Phialdelphia to Miami from $159 Roundtrip Including Taxes/Fees

If you're in the Philadelphia area and looking for a getaway to the somewhat warmer climate of Florida, there are airfares as low as $159 roundtrip including all those added security and airport fees and taxes.

There are flights available January through March, with the lowest fares available on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Saturdays. April has airfares in the $190 roundtrip range.

To make finding fares easier, Travelzoo has a site called fly.com with a calendar that shows the lowest roundtrip available each day. To check out these fares, click this link.

Website to Track Airfare Specials for Specific Itinerary and Dates

I post a bunch of deals on airfare specials -- they cover certain periods and certain routes. Taking advantage of them means having some flexibility to travel when you find a good fare. But sometimes people have a trip planned well in advance for certain dates, and the question is how to find the best fare. If there is plenty of lead time, chances are there may be a fare special or two in the interim. But who has the time to keep checking all the time?

Well, thanks to a note in Real Simple magazine, there's a website called Yapta.com which helps solve that problem. You enter the itinerary you're traveling and the departure/return dates. And you will receive an alert whenever the fare drops. So if cost is a factor in whether you can afford the vacation, this may tell you when that window of opportunity opens.

The website service is free. To check it out, click this link.

Travel Sale at Orbitz

Most of the travel deals I find and post are for specific items, such as flight sales to specific locations and or for specific dates, some particular hotel deals, etc. And those can be helpful if you happen to be traveling there, or (if you have a lot of date flexibility) have wanted to go to a special destination. But for a more general search tool that may help you save on whatever your upcoming travel plans may be, Orbitz is currently starting a summer sale that has all sorts of savings.

There are deals on hotels, with savings up to 50% off for some, free nights for others, flight deals on American Airlines, special savings on car rentals and more.

It may be worth taking a little time and seeing how a potential vacation trip (or business trip) might come out if you let Orbitz find you some savings. To start a search, click the link below.

One Potential Source for Hotel Savings... AAA

With travel plans coming up, many people may be looking for a way to save a bit on lodging. Sources for good deals include hotels.com, travelworm and other sites that check for great rates at a variety of places. Many hotel sites also contain best rate guarantees on their home sites. But a couple of times that we've recently had to travel, we have found better rates available at AAA.

If you happen to be a member of AAA, it's worth seeing if this gets you some extra savings.

After we checked some specific hotel possibilities through searching hotels.com or similar sites, we would check those hotel sites directly and often found the same basic rates. But when we checked at AAA.com we found some hotels where hotel rooms were available for even less than "the guaranteed best rate."

Those best-rate guarantees are only valid for rates available to the general public, but since AAA rates are valid for members only they can be even lower. I don't think it's always across-the-board that AAA rates are better, but before you book that room, it's probably worth checking.

On a couple of our trips, the savings ended up being close to 10% off the best prices claimed elsewhere. And those extra dollars saved can add up.

Hey, you get the same rooms anyway... why not use every tool to get it at the best price?

Southwest Airlines Fare Specials for May Travel

Southwest Airlines has a special for travel during the month of May if you book travel by midnight May 1st. Travel periods are from May 8th through 31st, although they black out near Memorial Day (May 22, 23 and 26).

Some examples are Philadelphia-Tucson $246 roundtrip, Phoenix-Los Angeles $96 roundtrip, Buffalo-Baltimore/Washington $96 roundtrip, San Jose-Las Vegas $124 roundtrip, Philadelphia-Nashville $120 roundtrip.

As with all posted airfares you see, security/airport fees and taxes are additional.

Southwest has a ton of departure cities and destinations, all shown at one web page, so if you want to see if you spot a good fare for an upcoming trip, click here.

Discounts on Florida Summer Vacations from Philly -- From Other Cities Too?

I received an e-mail from Travelzoo, announcing that Expedia has a bunch of packages on sale for hotel + flights from Philadelphia good from late May to early September.

