How to find Cheap Airfare & Travel Deals

[Liv]

I've been doing a lot of searching lately... for cheap travel. I do this every year, and for some reason I can never remember all the sites I used last year....

I figured it would be cool if I stickied a post like they do on other sites, and we can all add our personal bookmarks for cheap travel since so many of us love traveling....

If you're flying American Airlines, I highly recommend checking out this thread, where you can almost immediately get 5% by buying an Entertainment book.

Added 4/11/2011:
Cheapoair, seems to be one of the better airline consolidators. I'm adding this one because it's managing bookings I'm not finding elsewhere. It just came up with RDU to BRU for $650, while every other site is showing about $1000. Sure it involves transversing New York and three airlines... but it's cheap.


http://matrix.itasoftware.com/
ITA Software is like Orbitz, & all the commercial cheap sites without all the B.S.

http://www.cheapflights.com/
I like Cheap Flight's travel matrix, reminds me of the original "bestfares.com" site.

http://www.airfarewatchdog.com/
Air Fare Watchdog has mainly domestic airfares, but sometimes good deals

http://last-minute.travelzoo.com/other/
Travel Zoo's Last Minute deals. Never found much, but I keep looking

http://www.usairways.com/awa/faresale/eSaverIntl.aspx
US Air's E-savers... Pretty self explanatory

AA.com
American Airline's last minute international getaways.

http://www.1800flyeurope.com
I had to add this one tonight... They were almost $200.00 cheaper then American Airlines website for the exact same flight.

This one has interesting multi-city package deals rather reasonably:
http://europeandestinations.com

Found a great price on our flight to Europe. In fact the cheapest so far.
http://www.travelpapa.com/

A really great search engine for airfare and travel. How I found Travel Papa.
http://www.momondo.com/

Kayak Buzz: If you're flexible, enter a landmass and find a deal:
http://www.kayak.com/buzz

Rental Cars Discounts:

Enterprise:
This method is questionable, but offers deniable plausibility of accidentally clicking on a corporate account and gaining their discounted rate. Various choices will show up, but you have to hunt for the best discount, but by doing so It can often provide up to a 25-75% discount on car rentals:

Enterprise discount

Avis:
A similar method to the above Enterprise, but with Avis car rental is available here:

Avis AWD Discounts

We've also been told the following on Avis:

Hello , D454000 = the BEST AVIS code , have used it for years and it saves me anywhere from 1/3 off to half off, really... even when I call it in, the operator jumps back and says "Whow, great code, where'd ya get it?" It was in a little promo letter they sent out yrs ago.....

Lauren C

If you have any further discounts, post them and we will add it too the list!

[Sanjuro]

Id like to find a site that mentions how to get hotel rooms that most places secretly hold.. you know, they always allot a few that you never see on the travel sites, so when they list 'sold out' they rarely are. But how do you get them to release one? This would really help to find something around events.

[Liv]

I can only imagine it's something akin to the airline companies, and they hold so many for their "premium" customers....

One trick I've always learned is apply for their "members" club and always use the prefix of "DR".... it generally gets you a lot more goodies for a lot less money.... and at the very least, generally more respect when you deal with their customer service agents....

Sometimes you get free wine and fruit in the hotels too, if they're trying to impress you.

[nencybush]

I can only imagine it's something akin to the airline companies, and they hold so many for their "premium" customers....

Yeh, Many of my friends faced this same situation. They just avoid it and tried another resource and that is nice way i think.