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Cheap Airfare Step 8: Opaque Airfares
Book with Hotwire.com and you can get a great price on a plane ticket...so long as you're willing to be a bit vague on the details
Opaque fares are not quite as loosey-goosey as travel bids—by which I mean you know ahead of time which airport you will be using. The airline you'll fly and precise flight times will still be a surprise you don't learn until after you've bought the ticket.
Advice, Tricks, and Resources
These websites exist solely to provide tips, tricks, and ways to game the
online travel auction world so you can the best deal when you bid on travel:
BidOnTravel.com (www.bidontravel.com) - This is the sleekest and most user-friendly interface of these three resources, more of a tip sheet and guided advice than a free-for-all message board (like the others) where the gems are buried between 1,001 postings all asking "Did I get a good deal?" It provides an online guide to gaming both Priceline and Hotwire
for the best deals in every travel category: airfare, hotels, rental cars, vacation packages, and last-minute deals.
BiddingForTravel.com (www.biddingfortravel.com) - A message board for Priceline and Hotwire
fanatics—and those who like to pit the two against one another—though, sadly, they no longer walk you step-by-step through the bidding process. Still, the message board forums are packed full of general helpful hints for online auctions.
BetterBidding.com (www.betterbidding.com) - Similar to BiddingForTravel.com—another message board format—but a bit more homegrown, plus it has a bunch on Hotwire.com as well as on Priceline.com
(in fact, it was started as a Hotwire
tips site and later expanded to include Priceline
).The trade-off? You can snag deals up to 40% off published airfares, and 75% off hotel rates.
At the leading opaque booking engine Hotwire.com (www.hotwire.com)—which calls its opaque fares "Hot Rates"—your dates (departure/return) and cities (where you are and where you wanna go), and they give you a price to match.
You pick the price you like (hint: it's the lowest one). Only after you pay the virtual piper do you find out the name of the airline and precise times of the flights.
There's nothing fishy about all this. It’s just a way for airlines to move empty seats at amounts that far undercut their published fares without admitting that they're willing to sell seats for so little.
Also, it's not as if you'll be stuck flying My Cousin Sal's Podunk Airline. Hotwire's associates are all big names like American Airlines, Continental, Delta, Alitalia, Cathay Pacific, Northwest, Air France, Lufthansa, etc.
They also rep thousands of hotels (mostly chains) around the world—including hotels in central Rome starting at $118 in high season. (Which hotels? Couldn't tell you. That's what they mean by "opaque.")
Unlike some bargain sites, Hotwire.com encourages you to shop around and try to beat their fares, and will hold a reservation free-of-charge for one hour.
It also lets you compare its results right on-screen with competitors like Hotels.com and Expedia.com, and offer have some juicy last-minute deals.
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This article was last updated in January 2010. All information was accurate at the time.
Copyright © 1998–2010 by Reid Bramblett. Author: Reid Bramblett.
