Whether your dream vacation involves relaxing on a tropical beach or exploring Europe’s cultural capitals, you might be able to save money booking it with Expedia coupons. Photos: Maldives by Sarah Ackerman, Paris by Moyan Brenn
Sometimes it’s hard to know which website to check first when it comes to finding the best travel deals. Some people swear by one site while others brag about taking the most amazing and affordable vacation using another. Either way, most people can agree that Expedia is one of the top travel websites around.
An early pioneer of the online booking industry, Expedia maintains an excellent reputation — and because they make it so easy to find Expedia coupons and even last-minute deals, it’s quickly becoming one of our favorite places to find some great prices on travel.
Now, with every travel website, there is a specific strategy you have to use to find the best deals — and Expedia is no different. Here’s how to use Expedia to search for deals and make sure you get the best ones.
Finding the Best Expedia Coupons and Deals
While there’s nothing wrong with just going to Expedia.com, searching for your travel destination, and seeing what pops up, you may not get the best price with that approach.
Expedia groups its prime deals on a handful of separate landing pages, including ones for last-minute deals, hotel deals, vacation packages, and daily deals. Your best strategy is to check out each one to see what combinations are available before you pull the trigger and book anything.
Here’s a step-by-step approach to find Expedia coupons and deals for your next vacation:
1. Log in. Go to the Expedia homepage and sign in. If you’re not an Expedia member already, go ahead and sign up.
Essentially, the more you book and travel with Expedia, the more benefits you get. There are also certain deals that only show up to members when they log in, so before you even start your search for a travel deal, make sure that you’re a member and that you’re going to get the points you deserve if you actually book.
The points you earn from Expedia can be redeemed for travel later on, although some people have found Expedia points aren’t necessarily as valuable as using airline credit card points. It’s still worth a look though, even to see if you can get one or two extra nights in a hotel for free.
If you’re already a member, take a look at the points you already have in your account and see if you have enough to get Expedia coupons for hotel stays and more.
2. Check the home page for deals. Okay, once you’re logged in to your account and you can see whether or not you have points available, you can go back to the Expedia homepage as your home base to see if they are running any deals or sales at the current moment. You’ll notice that they’re typically advertising that you can save money if you book your flight and hotel together and that you can cancel at anytime. These are good things to remember as you go through and plan your trip.
Scroll down some more — at the time of this writing, they are offering $25 off your hotel booking and triple points if it’s your first time using their mobile app to book the stay. Keep your eyes peeled for little sales and Expedia coupons like this as each little bit helps when booking travel.
3. Dig deeper into Expedia’s specific deal pages. Next, you want to check all of Expedia’s specific deal pages for the best bargains, which I’ll explain in detail in the next section. Basically, Expedia advertises last-minute deals, hotel deals, vacation packages, and other promotions on several different pages, and before you settle on a trip, you want to check them all — because you never know where you’ll have the most luck.
4. Be flexible if possible. Ultimately, the best strategy is to be flexible and use all the information above to book your next vacation. The more open-ended you are about destinations and dates, the more money you can save.
For example, Expedia might be running a one-day sale on Caribbean vacations, and the perfect getaway might suddenly be less expensive than the trip you’d originally been planning. Keep an open mind and you could be in for a world of savings.
The Best Pages for Different Expedia Deals
As I mentioned, Expedia has a few different specific landing pages where you can find the best deals. These are pages you definitely want to visit before doing an initial search just to make sure you’re seeing the best Expedia deals right from the outset:
Today’s Travel Deals
Use this page to find deals that are specific to today. When you click on the page, it will pull up a search bar. Simply put in the destination you want and your desired dates, and Expedia will tell you if there are any specific discounts today for that location.
Scroll down a little bit, and you should see a box that says something like “Daily Deals”. Click that, and you’ll see several more options without having to insert dates. This is my favorite method to save. Usually, they’ll have a featured hotel that’s discounted only on certain dates or other hotel packages.
Keep in mind that they update these deals every day at midnight PT (3am on the East Coast) — so if you see something you like, you should book it.
Last-Minute Deals
The last-minute Expedia deals are probably the best part of their website. After all, who wouldn’t want to spend some time dreaming about where they could go in just two or three weeks on a spontaneous trip?
This page is very easy to use, and you’ll see the deals right when you pull up the page. They are broken down to show hotel deals and full package deals which include airfare, hotel, and taxes and fees.
Pay special attention to the dates that are available — the prices likely only include travel within the next month or two at most.
Vacation Packages
Planning a vacation is a ton of work, so sometimes vacation packages can be your best bet, especially if you’re super busy and don’t have the time to separately book cars, hotels, and flights.
