Use Online Forums for Best Travel and Hotel Deals & Slash T&E Expenses

Discount ticket and hotel booking sites like Priceline are excellent to keep the travel and entertainment expenses under control.

Yet how does one decide which travel or booking service to use? How do you know how good they are?

Wouldn´t it be great if there were forums where former users discussed and shared their experiences with such services and passed around useful tips and practices?

There actually are a number of such online forums that business travelers should check before they finalize their travel plans.

FlyerTalk (www.flyertalk.com) for example is an interactive community dedicated to frequent flyer miles. It offers discussions and chat boards covering the most up-to-date traveler information, accessible 24x7. It is a great resource to make the most out of your frequent flyer miles and bonus points.

FlyerTalk offers four main forums on Miles & Points, Travel & Dining, Community and OMNI. Especially interesting are the discussions on the pros and cons of different (and sometimes perplexing) programs available out there.

Bidding For Travel (www.BiddingForTravel.com) covers air, hotel, packages and car rental bids. Here you´ll find hundreds of postings about flight and hotel advice, and feedback on vacation packages.

This online forum concentrates on Priceline bids. The idea is to educate consumers on how to become better informed Priceline bidders and prevent costly first-timer mistakes.

Better Bidding (www.BetterBidding.com) is another great online forum where people discuss their experiences with the hotels they booked through Hotwire or Priceline. All hotels are searchable by State (in the US). When you go to a certain state and click either the Hotwire or Priceline button, the site displays all the reports on hotels with the bids from those companies.

If you are interested in bidding for Priceline hotels I´d also recommend this 2003 Washington Post article,

How to Snag a Good Deal on Priceline.

Here are the main Priceline bidding recommendations explained in detail in this article:

> Shop around.

> Know the rules.

> Check online forums.

> Let Priceline help you (800-658-1496).

> Rebid wisely.

> Check zone maps carefully.

> Check vacation packages.

> Once your bid is accepted, join the hotel's loyalty program.

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