Location: DFW; 2-time FT Fantasy Football Champ, now in recovery.
Programs: AA GLD 1.1MM, Marriott Gld; OMNIPat
Posts: 6,204
Smartmoney article
The cover story in the new (mar 04) Smartmoney magazine compares various web sites for booking travel.
They compare for booking air, hotel, car, and packages.
For flights, the winner was Sidestep.
For hotels, Quikbook.
For cars, they decided there wasn't much difference in results, but liked Orbitz's user interface.
For packages, it was Sidestep and lastminutetravel.com, though they disliked the latter's usability; and they found that booking the components individually was usually cheaper than buying the package.
They did not address or test the opaque sites.
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SideStep has never shown me the cheapest fare. And for some reason, Sidestep seems to have a real bias for listing Continental flights as the cheapest, which so far they aren't for my departure airports (YVR or SEA). Yet, I know other people swear by it.
Just tried sidestep for the first time and I was impressed that it does include sites like southwest airlines. However it doesn't (as far as I can tell) do next closest airport since DFW and DAL are close to each other I wanted to compare both airports.
Just an update, They told me the exception was Southwest Airlines so since I did DFW to LBB Southwest would not show however if I try DAL to LBB it does. They told me thats the one exception is Southwest. Anyway Im happy with it
Maybe because I've been an FTer since 2001, but I found that article didn't tell me anything worthwhile. It didn't even mention the idea of bidding for great prices on hotels. I can't say that I'm too upset as I don't want them publicizing what we all can enjoy.
__________________ Analise It is high. It is far. It is GONE !!!!!
"We play today; we win today. Das it."
<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by Analise: Maybe because I've been an FTer since 2001, but I found that article didn't tell me anything worthwhile. It didn't even mention the idea of bidding for great prices on hotels. I can't say that I'm too upset as I don't want them publicizing what we all can enjoy. </font>
<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by Analise: Maybe because I've been an FTer since 2001, but I found that article didn't tell me anything worthwhile. It didn't even mention the idea of bidding for great prices on hotels. I can't say that I'm too upset as I don't want them publicizing what we all can enjoy. </font>
There really are legions of people out there who aren't hip to bidding sites, and this evidently includes legions of travel writers. The hotel rates on Quikbook are more than double those for the same hotels on PL/BFT.
It is high. It is far. It is GONE !!!!! 
