Signing up for travel newsletters and email alerts from airlines and online travel services is a great way to bring the discounts and deals to you - reduces the effort of hunting down airfare, hotel, car rental and other discounts and brings you last minute, low cost travel deals. Just go to the websites below, sign up and you'll soon be awash in discount travel offers.
Real Travel Deals Newsletters
Fare Alert is a must have travel deals newsletter. Must have. Gotta get. The site reads,
"Welcome to FareAlert, the home of some of the cheapest air and hotel deals on the net. This site differs from the thousands of other 'low fare sites' because we only send you deals that are out of the ordinary. FareAlert is the site that sent out deals such as the $20 British Airways WT+ trips and the legendary Iceland deal." FYI: the legendary Iceland deal was a "fat finger" fare (a mistake that people in the know are able to grab, basically): round trip airfare from New York (JFK) to Reykjavik, Iceland for $61 available for a few heady hours in 2004.
1-800-Fly-Europe - great specials page.
About Student Travel - 'nuff said.
Online Travel Agencies
STA Travel - a true student travel agency, STA's newsletter offers special student travel deals on top of their everyday student discounts and bonuses like other traveler's journals - good tips and interesting stories.
TravelCuts - Canadian student travel agency newsletter with a US student travel option. The site has an excellent special events and festivals locater.
Sherman's Top 25 - the best deals this agency can find weekly.
Orbitz - Orbitz also offers a Deal Detector - set a target price for a destination and you'll be alerted when it's been matched or bettered.
Expedia
Travelocity - you'll need to join first, then navigate to Last Minute Deals and sign up for the Easy Escapes newsletter on the middle right side of the page.
CheapTickets
Hotwire - to sign up, scroll down to "Low Price Alerts" under the fare finder.
Airlines
With many airlines, you'll have to enroll in their frequent flyer programs before you can get deals and promotions emailed to you, but enrollment is fairly easy and quick. It doesn't hurt to be enrolled in as many free frequent flyer programs as possible - you never know when you'll have to grab a quick flight with whatever airline is available that meets your needs - might as well get the miles!
Delta - become a frequent flyer member first here.
American - become a frequent flyer member first
here.
Northwest - become a frequent flyer member first here.
British Airways
Mexicana - it's become hard to navigate Mexicana.com and the site changes frequently, but try to find and click on "Receive our On Line Promotions Via Email" under "News and Promotions" on the right side of the page.
Frontier
America West
Spirit Air
Qantas
Many airlines offer deals on their sites, but no newsletters or email alerts; you may want to bookmark these two that frequently offer exceptional discounts which generally change weekly:
Happy bargain hunting!
"A good holiday is one that is spent among people whose notions of time are vaguer than yours."
--J. B. Priestley