The best part of this page is that you can let Expedia know all the services you need. So if you need a car in addition to a hotel and a plane ticket, you can book all that together. If you just need a flight and a car but are staying with a friend and not in a hotel, you can book that way too.
This allows for some flexibility and various options for everyone involved. If you need help deciding on where to go, this page also lists some of the most popular and trending destinations along with typical prices for those trips to help you with your search.
Hotel Deals
If you want to search Expedia just for hotels, then it makes the most sense to go directly to this hotel deals page. This will connect you with options in a variety of different price points.
However, if you want to get the cheapest hotels available, it’s best to go to this Expedia Top-Ten hotel deal page where you can see the 10 absolute best deals around on a given day. This can help you narrow down a destination and get a great deal in the process.
Frugal Travel Tips to Save Money on Any Trip
In addition to the tips above, there are many other ways to save money as you plan your next vacation — regardless of whether you book it using Expedia. Here are some of our top tips to remember:
Book a hotel with a kitchenette. If you do this, you can have several meals in your room without having to splurge on fancy croissants at the brunch place next door to the hotel. Booking a vacation rental through a site such as HomeAway or Airbnb is another affordable way to find lodging with a kitchen at your disposal.
Travel during the week or in the off season. Traveling when no else is may not be as convenient, but it remains one of the most sure-fire ways to save big bucks on any trip.
Visit a city with excellent public transportation. Car rentals can be extremely expensive — like several hundred dollars for just a few days of a rental. If you vacation in a city that has great public transportation, such as New York, Boston, or Washington, you won’t need to rent a car at all.
Ask locals for their favorite restaurants (or check Yelp or Foursquare). Don’t hit up the touristy spots. Instead try to find the diamonds in the rough, the ones that all the locals love to go to, without the high tourist prices.
Research deal days at museums and other places of interest. Most museums have at least one afternoon a week where they offer discounted or free admission, and many have other coupons available on their websites. Do your research before just walking into one.
Pack lightly to avoid baggage fees. You don’t really need all those shoes do you? Packing sensibly means you could save significantly, especially if you have a whole family in tow.
An Example of an Expedia Deal
Now that you have an idea of how to search for Expedia coupons and Expedia deals and know to combine them with other frugal travel tricks, here’s an example of what booking a trip on Expedia could get you.
Gorgeous, Beachy, and Luxurious for Less
Let’s pretend to go somewhere tropical where you can enjoy the beach and get a little tiny umbrella drink. Remember, our best tip is to be flexible, so don’t search for a specific beach or a specific date. Instead, search Expedia’s last-minute deals page to see what they have to offer.
Scroll down and you might see a bunch of expensive weekend trips to exotic places like Cancun for $1,000+ per person. But if you keep scrolling to the right, looking at all the last-minute deals Expedia has to offer, the cheaper deals are a bit more hidden on later pages.
Let the best-value deals help guide your decision about where you might want to go — instead of visiting Cancun, you might consider a place like Miami or Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., for example, since Expedia is offering a last-minute deal there at the time of this writing. Click on the destination, and it’ll take you to a new page with several different hotel options.
Scroll through, and you’ll see an incredible and complete vacation package deal where you can actually stay two nights at the Four Seasons Miami, one of the most luxurious hotel brands in the world, for a mere $394 per person — including nonstop roundtrip flights from New York, two nights at the Four Seasons, and all the taxes and fees (not to mention free fresh fruit and cold towels by the pools).
So for around $800, a couple can have a romantic, luxurious weekend in cosmopolitan Miami at one of the nicest hotels available.
If this couple makes sure to log into Expedia and get a free account with them, they can get rewards points for their travel. The more they travel using Expedia, the more points they earn and can use toward future travel.
After choosing a hotel, they simply pick the flights and voila! – they can spend 10 minutes deciding on a vacation instead of combing through tons of airline sites and tons of other hotel sites. To top it all off, they should do a quick search for other Expedia coupons before they actually hit the order button just to make sure there aren’t any outstanding coupons available on third-party sites.
For this particular vacation package, we can’t find any additional coupons, but we’ll be looking for an even better deal to pop up in the next 24 hours since Expedia will refund the difference plus $50 if you can find a better price elsewhere.
Ultimately, using a website like Expedia to book your travel can be a great tool. Not only can you get great Expedia coupons and Expedia deals on their various deal-specific pages, but you can earn points while you travel and let them help plan your vacation for you.
Have you ever used Expedia to book discounted travel? What was your experience like?
The post How to Save on Travel With Expedia Coupons and Deals appeared first on The Simple Dollar.
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