Unless you’ve big plans for a luxury travel with only first-class choice, chances are you’re searching for best travel deals in regard to transportation, flights, hotel, and car rental no matter where you want to travel.
But discoveringsuch dreamy travel deals can be unnerving. You can put in hours searching airfares posted on various aggregators, and online travel agent sites, then comparing them to prices mentioned on airline and hotel websites, all the while questioning if the deal of the cheap flights to New York notification emails you’ve registered for will send you an even cheaper rate tomorrow or next week.
While you’re probably never going to discover whether you received the really cheapest deal available (although subjective research displayed that you almost always get a big discount on hotel-and-airfare combinations through online travel agent sites in comparison to booking them distinctly through separate hotels and airlines), there are various tricks you can use that can help ensure you availone of the cheap flights from Lagos that matches your own personal needs.
You can choose to always utilize your airline’s recurrent flier or loyalty rewards when booking on an online travel site, but it may not be possible to use your loyalty number for hotel bookings. So, if that free promotion to book a hotel in London is on your range, booking straight with the hotel to get those points might be your best way forward. One option to work around this is if you carry hotel rewards credit card or an airline miles credit card. You might not get as many points as booking straight with the hotel or airline, but it can help you garner points for future travel.
There are hotel and airline co-sponsored credit cards, but there are also travel site-related credit cards as well that don’t link you to a particular airline or hotel chain. For example, Expedia has the Expedia+ from Citi card (full review here) that awards 3X points on Expedia buys. You can check out the winners of the latest ranking of the most popular travel credit cards in the country to compare any credit cards you’re thinkingof to some of the industry pioneers.
If you don’t know precisely when or where you’re planning to travel, or if you just got the all-inclusive idea of sifting through various deals and options tointimidating a task, there’s always the option of the outdated travel agent, which really isn’t that bad a deal.
Travel agents by and large have access to the same rates as the online booking sites (sometimes better) and will take care of the booking and planning for you. This may come at a fee, usually $20-$50, but you may get that the ease of using a travel agent is of true worth, and you can make up the expense in other paths. And if you come across any issues before or during your trip they can often help you out with those easily.
