New Travelocity Features Find Hawaii Deals

Travelocity is back in competition with Expedia. Hot on the heals of new Roaming Gnome ads (in case you haven’t seen enough of him), there are two significant new features. I’ve always liked Travelocity, but have migrated away from using (and suggesting) it over time, and find myself much more frequently at Kayak. We’ll see if these new features plus others likely right behind them might be enough to sway me back.

Deals on a map

First, a new deals on a map feature, that may be useful for finding Hawaii deals from your area. Here are my tips after taking it for a test run.

• If you only want to see deals from one mainland airport, but are interested in what’s available for all the islands, select Hawaii as the destination. All of the island airfare and airfare plus hotel deals will be shown.
• What if you live some place like San Francisco where there are multiple airports available to leave from? If you enter a Hawaii city as your point of origination, and North America as the destination, the map will show multiple airports. Just zoom in and you’ll see deals for all the airports in your area.

Travel-Deals

The other new feature is the Travel-Deals page, which is a less visual but equally well laid out way to find Hawaii (or other) deals. Again, use it either of the two ways suggested above.

As a final thought, the OTA’s (like Travelocity) are in the business of selling packages.

Airfares alone do not bring them profit. Be sure to do your homework and check what’s available elsewhere before buying a package deal from anyone. Often, but not always, your best deal is had by buying airfare and accommodation separately.

Look forward to your thoughts.