"PHILADELPHIA--APRIL 25, 2008-- Expedia.com just announced a huge sale on vacations to Florida from Philadelphia. They have reduced the price of more than 100 packages to places like Miami, Orlando and the Keys to as little as $236 per person.

"We regularly see airfare to Florida cost $175 or more.You can travel between May 23 and Sept. 5, making this a great time to plan your summer getaway. One example of a package on sale is a 4-night stay in Orlando at the 3-star Best Western Lakeside including roundtrip air from Philadelphia for $236.

"To see all the packages on sale and to book through Expedia.com, click the link below. IMPORTANT: Use the "Build your trip" box on the left side of their page to see pricing from Philadelphia.
www.travelzoo.com/Newsflash.asp?400607"

They may have the same special kinds of deals from other departure cities and I may have gotten the Philadelphia departure notices because it's closest to where I live. So even if you're elsewhere you might want to check out these offers and see if Expedia has similar deals from your area.

American Airlines Fare Sale -- Example: Nashville/Chicago $96 Roundtrip -- Sales on Many Cities

For travel between now and June 25th, American Airlines has launched a sale, with some fares as low as a Nashville-Chicago roundtrip for $96. They also have New Orleans-Dallas for $98 roundtrip. They have a lot of other city pairs discounted, but these two seemed particularly nice.

Travel on May 22 and 23 are blacked out, they require 14 days advance purchase, and security/airport fees are additional.

But if you're looking for a quick trip to see an old friend or visit some family, why not see if the cities involved have some nice deals?

Here's the link.

Hooters Casino Hotel Las Vegas $26/Night Plus Bonuses

Got an e-mail today from Travelworm about some Las Vegas hotels having some specials and bonus offers... many of the hotels are downtown, but if you want to be closer to the big casinos on the Strip, I found a deal for three nights starting December 18th (checking out the morning of the 21st) for $26.oo a night for a Standard Room promotional package!

The promotion also entitles you to two tickets to a comedy show, two cups of coffee, 2-for-1 drinks, discounted spa service, $10 match play and a souvenir. This "six-pack" promotion is limited to particular days, and the low price is when you book a three-night stay (they average the cost of a free night into the price).

If you'd be interested in a quick getaway to Las Vegas and want to see the prices/dates, click on this link to go to Travelworm. You'll see the Hooters special link under "Blazing Deals" at the top left column.

Three nights in Vegas for $78... you're already a winner before you pull the handle!

Virgin America Free Companion Promotion

Virgin America is a new airline that's been getting good reviews for performance. They have a very limited number of cities to which they fly -- only the very major markets: New York City (JFK), Los Angeles, Washington DC, San Francisco, San Diego and Las Vegas. They're well known for having lots of entertainment options, including MP3s, movies on demand, and even electric plugs at each seat so you can use your laptop without worrying about the battery.

Right now they are offering a promotion for a free coach companion ticket for flights through March 19th (with blackouts around the holidays unfortunately).

You should note that the promo doesn't quite get you two for the price of one. The second ticket is discounted by the base fare only, and I guess that doesn't include any fuel surcharges inside the cost of the ticket.

I was checking a fare from New York to Los Angeles, and without the promo code the fare would be $129 each way (before taxes and security fees), totalling $516 for two roundtrips (plus tax/fees). I expected that it would be $258 for the two roundtrips but when I entered the promo code and searched for flights, the same itinerary came back with a fare of $84.51 each, meaning the price for the two roundtrips was $338.04. Not quite as good, but still a nice price...

You need to have two people traveling together to take advantage. Go to this Virgin America Promo Page, and enter the cities, dates and put 2 in the number of passengers. You have to activate the promotional code, so click on "Got a Promo Code?" and type in DIGGNATION. Click on "apply" and the window should disappear, with the words Promo Code Applied now shown in red. Then you can click on "Search Flights" and let them show you your options. Read all the flight rules, as I would expect these to be non-refundable. Once you pick your flights, you'll even be able to reserve your seats on-line.

Hope this helps some of you out with future travel plans.

