TravelHacks.iExploreFlorida.com

I rambled on here about finding flights and deals online in the ‘traditional’ manner using meta-searchers so you dont have to visit each individual travel site etc, but there is an even more time efficient way by using RSS. I’m assuming that readers have some entry level knowledge of RSS, if not, read this to get some background on the format that’ll help save you bundles of time.

I use the Sage RSS reader in my Firefox browser. Its a great lightweight way of reading RSS feeds without having to log-in to an online reader or fire up a desktop stand alone ( I use Feed Demon for more heavy duty feed trawling). Once you’ve installed Sage in Firefox you can open it in a browser sidebar to view your feeds.

The “big three” online travel agents, Travelocity, Expedia and Orbitz all now offer various RSS feeds.

You can customize the feeds to your own search preferences in Expedia. They offer hotel and flight combo’s or just individual flights or hotel feeds. The Florida departure cities covered so far are Miami, Fort Lauderdale, Tampa and Orlando with Fort Myers and Disney and West Palm Beach added to that list as destinations (as well as other destinations in the USA and Europe). You build your travel preferences, agree to the T&C’s and a feed is built. Unfortunately for me there was no departure point from my nearest airport in Fort Myers, though I could use it in the oposite direction.

Orbitz’s selection of feeds were not customizable with offerings limited to a range of USA cities for airfares, packages and hotels and a handful of general feeds for cars, flights and cruises.

The Travelocity feeds were customizable, much like Expedia. A range of search options are offered by trip type (beach,bachelor,family etc) and a much wider range of departure cities (including my local, Fort Myers) than Expedia. Another advantage the Travelocity feeds have over their two main competitors is that you can add as many as four destination cities though there were no international options.

Booking Buddy offer a list of feeds for vacations, hotels, cars, cruises and even travel gear deals. Sidestep offer a similar selection.

Travel meta-searcher Kayak offer just one deals feed (the Kayak Top 25) though more advance users can customize their own feeds by changing search parameters. Kayak are also testing the ‘KayakBot’ which enables you to search via AIM using a few text commands. Very neat. There’s a Kayak search Firefox plug-in, though development seems to have stopped at Firefox 1.6 and wont work with the latest browser.

FareCompare.com are another site we like a lot. You can build as many feeds (for flights) as you want by departure and destination. Even better is a feature that compares prices over the year from the results. There’s also a FareCompare Firefox browser plug-in that sits in your status bar at the bottom right of your screen and searches for flights you want to watch. You can fine tune your search by price and airline too.

Another Firefox plug-in worth trying is the Advanced Travel add-on from TravelGrove.com. This browser add-on sticks three more icons on your status bar, one each for flights, hotels and cars. While the FareCompare add-on grabs fares by destination this one has fine tuning with specific dates and queries Hotwire, Travelocity, Expedia, CheapTickets and Orbitz, amongst others.

AirfareWatchdog offers RSS feeds by departure city with the option of having deals emailed as they appear.

Farecast have more custom options with most US. departure points though the destination list is limited to less than twenty US. cities, though you can add three cities at a time. What we do love about Farecast is how they breakdown the search results into predictive suggestions for fluctuating ticket prices. A fare prediction shows if the lowest fare is rising or dropping over the following seven days for the specific dates and cities searched.

So which one is the best? Well, none are really conclusive but we’d recommend a combination of Kayak, FareCompare and Farecast for US. destinations and Expedia for international destinations with the Travelgrove browser plug-in for handy meta-searches

Related Links

Best Time to Buy Cheap Airfare & Airline Tickets (FareCompare.com)
Finding Cheap Airfare, Rules of Thumb (FareCompare.com)
There’s a Popular New Code For Deals-RSS (New York Times-Jan 2006)
Creating RSS Feeds For Travel Deals (Sidestep.com)
Fifty Things You Can Do With RSS (About.com Websearch)
How To Find RSS Feeds on the Web (Wiki-How)
All About RSS (FaganFinder.com)
RSS What It Is Where to Get It (Interleaves.org)