Booking Car,Flight, and Hotel?

[Jackie Schuknecht]

Anyone know of a good site to book all three for an upcoming trip. I know there are a lot out there, but not sure which one to use, if any. Anybody with any experience in this?? I will be going to Florida in January to do some photography in the Everglades National Park. Thanks.

[William Malacarne]

We always just shop around ...usually end up with Travelocity or Orbit. Due to you going international the flight will probably be the trickiest to find, meaning there will be less choices.

Bill

[Jackie Schuknecht]

Thanks Bill.

[Cal Walters]

Just make sure if you use one of the online sites, (agree with recommendations) that you call each booked company directly and CONFIRM that they have the booking in their system and make note if they identify it with a different internal number. Too many experiences out there on reservations slipping through the system.

[Dave Leroy]

I've used expedia.ca with no problems Jackie. They will give lots of choices on prices from all the recognizable airline companies. Going that way in the winter I would expect lots of flights.
Dave

[Jackie Schuknecht]

Thanks Cal, Bill, and Dave, hope to do some searching on the w/e, Thanks for your suggestions. They really help.

[Aravind Krishnaswamy]

For a lot of my flights to Canada I've found Air Canada's prices to be pretty much inline with what the other airlines will offer and I prefer Air Canada to the other airlines so these days I just book directly through their website. I don't know if WestJet flies to Miami yet but you may want to check that.

If you want to save money on the flight, then consider flying out of Buffalo instead of YYZ. For some reason it costs a lot more to fly into/out of YYZ. I wouldn't recommend this if you are taking big glass as you may end up being put on a commuter plane.

For the hotels I use Expedia to get an idea of the hotels in the area and then double check the prices by going to the hotel's website directly. Many hotels will give as good or even a better rate on their website if you prepay for your stay.

For car rentals, if you have a Costco membership, definitely check out the discounts you get with the major rental companies. Have had a lot of luck recent with Alamo for getting decent rates on cars with Costco discount.

[Marina Scarr]

If you have AAA (not sure it is available in Canada), you can receive a discount at almost any hotel which is also helpful. I usually use Expedia for plane and car. There is now no booking fee.

[Jack Faller]

Travelocity & Expedia are both good in my experience. Enterprise car rentals can often offer exceptional value.
This far in advance you should not have troubles, but you should be aware of a possible problem if you make multiple attempts to check prices on airfares via different sites. On flights that may be heavily booked (and most of them are these days), the computers keep track of queries for a particular flight and if they get several, the price for the seats may go up. Thus, you can effectively bid up the price of your own seat if you check too often. I recently had trouble with my internet connection and tried unsuccessfully three times to book a particular flight with the computer hanging every time. By the time I got a good connection the price had increased by ~ $150, so I ended up using frequent flyer miles instead. :(

[Jackie Schuknecht]

Thanks for all the suggestions. Don't think the Everglades Holiday Inn is part of any package, so I will book things individually. Booked West Jet, which was pretty reasonable. Will look at Enterprise Car Rentals. Thanks for all the suggestions, they will come in handy in the future too. (Travelocity and Expedia)

[Joerg Rockenberger]

One of the best travel search sites IMO is kayak.com. It searches multiple (countless?) other travel sites incl. Expedia, Travelocity, sites of hotel chains and airlines etc. and offers great search customization options. For booking it then links you to the travel site you've selected.

For hotel bookings in or nearby metropolitan areas I strongly recommend to bid at priceline.com. I got hotel stays for $65 - $80 in major 5 star hotels in San Francisco, Vancouver, Frankfurt (Germany), New York, Tokyo etc. If you can deal with the uncertainty of not knowing in which hotel you'll end up with when placing the bid it's hard to beat as for deals.

JR