Airfare and hotel websites
 

Going from LA to Fort Lauderdale in November. What are best websites for airfare and hotels?

While I often check prices at orbitz and others, I have found that I actually have gotten the BEST prices by going directly to the airline websites. <BR>In hotel deals, I browse local web guides, check prices listed, then call the hotel I'm most interested in. Sometimes the web-price is better, but sometimes the phone rate is lower. Also ask if there are any deals.

In addition to Orbitz and the individual airline websites, I have also had good luck in finding deals on Travelocity.com, Expedia.com, and Cheaptickets.com

For hotels, try biddingfortravel.com . They offer advice on how to use Priceline. Check their FL boards to get a sense of the savings that folks are getting.

I've used both priceline and hotwire for hotels, air and even rental cars. Of these two sites, I prefer hotwire.com since you know the price up front. Keep in mind though, you will get a great price but you can not select the time of day that you travel. I've used this back and forth between LAX and JFK 3 times and all 3 times I got a morning flight leaving around 10am and all 3 were non-stops. Maybe I just got lucky but the flights i ended up with would have been the flights I would have chosen anyway. Another thing to know is that you do not get frequent flyer miles when you use hotwire or priceline. I've also used hotwire for hotels and rental cars and been very pleased each time.

Orbitz and expedia are probably the best for airfares. You might want to check the specific airline websites like aa or ual. I would use priceline for hotels.