Using Fare Tracker to Get Savings on Favorite Destinations

Here's one more way I try and keep an eye on getting the lowest airfares. Travelocity's Fare-Watcher keeps an eye out for any drops in price for my five chosen itineraries, and sends me an e-mail whenever the lower price occurs. That way, instead of always looking for airfare wars and maybe missing some, I can let the system notify me. Costs nothing and the sign-up is pretty simple.

Many of us probably have a few airline routes that we'd be most apt to fly. For some it might be to where family members live, or some other place we might have reason to visit at different times through the year. Travelocity.com has a Fare-Tracker that has space for five specific itineraries, and lets you enter the parameters when you wish to be notified.

You can choose to be notified when the fare drops below a certain dollar amount. If you know the usual base fare is $350, you could choose to get an e-mail anytime Travelocity reports a fare under $275, $295 or whatever your choice.

The other option, if you're not sure of the regular fare, is to have them send you an e-mail whenever the fare drops a certain amount below what's regular. So you could choose to get an e-mail if the fare drops by $25, $50 or whatever might make it worth checking out.

The itineraries must be specific as far as airports, so if you want to check fares from the San Francisco area, you might choose to look at both Oakland and San Francisco airports - those would be two itineraries.

You can change any of the Fare-Watcher itineraries or parameters any time, so you don't feel locked in when you first sign up.

Travelocity.com Fare Watcher: a handy little tool just to check up on those trips you probably need to take sometime. This way, maybe a savings pops up that's enough that you might take advantage and say hello to that special someone or someplace.

Using Hotwire and Priceline for Airline Travel - Get the Better of Two Deals!

There are a number of travel search engines around, such as Expedia, Orbitz, Travelocity and others. Those can be helpful in finding great fares for flights, hotel prices and rental cars. But there is another way to go depending a bit on your flexibility in time of arrival at your destination and time of day when you return.

Hotwire.com is a site that lets you select an itinerary and dates and will return a number of options. The lowest cost ones are listed showing a price but not the airline nor the times of your flight. The benefit is that the prices they offer this way are usually markedly lower than if you picked a scheduled flight. The hotwire tickets are still on major airlines, so it's not as if you're flying in a baggage compartment or an airline no one's ever heard of. (If the degree of uncertainty isn't something with which you're comfortable, they also offer prices for more clearly labeled flights/times, similar to Orbitz etc.)

Booking with hotwire means you know you'll be flying on the date you requested, not knowing for sure the time of departure or exact arrival. With certain trips you might still be able to generalize... overseas trips usually depart times of day (i.e. most European flights from the east coast depart in the late afternoon or evening with arrivals early the next day)... but since it's just a generality your flexibility still has to be there.

But let's say you want to make that trip to Europe and you know you can fly on a Tueday of one week and return the following Tuesday. If it's not critical whether you fly at noon or at 6:00, if it's not critical if you arrive at 8:00 am or noon, then maybe the hotwire savings might make the difference worth taking. You still are sure the dates are met, so you can still fit it into your overall vacation schedule. We have saved a couple of hundred bucks at times with this kind of travel option, so it might be worth considering.

But here's step 2 of the process: if you've decided to check hotwire and get a price on a flight, don't book it instantlty. That hotwire quote is generally good for a brief amount of time (I cannot recall if it's an hour or if it's less, but there is enough time to do the following):

Go to priceline.com. Again, they offer lots of ways to book tickets but the way they started was to let you offer how much you'd be willing to spend and they'd see if any airline would accept your bid (they also would not tell you the airline or exact times). So why use them now? Because hotwire's price gives you a price range for bidding. You can quickly put in the same itinerary and dates into priceline, and decide how much below the hotwire offer to bid. You would bid below, because if priceline says 'no' then you simply go back to hotwire and book it. If priceline accepts your lower offer, all the better and you've saved even that much more!

The thing to be aware of with this step is the length of time the hotwire price is valid, so you have that price floor as a safety net. You don't want to have it expire while you're dealing with priceline (I think you usually get a priceline answer back in several minutes). You'll have enough time without rushing, but it needs to be done promptly. I was once able to save an additional $30 off a $189 roundtrip to Houston shown by hotwire when priceline accepted my bid.

