Using Google Search to find things they don’t want you to know…

ByDCTA
1 Comment

Online research skills are important. Knowing them helps you in school, in the workplace, and even in the travel hacking game. Although there are many dozens of search tools you should know about, I’m going to focus on just a couple and how you can use them to find promotions and other tricks that the airlines and hotel programs don’t want you to know about. I won’t publish any exact promotion here, however, I know of a couple interesting and hidden promotions going on right now that you can find using these tools.

There’s been a schedule change, will Aeroplan waive the change fees?

ByDCTA
1 Comment

A while ago, I booked a trip between Sydney SYD and Nuku’Alofa (Tonga) TBU using Aeroplan. On Star Alliance, the only routing available is via Auckland AKL on Air New Zealand, and only in economy (Air New Zealand barely releases business inventory to partner airlines – however, you can typically find one business seat on Shanghai PVG to Auckland AKL). Unfortunately, the AKL-TBU segment is extremely challenging to get two seats on, so I was pretty lucky that I got dates that worked for my itinerary.

Sunday Reader Question: How can I save money on passport applications/renewals?

ByDCTA
2 Comments

Our wonderful government has done a lot of good for Canadian travellers. They’ve increased passport application/renewal fees (who doesn’t love paying more for stuff?), reduced consular services (of course I love being independent in a crisis), and through their hostility to other states, created increased visa fees for Canadians. Even though I absolutely love the wonderful things that our wonderful government does for travellers, sometimes it’s nice to save some money.

How to use ExpertFlyer to Search for Award Inventory

ByDCTA
2 Comments

ExpertFlyer is a service that collects proprietary airline data, including award inventory, from a number of airlines and for a subscription fee, will reveal that data to consumers. ExpertFlyer is a unique tool, as they have contracts for data-sharing with airlines, unlike a number of other services which scrape the data from publicly available sources. I find that ExpertFlyer is the most accurate tool to search for award inventory for participating airlines, as it does not show phantom availability which can be a serious problem (looking at you Air France!).

I’m taking a trip to Turkey… any suggestions?

ByDCTA
7 Comments

On a recent Aeroplan pricing error, I booked two passengers between Toronto to Istanbul on Turkish Airlines business for a total of 100,000 points. Since the pricing error was short lived, I didn’t do any research or make any plans prior to booking. Now that my trip is a month out, my travel companion and I sat down last night to figure out a plan.