Everything was in place for Karen Wlodarski’s California vacation – except for a rental car. A Hertz reservations agent had offered her a weekly rate of $300 from Los Angeles over the phone, but she thought she could do better than that. Wlodarski, a Johns Island, S.C., real estate agent, remembered reading about a software program called SideStep that scours the sites of nearly 100 travel suppliers.
The tip was right. SideStep found an identical car for $140 on Hertz’s Web site. And when Wlodarski returned the rental, she discovered that the price was $20 less than that. “Even the Hertz representative asked me, `Where did you get this rate?’”
SideStep is just one among a new breed of travel sites–better known as super or meta search sites – that may develop into a top money-saving tool for travelers. But such sites are controversial in the travel industry because they plunder traditional travel sites for information. Since you don’t actually visit those traditional sites unless you book services on them, you don’t see the sites’ ads, special offers and other services. A representative of Expedia, a traditional travel Web site, calls the new sites “parasites.”
Bottom line, though, is that they can save you not only money but also time, by cutting multiple searches down to just one or two. We tested four sites to find a round-trip, nonstop, 14-day advance-purchase, economy-class ticket from Baltimore-Washington International to Denver International with a Saturday-night stay-over. (As a benchmark, a search of the United Airlines site turned up an Internet fare of $323.)
AirlineGuides.com. After searching 13 sites, the best price AirlineGuides.com found for our trip was a $290 fare on United Airlines through TravelScape.com When we gave the site a chance to come back with flights that were not direct (and would presumably be cheaper), it returned the same United itinerary and price. Overall, AirlineGuides proved slow and cumbersome to use.
FareChase was still in a beta version when it was evaluated. Even so, it managed to find a low price from among 80 sites: a $295 fare on Northwest Airlines. FareChase also bagged a $170 fare, through OneTravel.com, with a stop in Cleveland. Navigating FareChase was slow, but the firm promises its upgraded version will be much faster.
Qixo found a $289 nonstop fare on US Airways and a $215 “white label” fare (with white-label fares, you don’t get to pick your airline, flight times or number of stops). But Qixo slaps on a $10 surcharge for booking, and the Web site’s server speed is tiresome.
SideStep, the site Wlodarski used, is perhaps the most promising of these new projects. It pulled up a $332 nonstop flight, and a $281 flight with a single layover on the way to Denver.
The search was lightning fast, and SideStep offers a wide array of features that make searching a snap. But the program runs only on a personal computer with at least Windows 95 and Microsoft Internet Explorer version 4.0 and above.
Christopher Elliott is the author of Scammed: How to Save Your Money and Find Better Service in a World of Schemes, Swindles, and Shady Deals. Critics have called it “eye-opening” and “inspiring” — it’ll “grab your attention and won’t let go.” Order your copy now on Amazon, Barnes & Noble or iTunes.
Elliott is consumer advocate 
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