So, are online booking agents like Expedia and Travelocity worth it. Do they really save you any money?

Well I thought I would do a little detective work and see if “the deals” were really deals.

Take Travelocity, they have an ongoing Las Vegas travel special. Here they advertise a New York New York Holiday from 3 night flight and hotel from $236 a person. Obviously this would be dependent on where you are flying from. For simplicity sake we are going to assume you are flying from Los Angeles. We will choose dates 2 weeks from now December 6-9.

Travelocity lists a price of $854.78 based on 2 people or $427.39 per person. Flights would be on US Airways there and Northwest Airlines return. You would be staying at New York New York in a Park Avenue room.

Alright, now to see if we can beat this price.

First off let’s search for flights. Travelocity’s own flight search lists a return flight at $128/ person. Going directly to the airlines website, US  Airways, and I get a list price of $96 return per person.

Now, for the hotels. I love using Hotels Combined for searching out hotel rates. They have put together a search engine that just searches travel sites, about 30 of them. Using Hotels Combined the best rates I could come up with is $564.96 based on double occupancy or $282.48 per person. Wanting to be complete, I also visited New York New York’s website and found availability at $539.97 based on double occupancy or $270 per person.

So, based on surfing for about half an hour, I could book a trip to Las Vegas on the dates I wanted for about $366 per person. I could save almost $60 per person just by looking at alternatives.

Being an affiliate of Travelocity I believe in their service. They definitely offer ease of use and some competitive prices. But, you should always do your homework to make sure you are getting the best rates available. I am sure if I wanted to do some digging I could have found a package on Travelocity that would beat out any package I could have put together myself, but I will always double check and so should you.

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