Regular travelers to Jamaica must have discovered flights are more expensive then usual. I am interested in the various approaches used by regular travelers to Jamaica to get the best fares.
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Regular travelers to Jamaica must have discovered flights are more expensive then usual. I am interested in the various approaches used by regular travelers to Jamaica to get the best fares.
Flights in general are more expensive this year than last. I fly at least once a month. Ouch.
I use Kayak as a reference but I will not book air or hotels through travel sites such as Expedia, Orbitz, Travelocity etc. I book directly with the airline - I find it saves me some money and provides more flexibility.
I use ITA software's Matrix. It will list all fares to a destination in one month blocks along with total travel times. Just google it for the URL
Then I book directly from the airline.
I use both Kayak and ITA but for our next trip I found the best price on Vayama.
I use http://matrix.itasoftware.com and also kayak and orbitz.
Ita soft has a mobile app for Android that shows a bar graph showing highs and lows in prices.. I find my flight there, then buy it from orbitz..
We also use the matrix website. The nearest airport is about an hour away and we have 3 more within 2 hours. It lets us list all those airports and shows the cheapest. You can't book from their site so I normally just go to the airlines website and typically save a few dollars more. Not an issue with Jamaica but they do not list Southwest. Not sure if there is any other airline they do not list.
We haven't had much luck pricing airfare with any travel website from Grand Rapids, Michigan, home of the 3rd most expensive airport in these here United States. We just check the airlines daily, sometime more often, and find that the prices will come down, sometime for only a couple of hours. So, we have to be diligent and ready to push that button.
For example, for this trip coming up this week, I began checking prices upon our return from our last trip in May and Delta was at $ 832 each. I continued to check several times a day and, voila, the price came down one day to $ 403 each and I booked. Sometimes it is best to be flexible on your days as it is cheaper to fly out and back on some days than on others.
It has been this way for our last several trips. I check other sites from time to time, but, I always end up booking directly through the airlines web site. But I see some ideas here that I will add to my search for our June trip.
Weathermon
Thank you to all who have responded so far
Negrilal
Since Airtran started flying to Jamaica, I have been getting great deals with them. Love it!