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Automatically Score the Biggest Travel Savings (Without All the Hassle)
May 4th, 2012Top StoryAutomatically Score the Biggest Travel Savings (Without All the Hassle)By Melanie Pinola
AutoSlash: Automatic Price Reductions on Car Rentals
Unfortunately, not all car rental companies are keen on this idea. Both the Enterprise, National, and Alamo franchise and the Avis and Budget one refuse to let AutoSlash inventory their car rentals. Hertz and sister companies Dollar and Thrifty used to work with AutoSlash but recently pulled out. That leaves mostly the smaller/budget car rental chains, such as Fox Rent a Car, Payless, and a few others and makes the car rental search results more sparse. But if you don't care which car rental company you patronize and just want the best deal you can get without having to search for it yourself, give AutoSlash a try to see what's available where you're traveling. Tingo: Automatic Refunds on Hotel Reservations
Not all hotel rooms are eligible for the auto-re-booking and automatic refunds, because some hotels set their room rates as non-refundable (unlike most car rentals, where you can cancel at any time). When you book, you'll need to accept the hotel's own cancellation fees, if there are any. If you don't want to book on Tingo, you can still use the service to just track hotel prices and be notified when a hotel's price drops. In the last month, according to the service, 476 hotels in Paris had price drops, 273 in London, and 214 in NYC—lots of savings travelers might have missed out on if they weren't tracking price drops. Yapta: Refund Alerts and Claim Assistance for Airline Tickets
Alaska Airline and JetBlue offer refunds for any drop in price, while other airlines issue refunds depending on how much the price drops (for Virgin, it's $75 or more; United, American Airlines, Delta, and US Air, $150 or more). About 13 percent of Yapta-tracked fares were eligible for refunds in the first quarter of last year according to this MSN Money article. Since the service launched 5 years ago, average annual savings per Yapta member is $334.16. (Orbitz offers a lowest price guarantee for flights and hotels with automatic refunds, but it's harder to ever get that, because the refund depends on another Orbitz customer booking the same exact itinerary. Likewise, Travelocity's price guarantee is less than ideal, since it requires you to find the lower competing rates yourself after you book your trip.) In short, these three services together save you the time and hassle of hunting for the best prices for your next trip and possibly overpaying. Combine this with MySeatFinder's automatic upgrade to a better airline seat, and you've turned the web into a pretty sweet personal travel assistant. Know of any other cool travel sites or tools for making saving easier? Share them with us in the comments.  |
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