Booking Travel On-Line

(Confessions of a Business Traveler)

If you're not booking trips (flights, hotels, and rental cars) on-line... try it. Every time I book a flight, I smile and thank God for small favors. I travel frequently, and don't have the luxury of a huge travel budget. Until today, I was an avid and enthusiastic Expedia user. I decided to check out some of the other on-line options and share my experiences. I compared four major sites; Expedia, Travelocity, Cheaptickets and Orbitz. I was surprised by the results.

Several years ago I started using Expedia. Oddly enough, I resisted booking travel on-line, mostly because I had a wonderful travel agent. The first time I used Expedia, I searched for the best fare and travel times, and then called my travel agent to have her book the flight. After doing this a couple times, I noticed that I was normally able to find better deals on-line. I would look at all the different options. I would try different airports, times, and days, depending on how flexible I was. It didn't take long until I started booking flights myself... in fact, I felt fairly stupid for not doing it in the first place. It's quick, easy, and very convenient.

Booking Flights

I've booked about 50 flights for business and pleasure... and until today, all my bookings were done with Expedia. I thought it would be an interesting exercise to do a comparison of Expedia, Travelocity, Orbitz, and Cheaptickets.com... and I was right, it was very interesting.

I'm flying from Jacksonville to New York to Boston and back to Jacksonville. Cheaptickets.com  doesn't handle multiple destinations (only one-way or round-trip flights). So I entered my flight information into the three other sites. They all returned similar results. Orbits had slightly better prices and also located more flights. For example, both Expedia and Travelocity gave me the option of going back via Charlotte or Philadelphia. Orbitz also had options to return via Tampa, Orlando, and DC. One of these routes ended up getting me back home an 1.5 hours earlier.

PRICES FOR MY FLIGHTS:

     Orbitz - $356

     Travelocity - $367

     Expedia - $377

Another thing I liked about Travelocity and Orbitz was when I entered my travel dates and cities,  they listed various options meeting my criteria (the least expensive option listed first). Expedia had me pick flights for each leg of my journey separately and then gave me the total price. This offers more flexibility (you can mix and match airlines), but you don't always get the lowest price. To make the comparison fair, the prices I listed above were for identical itineraries. I preferred the way both Orbitz and Travelocity listed the flights.

After booking my flight (with Orbitz), I decided to run a couple more tests to see how the sites would perform:

Round-trip ticket from Jacksonville to New York (10 day advance booking).

     Cheaptickets.com - $192

     Orbitz - $227

     Travelocity - $231

     Expedia - $249

Round-trip ticket from San Francisco to Philadelphia (2 day advance booking).

     Travelocity - $539

     Orbitz - $544

     Expedia - $614

Note: Cheaptickets.com requires 5 days to send you tickets so I couldn't check this fare.

Round-trip ticket from San Francisco to Philadelphia (10 day advance booking).

     Travelocity - $422

     Orbitz - $439

     Cheaptickets.com - $439

     Expedia - $565   (ouch!)

Round-trip ticket from Tallahassee to Dublin, Ireland (3 month advance booking).

     Orbitz - $667

     Expedia - $709

     Travelocity - $714

     Cheaptickets.com - $714

Booking a  Room

On most of my trips, I find a spare bed or couch with friends or family, so I'm not quite as experienced in booking hotels. I took a quick stab at it, and found the results much harder to judge.

Orbitz gave me the best rates for the hotels I checked... BUT when I searched for hotels, Orbitz gave me a list and forced me to click on each item to check the price. This made it time consuming to compare prices.

Expedia gave me a nice list with prices and pictures. I knew what hotel I wanted to book - and even entering the address, it took scrolling through several screens to get my desired hotel to appear. To make matters worse, when I clicked to book my room, Expedia told me no rooms were available (I later booked the room with Orbitz).

Travelocity gave me a list of hotels and their prices in my desired area, but the prices were slightly higher than the prices listed on Orbitz.

I booked my hotel using Orbitz and saved $30 per night over the rate displayed on Travelocity.

Renting a Car

Driving in Boston is not for the weak-hearted, but I'll be doing it. All three sites are pretty similar in this category. I did a quick search of rental cars in Boston and found:

     Orbitz - $21.95 / day

     Expedia - $22.99 / day

     Travelocity - $25.80 / day

That makes it a clean sweep - the car, hotel, and flight were all booked using Orbitz.

Au Revoir Expedia

I'm surprised by the results. I expected that there would be little difference between the sites, and generally, that was true. There were a few instances, where I found significant savings over Expedia. What really shocks me is that I ended up booking all parts of my trip with the "new kid on the block", Orbitz. I'm impressed. Orbitz is run by five major U.S. airlines (American, Continental, Delta, Northwest and United) - and they've done a terrific job of providing a travel site that really meets my needs.

If you're currently using Expedia or Travelocity,  check out Orbitz for your next trip, it might save you some cash.

For those of you that have not yet booked your own trips on the Internet, try it. Once you've booked a couple trips, you'll wonder how you did it any other way.

Bon voyage.

Related Links

     Orbitz - www.orbitz.com

     Expedia - www.expedia.com

     Travelocity - www.travelocity.com

     Cheaptickets.com - www.cheaptickets.com