using internet booking agents
 

I just have a question I want to throw out there. Have any of you found booking your trips online to be the best way to go? I am curious to know if anyone has used sites like Apple Vacations and Vacations to Go, or anywhere else for booking their trips and if they
were reliable and trustworthy. Do they really offer you great savings? I have used expedia, and orbitz in the past but never these agencies. Any input???

Apple Vacations offers good deals because they are large tour operator who offers cut-rate packages to the Caribbean, not because they are online; they're not a travel agent, they are a tour operator. They also sell only their own packages (though they each work with different airlines).

Vactions to Go is a consolidator/travel agency. But as far as I know, they sell only cruises.

Both companies are reliable and have been around for a while. Worry Free Vacations is another big packager for Caribbean and Mexico trips.

But you can get the same rates for most packages with Apple Vacations and Worry Free Vacations through a travel agent. The tour companies associated with Delta, American, and Air Jamaica also have good deals sometimes, and they all can be accessed through the related airline's web site.

If you want a good source online for general Caribbean deals, check out Liberty Travel.com. This is a big travel agency, and they sell packages by many different tour companies. This is where you'll get the best sense of what's available at the time you want to go.

Most travel agents still sell Caribbean packages without a fee because they get a commission from the tour operator. So you can usually book most of these kinds of deals through a travel agency (online or not) for about the same price.

Expedia especially also creates its own packages and sometimes offers pretty good deals.

The Web site for Liberty Travel is www.libertytravel.com, not Travel.com. Just to be clear.

We've gone on 13 Apple Vacations and always had good service.

Vacations to go also has resorts(all-inclusive and not) on there site with good prices.

We have booked often through Expedia. An example of their service: We were on an island and had a medical emergency and my husband landed in the hospital for 2 days. Within 2 hours of our call to expedia, all of our return arrangements and extended hotel arrangements were changed without any cost to us.

I doubt our travel agent would have even been reached in that time.

Thanks for the info. I will check out those websites and hopefully come up with something.