As far as how much below hotwire to bid, that's a matter of judgment; you want the savings to be enough that it would be worth it to get accepted. I would judge how 'hot' the ticket should be (are you traveling peak times/days, popular destinations or less so) and try to pick a number that's reasonably below hotwire's based on those considerations -- also, with a very expensive ticket, a difference of 10% might be worthwhile and on a smaller one, it might need to be 15-20% to make the digging worthwhile.

Also be aware that hotwire and priceline, like all the other engines whether expedia, orbitz etc., work with the major airlines and not with names such as Southwest, Frontier, Spirit etc. So no matter what you find on hotwire, there may still be better fares looking elsewhere on the web. But the hotwire/priceline combination might just fit the bill for some of your future travel planning.

Great Site for Discount Airlines around Europe

Over the last few years there's been a lot of interest in discount airlines around Europe. Some of you may have heard of Ryan Air, an airline that flies between many cities for sometimes super-low fares, 19 euros or even much less (although they do usually have more restrictions on luggage weight and charge for extra). I have a friend who creates his own interesting discounted version of luxury travel by flying on Maxair (all business class) to London for $999 roundtrip and from London tacks on Ryan Air to get to his final destination.

But I recently got to realize that Europe is filled with bargain airlines, and the potential city combinations are endless! Many of the airlines are actually quite well rated too based on a recent article in the New York Times. For example, they rave about Flybaboo, extolling virtues of its airport lounge, service and amenities, all while flying from Switzerland to Prague for 8 Swiss francs!

So how to find out if you can use these discounted airlines to create a European itinerary that has you hopping between wonderful cities and countries? Go to flylc.com and you will find a search engine that shows you lists of cities and for each city every airline which services it, and all the destinations possible!

The first time I looked, I was astounded by all the possibilities... you could create an incredible and varied vacation by just getting to Europe and then hopping all around. If you ever think of taking a trip there and want to see if you can enhance it, flylc.com might be a great place to investigate.

Travel Newsletters by Email -- great source of ideas (and daydreams)

In one on my earlier entries, I mentioned how I found a 2-cent round-trip airfare to Las Vegas when I saw a note on one of the travel newsletters to which I subscribe. I can't recall exactly when or how I first found the newsletters but they've been a blessing. I've gotten some great deals on trips I was taking anyway, found a couple of amazing bargains, and (if you love travel the way I do) gave me a chance to daydream about some great new destination I hadn't thought of.

The first one to which I subscribed was called Travelzoo -- every week they send an email with the best 20 travel deals they find. It's all text so it's pretty quick to scan. When you click on a link in the email it takes you to that travel deal so you can get the details and book it if the deal works for you.

Not long after I found Travelzoo I stumbled onto a second one called Shermans Travel. They function similarly, although they send out a Top 25 instead of 20 and their email includes some photos. Sometimes they will have several of the same offers but there are always some that one has and the other doesn't. So I think it's worth subscribing to both.

I like both of them because they are just providing me info, they don't seem to be pushing to make a sale. So it becomes fun just to look, browse, occasionally click on one just to see some more details and get ideas for future travel.

After I subscribed, I didn't notice any rise in commercial emails into my in-box so it doesn't look like this opens you up to lots of spam emails. But I know you can never be sure. So here's what I did and would suggest for people who want to keep some email sanity: for my commercial dealings, I got a second email address. There are many sources now for free email service (I use hotmail, my wife uses yahoo, and there's always google too). I set up a second box there, so the main address I give out to friends and family is one address, and there's a second address where emails from businesses etc come in. It can take a bit of time to look at two email accounts, but this way when I want to check on my more individual and direct email from people I know I use my main account and this system keeps it more free of commercial spam. And on the business/general email account I figure I'll get more spam but rely on the spam filters to at least keep it somewhat manageable.

So my advice: if you like to or need to travel, subscribing to Travelzoo and Shermans Travel is a no-brainer!

