How to Find the Best Fall Travel Deals on the Social Web
Tips for scoring deals on airfare, lodging and more through the social Web.
Sept. 25, 2010— -- The sweet memories of summer vacation may be fading, but that doesn't mean travel season has to end too. In fact, fall is one of the best times to travel, as many airlines and hotels try to fill their books between the summer and winter vacation seasons.
?But, with rates falling faster than the autumn leaves, how do you hone in on the hottest deals happening right now? Fortunately, there are plenty of ways the social web can help you save money on major travel expenses like airfare, lodging and car rentals.
Read on for ways to save money on every leg of your trip, from take off to lights out.
Every airline, from JetBlue to United to Virgin, seems to be jumping on the social networking bandwagon these days. You can follow them all on Twitter or Facebook for good, last-minute deals on flights they're looking to fill. Check out these master lists of all the airlines on both networks to make finding your favorites even easier:
Sparksheet's Airlines on Facebook
For a more diverse selection of deals, follow an aggregator like CheapestAirfare or AirFareWatchdog, which feature offers from multiple companies at once. There's also the Twitter-sanctioned EarlyBird account, which has previously featured major discounts from Twitter advertising partner JetBlue, and has plans to release more travel deals in the future.
Another good resource is FareCompare, a site where you can see a map of multiple Twitter-based airfare deals happening at the same time. You can also "Like" FareCompare on Facebook to get deals sent directly to your Facebook stream all day long. And, if there's a specific city that you like to visit or fly out of, you can find a feed from Fly.com that features fares for that particular place, like NYCFares, ChicagoFlightDeals and DenverFlightDeals. They even have a Twitter list of all their city-specific fare alerts, so you can browse deals from all over or find an account that's listing flights for your city of choice.
