Orbitz
Has anyone used Orbitz to book their travels? I found a good flight/hotel deal for London and was wondering if it is safe to book through.
Kate
Winnipeg 10/28/09
Send Private Message
We have used Orbitz for many years with no problems. Just like Travelocity or some of the others.
Orbitz is jointly owned by several of the major airlines, no problems using it. Just the usual customer no-service you might expect from India call centers. Make sure you know what you are buying and read everything.
For the trip I just got back from to London and Paris, I booked my flight from Orbitz. I think they are great!
Steve is just being a little harsh since he works for Am Express travel and would prefer that you book through them.
Not so, our back office for the online site is Travelocity and some of our customer service reps are outsourced to India, just like the others. I'm in sales, and I have to hear the frustrations of those who have to deal with "customer service" for changing plans, airlines rescheduling and various mess ups that always happen with travel. Same for Orbitz, Travelocity, American Express online and the others.
Make sure you know what you are buying, if you change, it WILL be an expensive hassle, print out your confirmation email (you don't know know how many times people don't even have their confirmation number) and hope your airline doesn't cancel or reschedule your flight.
My advice, however, is look it up on Orbitz, or farecast.com or yapata.com and then buy direct from the airline, unless the trip involves more than one. In that case go ahead and buy from any one of the majors. We've all dropped our ticketing fees lately due to the competition with each other, and we do offer the ability to do multiple airline ticketing. The airlines don't do this, much anymore.
And some of the air/hotel packages offered right now online are spectacular. I've seen some that give you round trip tickets plus a hotel stay for cheaper than just buying the tickets alone. Las Vegas and Cancun are really discounting right now. Perhaps I'll even find some nice Europe stuff for next spring sometime soon!
Now that you know what Orbitz is offering, go to that airline's webpage and see what kind of package deal they offer.
It's very rare on this board to see people talk about air/hotel packages mostly because Rick doesn't mention them.
However, in slow times, they can be amazing. I was once able to get a package deal to London that included a hotel at 75% off regular rate, and my non-changeable, non-cancelable airfare suddenly became changeable at no extra cost.
Thanks for the help. The flight deal is United Airlines there and Air Canada back. I normally would love to just fly Air Canada, but I go where the deals are! The hotel deal is really good and I am having a hard time finding something that can match the price. I normally like dealing with the hotel/airline myself instead of through a middleman, but the price tag always wins!