I just recently came across Flights.com, which is surprising to me as they have been in business for about 10 years. While most everyone is aware of the big boys in the online travel, such as Travelocity or Expedia, not everyone can say the same about Flight.com.

So, what does Flights.com do that should make you take notice of them? Well, they advertise cheap flights and discount airfare but.. so does everyone else. The difference here is that they actually have a history of delivering.

How do they compare to other online travel companies? This is the key really, anyone can claim that they have the best rates but when you do some comparison shopping the answer is easy to spot.

For the point of this post I decided on a random date in the future (April 24^th 2008) and ran a query through both Flight.com and Travelocity for a roundtrip returning the same day. Here are the results:

Flights.com returned 3 possible flights with prices ranging from $236.19 to $259.58

While, Travelocity returned 78 possible flights with prices ranging from $254 to $308.

Just a note on this comparison, why Travelocity returns so many is because they offer a lot of flights that are VERY indirect, but they will get you where you are going. On the other hand Flights.com offered only flights that were more or less direct BUT were on less known carriers.

What do I think of them? Flights.com does indeed offer a great service. For those people that are travelling on a budget you will find flights that are priced very aggressively. One thing to note is the less known carriers, before booking your flight I would take a couple of minutes to make sure you knew who you were flying with and what their reputation is.

What a difference a few months makes. I don’t know if Travelocity has bought a lot of hotel rooms, or they have negotiated a better deal, but it seems that the rates they are offering are significantly better than what you will find at competing websites.

I did random search on Travelocity for dates in May (8-10) staying 3 nights at New York- New York. I chose this hotel because I recently stayed there and was quite happy with the accommodations. In the past, the best rates I could find published were just about always on the company’s website. So comparing Travelocity to New York- New York’s website here are the results staying in a Skyline Room.

New York- New York’s- 3 nights for $449.97US

Travelocity – 3 nights for $419.97US

Not only do you save $20 off the listed price with Travelocity but… you are more than welcome to apply coupons to their listings as well. Here are a few for you to use.

This may be just an isolated instance but you are free to use the Travelocity Booking Tool here, to see if you can locate a better rate for yourself.

Country: All Other Destinations Antigua and Barbuda Aruba Australia Austria Bahamas Barbados Belgium Bermuda Bonaire Brazil Canada Cayman Islands China Curacao Czech Republic Denmark Dominican Republic England Finland France Germany Greece Hungary Ireland Italy Jamaica Mexico Netherlands Netherlands Antilles Norway Poland Portugal Puerto Rico Saba Saint Lucia Scotland Singapore Spain and Canary Islands St Kitts St. Eustacius St. Martin/St. Maarten Sweden Switzerland Taiwan Thailand Trinidad and Tobago Turks and Caicos Islands United Kingdom United States Virgin Islands British Virgin Islands US All Other Destinations
City or Airport Code:	State/Province: — AK AL AR AZ CA CO CT DC DE FL GA HI IA ID IL IN KS KY LA MA MD ME MI MN MO MS MT NC ND NE NH NJ NM NV NY OH OK OR PA RI SC SD TN TX UT VA VT WA WI WV WY AB BC MB NB NF NS NT ON PE QC SK YT
Check-in: Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31	Check-out: Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31
Adults(18-64) 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 Minors(2-17) 0 1 2 3 4 5 6

I know I was pleasantly surprised when I searched with it! If you know of any deals that are coming up that you would like to share please add them to the comments below

I recently returned from Las Vegas and I have to admit I committed one of my cardinal sins; I bought my tickets at the box office and paid at least 20% too much. Granted this was a last minute trip, but it is always recommended to buy tickets before you go. Not only will you save some money but you will guarantee yourself a spot.

 I usually recommend sites like or StubHub.com today we will look at a new service. Actually new may not be the right term for Tickco.com as they have been around for over a decade but nonetheless they are new to MeOnNeon.

Looking over their inventory I have to admit that I am quite impressed. They do offer a complete line of Las Vegas shows but their specialty is broadway show tickets. Add to this a complete sporting event line-up and you should be able to find just about any show your heart desires.

As far as prices they seem to be competitive but not ground breaking. For instance, David Copperfield tickets at Tickco.com range from $199-$341 while over at they offer tickets as low as $184 for the same show. Admittedly Tickco offers a greater seating selection though.

As I stated earlier, this is not where Tickco shines. Their bread and butter are Broadway Tickets. The selection is one of the most complete I have come across and if you are looking for sold-out seating for broadway tickets they are practically impossible to beat.

In conclusion, I would say that Tickco.com is definitely worth looking at before you buy your tickets. They have a solid reputation and a great selection. If you have used them before let us know what your thoughts are.

For those of you who still haven’t had the chance to try out the hotelscombined.com excellent search tool, here is an example of what they do.

Using my cityof choice , in this case Las Vegas , I will need to enter my dates. In this case I am going to use a random date. How about November 14th to 17th 2008. Seems like a nice time

That is all the information, they need at this time,

The free tool searches nearly a 100,000 results in just a few minutes and list the results for you. It returns 172 hotels wiht each hotel having multiple carriers. it can organize the results by price ,"stars",location or consumer rating.

Here is a screenshot of the results:

It is very cool tool and I highly recommend that you use them for your next vacation. Here is the tool give it a try.

The best online tool I have seen and used in quite some time is hotelscombined.com. They have put together a nice search tool that will search something like 30 travel websites at once.

The neat thing about it is you can search by city or even individual hotels. So say you know you were travelling to Las Vegas but you hadn’t decided on a hotel you could use the search box below.

Or, if you knew you were staying at the Bellagio you could use the box below.

I use this tool all the time and I find that the results they give are quite good. I always take the lowest price and see if I can beat it someplace else, but to be quite honest they search so many sites at once they don’t leave a lot of places to continue your search at. Having said that definitely go to the individual hotels website and see if you can find a better deal, as you can see with my post yesterday sometimes the hotels do offer discount rates right on their own sites.