Survey.website To Buy Flight-ticket+hotel?

[Bangkok2008]

*Yes.I know "thaivisa" have this service and I can see the links also.

Is it Orbitz?Expedia?

I kind of new to this online booking thing over the net so please your kind advice.

[Bangkok2008]

So. where do you make your reservation?where its the saftiest and cheapest way to do it?

[sas_cars]

It'd be interesting to see the answers to this post.

For hotels, for me, I usually search from agoda.com, sawadee.com, and asiatravel.com . Prices are nearabout the same but I prefer sawadee since they don't ask for your credit card information once you send the inquiry, you need to only provide the credit card details once they reply you back with confirmation of space.

About online flights, no experience yet though.

[Spee]

*Yes.I know "thaivisa" have this service and I can see the links also.

Is it Orbitz?Expedia?

There are sites that will check all the others. For example, kayak dot com is one.

[benjamat]

I find Asia rooms good for hotels and Airline network for flights.

[ClaytonSeymour]

These days I generally book flights on the airline's own website. As for hotels, currently I usually use Agoda or Hotelopia.

[geriatrickid]

Here are the dark secrets of those booking engines: They sell price search result spots. For example if you ask for "anytime" vs. a specific time slot on Expedia you will often get different results. Kayak does not show the best possible routings at times and will often refer to Orbitz which will not have the tickets showing, but instead flip you to different flights. Some airlines do not even show up on some sites (e.g. EVA on Expedia and often on Kayak). OK, so you are now saying, well how does one work through these sites? Here's how.

1. Use Kayak to get an idea of possible routes. Some days and times will be significantly cheaper than others, but Kayak over all comes up with a good indication. If you sign up at Kayak you can use the +/- 1,2,3 day fare search option and even deselect certain stop over airports.

2. Next, select the specific hour that looks good and checkout Orbitz, Expedia and other sites. A good place that lets you do this is Booking Buddy which searches more sites than Kayak. Don't get fooled by the claims that hundreds of airline sites are searched at Kayak. The fares are the same because of the reliance on the limited number of actual booking engines such as Sabre, Amadeus. There are 6 major engines and depending on who is paying whom, orbitz, expedia etc. may or may not access some of them.

3. ALWAYS and I mean ALWAYS look at the trip as both a roundtrip and as single flights. For example instead of LAX-BKK-LAX, Do a one wasy LAX-BKK and then a BKK-LAX search. You will often save money, particularly if you are paying a premium fare.

4. Double check using the airline websites and do not hesiitate in considering a multi ticket purchase at several sites.

I fly regularly and this process might take a couple hours but it lets me save thousands annually and fly in business. Heres an example of a trip I had to make last year. Putting aside the preflights in from London,.

-Used AC website to purchase a YYZ to YVR ticket on Air canada

- Used EVA website to book YVR-BKK on EVA

- Used Orbitz to book ANA and Air Canada from BKK back to Toronto and then after a few weeks, back to Thailand I went using Expedia to book YYZ to YVR to BKK because the flights available on BKK as a code share were cheaper by almost $2000 than had I booked either as a full ticket on Air Canada (Galileo) or EVA's website.

Had I booked as roundtrips on any of the airline affiliated search engines or Orbitz, Travelocity, Expedia etc. I calculated that I would have been limited in routings and paid thousands of dollars more.

If you have the time and can keep a spread sheet or proper notes, the time invested pays off.