- Tools for Planning Long Trips: Where to Begin
- Tools to Create Maps & Itineraries
- An Easier Way to Create Maps & Itineraries
- An Even Easier Way to Create Maps & Itineraries
- Tools and Tips on Bookings
- Tools and Tips for Air Travel
- What travel programs should you join?
- Tools to record your trip steps
- Tools to Reflect on Your Trips
- What to do with Fido
- AN EVEN EASIER WAY TO CREATE MAPS & ITINERARIES – TAKE 2
Tools and Tips on Bookings – In this post, I will share sites and apps that you can use to book accommodations and make other travel-related bookings. I use a variety of apps and approaches to make bookings. These are dependent on the type of travel we’re doing and when we’re going. For example, unless we’re going during the high season, I will ordinarily wait longer to start booking flights and hotels. This is because the competition for those things will be less than during the high season.
Travel during the Pandemic
During the pandemic, it was easier to book things because nobody was traveling. You could find great deals easily. Some of the travel sites were offering exceptional package deals. Rick initially scheduled his bucket list motorcycle ride to Alaska to occur in July 2020. He started scheduling things in 2019 for the ride. Of course, he had to postpone everything because July 2020 was early in the pandemic. There were no vaccines yet, and Canada’s border remained closed. Thankfully, he was able to reschedule all the things he’d booked.
Travel Post-Pandemic
But now that the pandemic is waning and people are eager to travel again. It’s much more competitive. In a post-pandemic environment, as long as you can reschedule without penalty, it’s better to book things well in advance. I don’t book flights until I know for sure how long we’re going to be at the destination. If you skipped post one in this series, that’s where you should start. The steps in that post will help you know how long you need to be somewhere. Or it’ll help you determine what you can see given your time constraints – those imposed by work, for example.
Booking Flights & Accommodations
I wrote a separate post on air travel because the topic is too large to cover in just one post. That post is Tools and Tips for Air Travel. But as far as accommodations go, I generally use booking.com for finding places to stay in advance. The reason I use that site is that they host many types of accommodations. It’s like VRBO, Air BNB, and hotels.com, all in one app. And if you use booking.com a lot, you can get some pretty decent rewards. If we are taking a road trip and our timeline is fluid, I use hotwire.com. If you book your accommodations for the same day, you can find some pretty killer deals. The image at the top of this post is from a resort in Klamath Falls, where I paid $58/night because I used hotwire.
Booking Car Rentals
For car rentals in the U.S., I use hotwire.com, even well in advance. The one issue here is if you need to change anything on the reservation, it’s impossible through hotwire.com without the whole reservation being re-evaluated for price. What you can do is call the local rental office to make changes. Don’t bother calling the 800 number for the rental company. They are useless. And the types of changes you can make are limited. You can call the local office and change the pick-up time and/or driver. If you start changing dates, the whole reservation will be re-evaluated for price. I say this because the price difference can be double, triple, or more than the original price, depending on when you make the change.
For car rentals internationally, I Google the car rental companies at the destination and then go to each local car rental site to compare rates. You can try carrentals.com but I have found better deals going to each individual car rental site. One caveat though: I will only rent from reputable, well-known car rental agencies. This is because of a bad experience in Mexico. We were late getting to the rental car agency (Budget) we’d reserved with due to an over-abundance of people in Customs. So, they baited and switched us to another rental agency (Mex Rental Car) that ended up costing us 3x the original price. My lesson: call the car rental agency if you’re running late, even if you’re stuck in a Customs line that they are all well aware of.
Booking Motorcycle Rentals
For motorcycle rentals, aside from Googling, Rick looks at his motorcycle magazines for those companies that rent at our destination. He reads RoadRUNNER and Rider magazine. Both have digital subscriptions available.
One rental place we got bikes at deserves recognition. We rented bikes in Auckland, New Zealand at Cycletreads. Trying to get out of their driveway on a bike that was much bigger than my bike at home, I lost my balance on a hump in the driveway and went over. I broke a couple ribs. This was the first day of our New Zealand vacation. After we got through the surprisingly wonderful New Zealand medical facility, which cost me $125 for x-rays, exam, analysis and meds, we returned to the rental company. They did not charge us anything. They were more concerned about my health. New Zealand is an awesome place to go. Residents pay a surcharge that covers visitors’ accidents in their country.
Booking Ferries
For ferry reservations, if there are few routes per day, I book way ahead of time because I don’t want to be stranded somewhere without a way to get to one of our destinations. And then I schedule everything around getting to the ferry. If there are multiple ferry options, I wait to book them.
Booking Trains & Buses
For train tickets, if there are lots of trains going from point A to point B, I don’t worry about booking those far in advance. But if there are few options, I do book them far in advance. If you are going to do primarily train travel, e.g., in Europe, you can check to see if the Eurail pass or any other pass is beneficial. For any rail-related information in Europe, I consult ricksteves.com for the most up-to-date information on rail travel there. If you’ll also be using buses where trains aren’t available, I found checkmybus.com to be very helpful.
Booking Tours & Activities
For tour activities, I have been using GetYourGuide.com. But I get there from blog recommendations for the destination. For example, when I Googled Florence, Italy, I found MamaLovesItaly.com which provides various itineraries and gives suggestions on what to see. The site recommends specific tours to take in order to get the biggest bang for your buck. And it points you directly to that option on GetYourGuide.com. The same thing in Rome, I really enjoyed this post from romewise.com. Elyssa provides links to GetYourGuide.com tours, along with maps you can import from Google Your Maps. But see my post on the benefits and drawbacks of using Your Places.