FollowFriday – Friday April 09, 2010 – TRAVEL

April 9th, 2010 | Author: Chris Sully

FollowFriday : On any given Friday, thousands upon thousands (maybe even millions) of Twitter users enter the hashtag #FollowFriday (or #FF), followed by one or more “mentions.” The idea is for users to share the names of other “interesting people” that they follow and think you should too. These recommendations serve as positive comment cards for the digitally inclined.

JumpstartMyPC.com has decided to bring FollowFriday to our blog. Read on and, if you are so inclined, add these “interesting people” to your own list.

FollowFriday – Round 6

Last Friday I started out on a 7 day journey to visit relatives in Canada. The trip included over 8 hours of flying time and 2 layovers, giving me ample time to read and study the world of travel around me. During all of this, I got to thinking about how I could leverage technology to make the most out of my purchases in airfare, hotel, car rental and other services. Several articles and advertisements jumped out at me and I quickly saw a theme developing among them. Twitter and Facebook have become very popular tools for the airlines and other travel companies. A little more research led me to a list that perfectly fits the FollowFriday bill.

Bing Travel (formerly known as FareCast) is a site that I have been using for the last 2 or 3 years. If you are going to travel, this site is a must. Bing Travel helps you know when to buy, when to fly and where to stay by providing predictions and comparisons of your options using a huge volume of data that they process every day. I have personally used the price predictions in the airfare section of the site to save hundreds of dollars on flights. Simply plug in your desired destination, days and times and Bing will tell you when to buy or when to wait. You can also sign up for email alerts that notify you when a deal is within your designated price range.

Web Site: http://www.bing.com/travel/
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/bingtravel
Twitter: http://twitter.com/fareologist

Let Bing do the Reserach for You!

kayak.com is the world’s largest travel search site. When I first heard of kayak.com, I asked myself why I would possible need another travel site. The answer is simple. Kayak doesn’t actually sell plan tickets, hotel rooms or anything else. They are a research site that only makes money from the advertising they sell. Their research and information is taken from hundreds of websites to help people find the best travel choices easily.

The best part about kayak.com (in my opinion) is the ease of use. The site is simple and easy to navigate. You can start with something as simple as a city name or enter as many details as you want to narrow down dates, times, layovers, etc. Fare alerts are also available by email. In addition to the traditional hotels, flights and cars kayak.com provides information on total vacation packages, cruises and private sales. Private sales are limited time offers on hotel packages that offer savings up to 50% off retail rates.

Web Site: http://www.kayak.com/
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/kayak
Twitter: http://twitter.com/kayak

Individual airlines, hotels and car rental companies. There are far too many companies and sites to list, so I will use United Airlines in this example. While on my flight home yesterday, I read an article in Money magazine about saving money on travel. Ironically, the article mentioned United Airlines and the deals posted through their Twitter page. I saw “50%” and that was enough for me to pay attention and read carefully.

By simply following an airline, hotel or car rental company that you use regularly, you might stumble onto deals that are not offered to the general public or other travel sites like Bing or Kayak. Every company handles this differently, but each tries to “one-up” the other and you stand to reap the benefits. Follow and watch carefully to save big money!

Web Site: http://www.united.com/
Twitter: http://twitter.com/unitedAirlines
Facebook: United Airlines on Facebook

United Offers Deals Directly

Try out one or all three of the sites we recommended today and check back next Friday for more great #FollowFriday recommendations. Don’t forget, if you want to share this article with friends or family, all you have to do is click on the ShareThis button below.

Lifehacker, the software and productivity guide, is a blog that covers tips and tricks for streamlining your life with computers (and sometimes without). Updated several times daily, Lifehacker points out software downloads, web sites, do-it-yourself projects, howto’s, tutorials, shortcuts and tips for going beyond the default settings and getting things done in the most clever, unexpected and efficient ways. Think of Lifehacker as self-help for power users.

Tags: #FF, bing travel, car rental, Facebook, flight, FollowFriday, hotels, kayak.com, packages, travel, Twitter, united airlines, vacation

This entry was posted on Friday, April 9th, 2010 at 9:57 am and is filed under FollowFriday, Online Shopping. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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http://www.chillntrips.com Chill N Trips

I agree that both Facebook and Twitter are great tools for learning about great last minute escapes – especially twitter, just look at http://hashtags.org/travel and you'll see all of the promotions – may even see ChillNTrips on there.

The problem that I’ve experienced with Bing, or any major travel sites like Expedia, etc… is that if you are pricing an airline that has a hub in your city, pricing will vary from one travel site to the next, even when you are looking up the same flight number. I believe it all depends on which travel site negotiated the deepest discount.

I tried kayak a couple of times in the past, and found the same inconsistent pricing. As an example, when I looked up a trip from Houston to Las Vegas, a few minutes ago, the pricing was $389, when I looked at it again a few minute later to validate this post it was $421.

I’m not a conspiracy theorist, but I find it strange, when looking for air travel especially, that you can go to your favorite sites multiple times and get multiple prices, that change just as you are about to book, them. Yes, airlines are losing money, and they do have algorithms that compute optimum pricing based on number of empty seats, free ticket travelers, travel upgrades, and a whole host of metrics, that put the traveler at a slight disadvantage.

That is why I prefer to handle my travel arrangements through my own site, I have a bit more control and if time allows, I can plan a vacation weeks out or at least a few months out using my companies planning tools, where accommodations are comparable to 5 and 6 star hotels at the price of a 2 star.