The websites below are what we personally use when booking any overseas trip and from past experience know they can often provide huge savings!
Luxury Escapes – https://luxuryescapes.com/au
The site is by far the best website we have seen that offers you discounted travel and boasts a huge range of interstate and international destinations. If you’re planning a holiday, best to check this site a couple of times a week as you are almost certain to find a great deal. The only except being if you are set on a specific hotel and they don’t have a package deal. Usually best to book direct with the hotel for the cheapest rate but do your own homework.
Qantas Exclusive Offers – https://www.qantas.com/hotels/exclusive-offers
Qantas also has a bunch of great package deals on their exclusive offers page. They don’t have as many options at Luxury Escapes but there is certainly plenty of great deals on that site! I do find often they have a short time to travel window so planning 6 months+ in advance sometimes isn’t suitable. Another great benefit is the amount of frequent flyer points you can sometimes earn when booking. Usually, you’ll earn around 3-6 points per dollar spend but often they will have promos where you can earn 10 points per dollar spend. If you can jag a great deal and also time it well with a 10 point per dollar promo this could be a very handy site for you to keep an eye on!
OzBargain – https://www.ozbargain.com.au/cat/travel
We have a great community of bargain hunters in Australia and they usually hang out at OzBargain. That site is a big forum where bargain hunters post all the deals they can find and share them with other bargain hunters. They often find everything from credit card deals (to earn points) to discounted flights and they love finding ways to earn more frequent flyer points. May want to check this site frequently as often when they find a good deal you need to pounce on it fairly quickly.
Getting the best rate on a specific hotel – Booking Directly with the hotel
If you are booking a specific hotel and it is never listed on the above sites this is the strategy we use to ensure you get the best rate. Often, booking directly through the hotels website will be the cheapest option. This is usually because they don’t need to pay commissions to the referral sites this way so they can pass on some of those savings to you. When booking directly through the hotel, sign up to their free loyalty membership as you will often save even more and it takes 2 seconds. It is rare the paid loyalty membership will offer you any significant return unless you use the company very often or are staying for a long period of time (do the maths though and check for yourself). In summary, usually the best rate is via the hotels direct website combined with their loyalty program. For an added discount, the non refundable rate would likely give an even further reduction but we always opt for free cancellation. Sometimes (it is rare though) booking using a combination of third party sites will offer an even great rate….
Airbnb – https://www.airbnb.com.au
Anytime we are travelling somewhere it pays to compare hotel rates vs Airbnb rates. More often than not, the pricing will be on par with each other. Airbnb may be slightly cheaper for something comparable but hotels will often have the better service and less ‘rules’. Sometimes the winning factor for Airbnb is the unique stays. You can find some amazing unique places that people have tailored specifically for a destination that can blow any hotel in the area out of the water. This is why we always check Airbnb prior to locking in any accomodation.
Combining booking sites with cash back sites
If you are ever going to beat the rate you can get booking directly with a hotel, this is the way you’re going to do it. You need to use a combination of a cashback sites (e.g Cashrewards or Shopback) and also find the best 3rd party website with the cheapest rate. The way to find the best 3rd party site would be to use a website that shows you multiple rates (something like Tripadvisor).
Using Tripadvisor https://www.tripadvisor.com.au you can then see what multiple websites have advertised for their room rates as seen below. I tend to stick to the well established 3rd party sites (e.g booking.com/wotif/expedia etc). You can see some other sites have cheaper rates but do your own research. There would be nothing worse than getting a great rate on a deal and then rocking up to your accomodation to find out it is different to what was booked etc. Peace of mind when booking through large reputable companies is often worth the extra $$.
When you have found a few rates you like.. head to the cash back sites (Cashrewards/Shopback)
Cashrewards https://www.cashrewards.com.au/category/travel-holidays
Shopback https://www.shopback.com.au/
You will need to go through the cash back sites to access the exclusive offers do not book unless it confirms the cash back. It should display something similar to below. Notice how it says very clearly in partnership with cash rewards and also mentions the cash back amount below.
Hidden Fees:
Sometimes some cashback sites are a bit cheeky and bump up the price advertised but also bump up their ‘cash back offer’. This means they may advertise 10-15% cash back but normally booking through the site you can get the total trip for $1000, they may have it listed as $1050 when booking through the shop back offer. If you can normally book a rate at $1000 with no cash back but then they have advertised 10% cash back but now the rate you can book for is $1050 – this means you are actually getting only 5.5% cash back since they bumped up the room rates. It is rare to find this in the big established sites although sometimes does occur so just keep an eye out for it.
