have any of you guys found good deals on vacations? how did you swing it? chris and i want to go to california or vegas and we're looking for something relatively cheap. the best thing i've found so far is travelocity's last minute weekend trips. costco looks like it might have some bargains but they don't let you book online. any tips?

i use to do a lot of travel coordinating for tv/film and i always found it best to check southwest airlines for air tickets to california and vegas. also, american sometimes has last minute deals, so check their website.

if you use a travel site such as orbitz, hotels.com, etc., which are good for gathering prices together, don't book through them. find the good deals and go directly to the airlines'/hotel site because they won't have the fees that the travel sites do or they may also have better deals that the travel sites didn't pull.

http://www.site59.com/
http://www.go-today.com/site_gtweb/index.asp
http://www.quikbook.com/
http://www.smartertravel.com/

Also, check out hotel/car rental packages and throw away the car rental if you don't need it - those packages are often cheaper than booking a hotel by itself.

but do you really save money when you do flights and hotels separately? hmmm. i'll look into southwest.

but do you really save money when you do flights and hotels separately? hmmm. i'll look into southwest.

oddly enough, i usually did. packages are built to make the hotels/car people money. unfortunately, the only way to know for sure is to do many searches on-line and compare a la carte prices and then packages. however, some packages really do save money - whatever the packages consists, do an a la carte search on those specific cars/hotels and compare the totals to be sure.

i know it's cheesy, but bluestar swears by going to a timeshare presentation for a few hours. in return, you get at least your whole hotel stay for free. i normally wouldn't be interested in going to a dumb presentation, but if it meant that i wouldn't have to pay for my room, i might be down. i'm sure she or mike could give you the name of a company to contact if you're interested.

if you're not traveling on a busy holiday weekend and you /really/ wanna save money (read: be cheap), don't book hotels in advance. when you get into the area you wanna stay, stop by a denny's and pick up one of those hotel coupon books. check in after 5 and they will almost always accept any coupon they have (even if it's expired) - check into any hotel late and you can usually at least talk them down from thier normal rate, since no one owuld be taking the room anyway.

this plan works well if you have a cell phone and can check hotel room availability before driving to the hotel.

chris would kill timeshare people with his bare hands. :)

at least it would be an enjoyable vacation for him

i know it's cheesy, but bluestar swears by going to a timeshare presentation for a few hours. in return, you get at least your whole hotel stay for free. i normally wouldn't be interested in going to a dumb presentation, but if it meant that i wouldn't have to pay for my room, i might be down. i'm sure she or mike could give you the name of a company to contact if you're interested.

My boss does that stuff and it's worth it, I'd say.

This is Stacy btw.