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Sensible Pointers for Planning Affordable Getaways

Sun, 07/27/2008 - 05:00 |

This year seems to be an expensive vacationing year for me inspite of price increases all over the board. First Mexico cruise, second Chicago Road Trip and now 5 day trip to LA&LV. I guess, I am one of those country men who is really helping the economy by spending as our President wished.

What can I say? Sometimes things just happen in auto pilot mode and we don't have any control over it. Fortunately, my short term savings funds is really came in handy to bail me out. I am not here to talk about Short Term savings plans at this time.

I also don't want to bore with you all with detail trip report like usual. I decided to give a shorter version by listing some important tips and tricks for getaway planning.

A month ago, we went to multi-city vacation from Houston to LA - LV - Grand Canyon. This one was a planned to entertain my in-laws who came long way from India for couple of months. I booked the tickets way in advance(3 months ago) before the oil prices started sky-rocketing pushing the air ticket price way high. Thats were advance planning always helps out.

Here is my list of pointers which will surely makes some money sense for your vacation plans.

1. Multi-City Vacation Planning

Many of you know that planning a mulati-city getaway is a tricky one. There is a great deal of complexity on booking air tickets and car rentals. I still tried (only orbitz.com has this functionality)starting the vacation from (LA) one place and leaving another (LV). It not only costed little more and didn't really work out. So I dropped that plan and started out to do the usual way of starting and ending at same place and rented the car to travel to places.

I need to pick the right starting point comparing the mileages and days spent in each place. I started at LA (2days), gone to LV(2 days) and travelled to Grand canyon from there for a day to LV and then back to LA to board the flight. I picked LA starting point because I got a better air ticket deal compared to Las vegas. You need to figure out which is a best way to do it in your case.

** - Plan your multi-city vacation by taking the air ticket deals and mileage into account. Be flexible to change your plans.

2. Use Credit Card Points As I mentioned, I booked the tickets way in advance before the airlines started charging for baggages and increase fuel surcharges. I got cool deal of $284 round trip. I also combined my free ticket which I bought using my credit card score points savings my ticket charges ($300). Thats always a good thing.

Many of my friends travel a lot for their projects. I always envyed them for racking up their sky miles which gives out free air tickets all the time. But I was able to do with my DCU visa card only after 5-6 years accumulating points to get to 40,000 to buy a free roundtrip ticket.

My price, $823.50 for 4 people including a free infant on lap and free ticket using credit card points.

**- Do check your credit card points if you are not a frequent flyer. Use them and save money during tough times. Don't just use points to buy unwanted/small things and try to store up for big items.

3. Look out for Hotel deals

Once you booked your air tickets, next big item in the list is to book lodging. Try to check out for package deals or cheap week days prices. Most of time, if you book 3 days together you will be able to save good money. Also I use to save money by staying away from the hot spots. Now with high gas price you really need to compare how much you are saving by staying away and how much gas expense.

Also you will find good cheaper Studio Rooms during the weekends and may be during week days. You might not get free continental breakfast but you can eat better breakfast from the money you save on deals.

The best website, I would recommend is Hotels.com It is far better than other sites with lot more deals, cheaper compared to Orbitz, hotwire or Priceline. It also has got lot more options to compare and check reviews before you make your decision.

My price $110 for 2 days for 4 people in LA, $135 for 3 days for 4 people in LV - average $250/5 days for 4 people.

** Do check different website for deals, compare the rates&reviews before making the decision. Don't just book if you see cheaper hotels, they might not be really good.

I will continue the rest of my tips and tricks in my next blog, until then have a great week!!

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Tags: cheap getaways, getaway tips and tricks, las vegas trip, los angels vacation, pointers for sensible getaways, road trip tips, vacation planning

Road trip Or Flying- Which is best at this High Gas Price?

Sun, 06/08/2008 - 05:00 |

Vijaianand

Are you kidding? With high gas price making all time record numbers every day, are you about it?! This was the first question asked by my friend when I told him about my plan to go on a road trip to Chicago from Houston 3 weeks ago. That really didn't stop me. I ended up going, more importantly for a week and made it thru the tough wave of gas prices in different states.

I know it is hard to think about budget friendly vacation these days with big shift in the tourism because of price increases in various aspects starting from flight tickets, boarding, lodging, car rentals, sight seeing tickets and not the least but the most important dinosuar level gas prices adding it all up to eat your wallet.

Many of you already cut down on your vacations just because of this very own reason. In this post, I am just going to share my real roadtrip experience by taking you all along for the ride and show how you can still have fun on roadtrips in cost effective way.

I. Plan

I know planning comes first before you ever start. I am not a neophyte for roadtrips. I have planned many of them and made memorable lines in my life chapter. At the same time, I also flew to many cities for vacations. Comparing them, I totally fell in love with driving on the American roads and anytime prefer to do roadtrips if I have lot of time in hand. This time I luckily got a week long time to kill in my hand. My wife just used this opportunity to bring up our month old topic of going to Chicago for my cousin wife's baby shower.

1. Research At first I didn't even blink my eye and gave thought about it because its only a week away and too less of time get a deal on flight tickets. I know its really hard to get reasonable price with the high gas price affecting this airlines too. It is a cockroach which is now everywhere and its going to be a tough task to get it out of the system for a while.

Anyway, I started pondering around my favorite last time resort websites, to see my luck on getting last min deals. First Orbitz.com to get a average fare per person for roundtrip. Then I went to my favorite site, Priceline and started bidding for flights with various different combination to see whether I atleast get a reasonable price 25% lessthan the round trip fare from orbitz. No luck, it all came out to be close $384/ person. Then I visited my other saved sites like Farecompare, Lastminute.com and Sidestep to compare the prices average at this time of the year. It seems to be no chance to getting lower than that one. Farecompare.com

After seeing that number, I remember my wife suggesting for a road trip as the final option since we have good amount of time in our hand. So I got to google maps to figure out the mileage for the road trip. Then I jumped to google search to see whether I can find a fuel gas calculator and compare with airline charges. I couldn't find what I was looking but happen to hit on the AAA website to find how much will be gas expense.

FuelGasCalculator is the tool to find an aproximate estimation of gas expense for your trip by AAA. I was really amazed with the options like car model to determine average mileage. I typed all they wanted including to and from and details and got the gas expense for two way around $300. That is with an average 30miles per gallon for my Honda Accord. It is just almost 60% of savings just for travel.

Thats just for travel after taking high gas price into account. It doesn't mean all other expense going to be cheap. So I took my research further asking few questions,

1. Is Road trip going to work out cheaper than Flying with hotel expense on the way?

2. Do I have enough time to drive to and fro and have time for sightseeing? Is it going to be relaxing one?

3. Can I take advantage of this road trip to spend a day or two on the way and see few more places?

I love to continue but it will get too long on this post. So let me answer these questions on the next one. Hold on for a bit to catch the more fun part..