij, a new site just launched by a bunch of ex-Sidestep employees, and we're loving their setup, which is designed for travelers with wide-open plans. Voyij's homepage simply asks where you are in the world and if you'd prefer to travel this weekend, sometime later this month, or in an upcoming month. It then sorts through all the airplane, hotel and booking sites to find the cheapest deals for your given time, assuming you're willing to go anywhere in the world. ]]> BS 2009-05-15T08:46:55-05:00 http://www.jaunted.com/story/2009/4/8/11135/91955

Forget a battle of the airfare wars; the desperation to pack people on planes has reached new lows with even the airfare booking sites coming to blows. In order to scrounge up the business of people still traveling, sites like Expedia/Hotwire and Travelocity began dropping their booking fees in March, with Orbitz/CheapTickets late to the table this week. While these fees are typically under $10 per ticket and barely perceptible when you're dropping some dough on first class or multi-segment, the elimination of them seems a genuinely altruistic thing to do in this economy. ]]> JetSetCD 2009-04-08T12:35:03-05:00 http://www.jaunted.com/story/2008/10/15/142214/59

We don't normally run surveys from travel companies because, well, would it really surprise you that some booking website has discovered that people love buying plane tickets? Still, we can't ignore the results of an awesome telephone survey, just released by Travelzoo:

A full third of Americans (33 percent) would choose to go on vacation with vice-presidential Republican candidate Sarah Palin.

Over at HotelChatter, the story is all about crumbling hotel stocks. Well guess what? Seems like every business in the world is seeing their values fall faster than models at last week's Prada show.

Online travel booking companies are no exception. Here's the current breakdown, pun certainly intended:

· Expedia: currently $14.71, $33.44 a year ago
· Orbitz: $5.87, $11.27 a year ago
· Priceline: $64.85, $89.31 a year ago
· Travelzoo: $7.71, $23.06 a year ago

Now if anyone can tell us who's actually doing well right now, there's a story. We hear it's the folks selling cans of chicken broth and Bean-O, the new national diet.

But the worst part of all this? We can't stop hearing about staycations.

Related Stories:
· Models Lose It [Daily Mail]
· Booking Sites coverage [Jaunted]

[Photo: Google Finance]]]> ced138 2008-10-01T10:58:08-05:00 Search Jaunted string http://www.jaunted.com/search/