Where do I find the best price for an airline ticket thru a travel agency or thru the airline website?
by My Dream Vacations on Wednesday, January 27th, 2010 | 3 Comments
I want to travel from the US to South America for the end of the year holidays, please help with your advice. Thanks.
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I think the right answer to your question is to look at multiple sources to find the best price. For instance I will often check Yahoo’s Farechase and then also individual airline sites to make sure I can get the cheapest flights. Personally, I think a travel agency should not be used if your goal is to find the cheapest flight and you don’t mind doing the work. For me, I would use a travel agency if I had an itinerary and wanted to rely on them to help make suggestions and use their knowledge to make the trip more convenient but for only airline tickets you are best doing the research yourself.
It depends. If you need a hotel and car, the travel agencies are more convenient. If you already have a place to stay then checking the individual websites as well would be a good idea because sometimes they have better deals. If you do use a travel agency try using one of these sites to search several at once:
http://www.cheapflights.com/
http://www.sidestep.com/
http://www.airfarewatchdog.com/
So the answer is, you have to do some research. I usually search the travel agencies then the individual airlines that the travel agency uses.
For international travel I always check the airlines based in the country I’m going to because I hate layover’s and they usually offer a direct flight that the travel agency doesn’t. For example, I always use El Al to go to Israel, Emirates to go to Dubai and Royal Jordanian to go to Jordan. If you don”t live near a major international airport like LAX or JFK then this probably won’t work for you. While this may not be the cheapest often, consider how much your time traveling is worth. If you’re willing to put up with one or two layovers that are usually one or two hours long (but sometimes longer, sometimes even overnight) by all means, use the travel agencies.
Also look up reviews of which ever travel agency you decide to use. I’ve had a lot of good experience with CheapTickets.com but I only used them for domestic travel and never had to book a hotel. Expedia always messes up my hotel booking.
Also, if you have flexible dates, try to fly on Tues, Wed or Thurs. These days are almost always the cheapest, except around holiday times (including holidays in the other country).