Tips for Finding Discounted Airfare
By: Catherine Brock
Any seasoned travel planner will admit it: there isn’t one single, obvious path to finding discounted airfare. Experienced agents know how to find negotiated and bulk rates, but they’ll still want to check a few places before giving you their lowest quote. So you, as a consumer, should understand that your mission to find the lowest discounted airfare may be not be quick and easy.
Get informed
Before you can get started on your discounted airfare search, you should know what your itinerary options are and what the published airfare rates are. Thanks to some handy online tools, it’s not too difficult to get a handle on these issues, particularly when you are planning a domestic trip.
First, you'll need to find out which airlines actually service your selected destination. If you are traveling to a relatively small domestic airport, just click over to the airport’s website. If you are flying into a major domestic destination or any international destination, search for your itinerary on a couple of online travel agencies that show itineraries inventory from various suppliers. Make a note of the prices and list out the airlines that show up in the search results.
Go straight to the source
Armed with your airline options, you can now visit those airlines’ websites and price your flights. Also check Southwest Airlines’ website, since Southwest fares don’t appear in third-party sites. Pricing your trip directly with the airlines allows you to see published fares that are free of booking fees. The reason you didn't take this step first is because you wouldn't have known which airlines to check out. If you want discounted airfare, these published rates are the benchmarks you need to beat.
Beating published rates
Travel wholesalers and established travel agencies have access to discounted airfare, but if you don't have someone who's watching fares for you, you might never hear about it. If you have a dependable agent, consult with her on your dilemma; tell her what you know about the published fares and see what her thoughts are on finding something cheaper. Understand that while your agent should have connections with air consolidators and access to bulk air deals, she does not work miracles. It could be that on the day you're looking, there just aren't a lot of deals available.
Some established travel agencies offer online booking that consolidates airfare inventory from various sources; this type of system lets you see any discounted airfares in the system, including bulk fares, plus customized itineraries that combine flights from different airlines to build a route for you. Look for special symbols next to the search results to indicate exclusive or discounted fares; they might be marked with "exclusive fare" or something similar. Compare these fares to the ones you found when you were identifying available itineraries.
One caveat though: if you find the discounted airfare you want, you should snatch it up fast. Truly discounted airfare deals don’t last, particularly if a large agency's team of agents is working to sell them.
You can also try packaging your airfare with other travel services such as hotel or rental car. This is a pretty common strategy, but that's because it works. Travel wholesalers can hide discounted airfare within the bundled package; this allows them to compete without obviously undercutting the airlines’ standard fares.
Author Resource:-> Catherine Brock operates BrockComm Travel, an online travel agency that is backed by MTravel.com, the full service host agency division of Montrose Travel, a Top 50 travel company nationwide. Established in 1956, Montrose is a reputable, financially secure, $100 million company with the products, services and unpublished travel discounts that enable BrockComm Travel to plan and book high quality trips at the right price. BrockComm Travel also produces online travel destination guides including a Southern California vacation information portal.
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