Finding Travel Bargains - like a TWO-CENT ROUNDTRIP!

So I thought I'd start off with a recent story about how I was able to find a round-trip airfare to Las Vegas for 2 cents (plus airport security fees and tax). This was an airfare that I bought, not anything where I used frequent flier miles to get a free flight.

A while back I somehow stumbled onto Travelzoo and subscribed to their weekly e-mail. What I love about them is that they send out a list every week of the top 20 travel bargains they find. They aren't trying to sell them or pressure you, they just have links to the companies that have the bargains being offered. I like that about Travelzoo. Sometimes the deals are for airfares, some for cruises, some are hotels -- there are usually a great variety.

The lists are always interesting to look at, and often you can find a travel deal that is so good, it's hard not to go. Last year, they had a May 16 sailing Alaska Inside Passage Cruise on the Princess Line (no slouch) for 7 days for $499!!! That was for an inside cabin, of course, but you could upgrade to outside cabin for $200 for a $699 total -- an Alaska Cruise on a top line for under $100/day! I tried to figure out how to take advantage because it seemed like such an amazing chance, but the timing just didn't work out. Still, it was fun imagining...

Sorry about the detour. Now the 2 cent fare. A few months ago, Travelzoo's list of Top 20 deals had a listing for penny airfares on Spirit Airlines. Spirit is a lesser-known airline that flies between many cities in the U.S., the Caribbean, Mexico etc. Sometimes they fly out of smaller airports (for example, near us they don't fly out of Philadelphia or Newark but they fly out of Atlantic City). But they do serve major cities, like in New York they fly out of LaGuardia. I had occasion to fly them about 3 years ago to Detroit and their service had been fine.

The deal Spirit was offering was for 2 consecutive days in June and 2 consecutive days in September -- they were offering 1 cent fares on flights between many of their cities. They had a list from each city showing all the 1 cent destinations available. Now I figured the reason the promotion was for two consecutive days was that they figured most people would take the penny fare one way and pay regular price when returning a few days later (which would still have been a good deal). But being the deal game-player that I am, I had to see if they would really ring up a 2-cent roundtrip if I went on the first day of the promotion and came back the next. I saw that Las Vegas was a destination available from Atlantic City. I asked to fly to LV on day 1 and return on day 2. I figured that it would be a kick to just fly out there and have fun for a day or so if I could do it at (almost) no cost. Sure enough the fare came back as 2 cents!

So I went ahead and booked it -- fly out, maybe see a show, play some games, and for not much more than it would cost for an evening out locally. As I mentioned, you can't get around security fees and departure taxes etc. so the final price actually ended up at $20/roundtrip, but the fare was really just 2 cents.

I also booked the same 2-cent deal on the other two-day pair of the promotion, between Atlantic City and Fort Lauderdale, and again got the 2 cent deal!

Now the kicker, or the extra smile: when they sent me the notice that my confirmation was OK, there was a note that they could reduce my airfare if I joined their frequent flier plan! I thought it very funny that they were offering to reduce a fare below 2 cents, but I went ahead and applied, and they said the fare was now $0.00.

I was able to take these trips and make the deals because my schedule is fairly flexible -- I recognize that this isn't the case for everyone. But still, I think for anyone who likes to (or needs to) travel, it would be worth doing some things to help find bargains so our travel dollars go further -- after all, wouldn't you like to take the money you saved on an airfare and get a nicer hotel, or eat at a nicer restaurant? Every dollar you don't spend on something, gives you more to spend on something else that you prefer.

So I would suggest you visit Travelzoo and sign up for their weekly e-mails. You just might find a special that makes that 'dream trip' affordable. I would also suggest that you check around your area to see what are the smaller airports that might get traffic from bargain carriers. The more airports you can select as a point of origin, the more discount alternatives you may consider. The added benefit is that those smaller airports are often less crowded and easier to navigate as far as parking and avoiding long lines at security.

I have some other travel tips for future posts, but I figured this would get you off to a good start.

Good luck finding your own travel bargains, and let me know what great deals you can find!