Jaunted

Travel Auctions / Booking Sites / Travel Websites / Lists / → All Tags

Sold! Place A Bid At These Top Websites For Vacation Auctions

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.

more ›

Seats / Seating / Booking Sites / Travel Tips / Orbitz / → All Tags

Stuck in the Middle: Booking Engine and Airline Seat Maps Out Of Sync

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.

more ›

Priceline / Travel Tips / Booking Sites / Hotels / → All Tags

Priceline Travel Hacks Work For International Hotels Too

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.

more ›

Booking Sites / Voyij / Sidestep / Travel Deals / Hotels / Airfare Deals / → All Tags

New Travel Booking Site Voyij Feeds Our Deal Addiction

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.

more ›

Booking Sites / Airfare Wars / Orbitz / Travel News / → All Tags

Orbitz Joins the Great Airfare Booking Fee Drop of '09

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.

more ›

Barack Obama / John McCain / Sarah Palin / Joe Biden / Booking Sites / → All Tags

Important Issues Travel: Which Candidate Would You Vacation With?

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.

more ›

Meltdownomics / Booking Sites / → All Tags

Financial Fallout Travel: Online Booking Hurting, Too

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]

Booking Sites / Travel Websites / → All Tags

The Online Travel Industry: China's Winning There Too

Let's face it. If the spectacle of the Beijing Olympics taught us anything, it's that when it comes scary superpowers, China totally kicks the United States' weary butt these days.

This emerging dominance extends to the travel industry--as we've heard before. A recent Forbes article profiles Ctrip, a China-owned booking site that modeled itself after Expedia. Since it's growing much faster than its American counterpart these days, it looks like Expedia might soon be modeling itself after Ctrip.

The Chinese site tried once, back in 2001, to enter the business travel market, but backed out because of competition with American Express and Expedia-owned Chinese travel site, Elong. Now, it's preparing to reenter the market, CEO Min Fan says. Further, it started adding more land travel options like limo service, along with customized travel packages that it promotes from kiosks in China's airports.

Related Stories:
· Ctrip [Official Site]
· Taking Off [Forbes]
· China Travel coverage [Jaunted]

Booking Sites / Kayak / American Airlines / → All Tags

Travel Lawsuits: Kayak Countersues American

Remember that American Airlines-Kayak feud that started earlier this summer? After AA got upset with the way the booking engine was posting its fare data, Kayak yanked the info, leading to allegations from both sides about who started the trouble.

On August 5, AA filed a lawsuit in Texas asking the court to stop Kayak from using its fare info--and for damages. Right before the holiday weekend, the booking site filed its answer--and its counterclaims.

more ›

Booking Sites / Kayak / American Airlines / → All Tags

Kayak's Blog Suddenly Looking Less Than Transparent

Just days ago, we were praising Kayak for being transparent about its role in an ongoing saga with American Airlines about whether or not the fare search aggregator should be allowed to show the airline's pricing info. But one thing we didn't hear about on the official Kayak blog this week? A lawsuit AA filed against the company on August 5.

In the court papers, American alleges that Kayak:

Displayed American fare content obtained from Orbitz.com and Cheaptickets.com. [Kayak] would display American fare content ... above the AA.com listings. This siphoning of American fare content from other websites undermined American's efforts to reduce its distribution costs and violated the plain terms of [an agreement between the two companies].

The ultimate decision to pull American's fare content was made by Kayak on June 30, when the search company terminated the agreement it had with AA about displaying the carrier's inventory.

more ›

Booking Sites / Kayak / American Airlines / → All Tags

Booking Engine Fiascos: Kayak Owning the AA Saga Narrative

Today is day one of No-AA-Fares-on-Kayak, and the travel search aggregator has issued a statement that finally clarifies why you won't be seeing American Airlines' fare info on the site anymore. (You'll still be able to check the carrier's schedules, but to find the actual cost of those flights, you'll have to manually check another site.)

Here's Kayak's explanation:

American asked us to suppress search results from online travel agency partners as a condition to displaying their fares on Kayak.com and SideStep.com. We remain committed to providing a comprehensive and objective display to our users.

Therefore, Kayak.com and SideStep.com are displaying schedules only (not prices) for American Airlines flights.

We shouldn't have to tell you that American has yet to release its own version of events--except of course for a brief statement the carrier sent to Budget Travel. Where did Kayak release its statement? Its own blog, natch.

Related Stories:
· Kayak Statement on American Airlines [Official Site]
· Trying to Parse the Kayak-AA Drama [Jaunted]

Booking Sites / Kayak / American Airlines / → All Tags

Booking Engine Fiascos: Trying to Parse the Kayak-AA Drama

From August 1, Jaunted's preferred travel search engine, Kayak, won't be displaying fares for American Airlines flights. While TechCrunch, which originally reported the story, says that's because the aggregator "tends to show AA flights through its partnership with Orbitz instead of directly from American," this screen capture clearly shows that's but one option Kayak supplies bargain hunters.

In fact, CEO Steve Hafner (or someone using his name) clarified, leaving a comment on TechCrunch:

American asked us to suppress search results from competing websites as a condition to displaying their fares. This is simply not something that Kayak will do.

more ›