Traveling
Resources for Traveling Out of U.S.
- Temporarily Leaving the U.S.
- U.S.Embassies and Consulates Abroad
- Inviting Parents and Friends to Visit the U.S.
- Students to Invite Spouse and/or Children
Budget Travel Tips
Airfare
Common tips for getting the lowest fares:
- Saturday Night Stayovers
The airlines will often cut the cost of a ticket significantly if you stay at your destination on a Saturday night. You can use this to your advantage the next time you have a personal trip, or better yet, a business trip to an interesting location.
- Round Trip Tickets
Round trip tickets on the same airline are usually cheaper than one-way tickets. Be flexible in your thinking - it is sometimes cheaper to buy two round trip tickets than two one-way tickets.
- Book in Advance
Try to book your flights at least 3 weeks in advance. We like to book 30 - 90 days in advance.If the price drops after you make reservations, call the airlines and ask for the lower fare.They may ask for a $75 to $100 rescheduling fee, so the savings should be at least this much.
- Fly Major Airports
If your destination is a smaller airport, it may be substantially cheaper to fly to a major airport that is less than 50 - 100 miles away and rent a car or have friends pick you up.
- Layovers
Despite the higher cost of flying to a smaller airport, sometimes the airlines will use cheap prices to induce people to take a flight with a layover at a smaller airport.If the layover is less than two hours and the savings is $100 or more, it is probably worth considering.
Websites
Since savings are often based on promotional fares, no one site will always give you the lowest prices. Spend a little time checking through our recommendations, since you can often save literally hundreds of dollars on the right ticket. It is also helpful to compare ticket prices that you find on the websites listed below with tickets prices from the actual airline companies.
A VERY rough rule of thumb is that $250 is a reasonable price for a domestic ticket and $450 should get you from the U.S. to London. Anything better than this is good and anything substantially higher should encourage you to keep looking.
www.cheapfares.com
This is one of the most popular airfare search sites. They have a large database where you can also search for low priced hotels, rental cars, cruises, and vacation packages.
www.expedia.com
In addition to a searchable database, Expedia offers a service where you enter the price you want to pay as it tries to make you a deal. As with cheapfares.com, you can also search for hotel rates, rental cars, cruises, and special packages.
www.orbitz.com
Orbitz' inventory includes more than 455 airlines, tens of thousands of lodging properties worldwide and 22 rental car companies. Orbitz search results are presented in an easy-to-use matrix that displays a vast array of travel options. Orbitz claims that they won't favor or promote a specific travel provider, allowing you to easily identify and select the price and supplier that best meets your needs.
www.qixo.com
QIXO gets rave reviews from many budget travelers. Money Magazine recently called it "the best of the bunch" for efficiency and ease of use.
www.travelocity.com
Many times Travelocity will have great last minute deals for you to take advantage of. You can also search for the standards including airfare, car rentals, train tickets, hotels, and special packages.
www.priceline.com
Priceline.com allows you to name your own price when searching for airfare or other travel arrangements. It’s important that you are willing to pay the price you name, so be careful, once you bid, you will be held responsible to purchase that ticket if priceline.com finds a ticket for that price. Priceline.com also has websites for the UK, Singapore, Taiwan, and Hong Kong.
www.lowestfare.com
Priceline.com owns the Lowestfare.com Web site, as well as all of its trademarks and registered domain names. Through Lowestfare.com, travelers have full access to all of priceline.com's “Name Your Own Price” services for airline tickets, hotel rooms, rental cars and vacation packages as well as multiple discount travel options from other travel service providers. You can also purchase worldwide cruises on a specially discounted, fixed-price basis.
www.discountairfares.com
In addition to offering a search engine to find cheap airfare, this site has plenty of useful tips for finding the cheapest airfare available.
www.tiss.com
This is a great site for European destinations. Tiss.com also allows you to search for EU rail passes and more.
www.skyauctions.com
SkyAuction.com is a fast-growing travel auction marketplace where you can buy airline tickets, room nights, tours, cruises and all-inclusive vacations.They negotiate special deals with leading airlines, hotels, resorts and cruises to offer you amazing bargains.Like eBay, you bid on what you want, at the price you set.
Rental Cars
Rental car rates can be found at nearly all of the sites listed above for finding lower priced airfare. You may also want to consider the following websites for your rental car needs:
www.travelbest.com
The “car rental whiz” on this site searches a database for locating the lowest rates in all 50 U.S. states.
www.dollar.com
www.hertz.com
www.thrifty.com
www.avis.com
www.budget.com
www.enterprise.com
www.nationalcar.com
Hotels and Lodging
Again, lodging rates can be found at nearly all of the sites listed above for finding lower priced airfare. Below are a few other sites that you may find useful:
This is a great place to start when looking for a room.There are discount fares available here, though not necessarily the lowest available. This site is worth a serious look if you're booking on a tight expense account. They also occasionally offer on-line discount coupons.
www.hostelworld.com
Hostelworld.com provides online bookings for hostels around the world. Please be aware that hostels are quite different from hotels. Often you must share a sleeping room with others you may not know when choosing a hostel. But, the low price of hostels is worth sleeping in the same room as strangers if you are on a tight budget.
This site has tie-ins with some of the major search engines, and allows you to tailor your shopping to a specific destination.
www.destinationsinflorida.com
Hotel discounts in major Florida cities, especially the Disney area are offered on this site. They offer breaks on airfares, restaurants and other travel expenses, too.
www.eurocheapo.com
This site is a guide strictly for Europe's largest cities. The writers are freelancers who scout out the deals and write candid reviews.
www.gotrooms.com
At this site you can search a worldwide database of 11,000 rooms, with links to the web sites for individual properties. The standard for inclusion here is not budget rates, but whether or not the hotel offers Internet booking. They do have a "special offers" page to help you narrow the field.