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On your air trip one of the concern is the cost of car rental. As the cost of the flight tickets are dynamic so goes the car rental prices. But if you are leisure traveler looking for bargain on you car rental then you might be interested in the strategy below which can sometimes result in good amount of savings on your wallet. Step1: Start your car rental search at Expedia, Priceline or CostcoTravel: Begin your search for car rental prices at the Expedia, Priceline or CostcoTravel . Most often than not you will get fairly decent idea on going price of car rental. Another advantage of going this route is you get the prices which are not "discounted" through any rental car company or partner discount/promotions. For e.g. sample search for SJC Airport for car rental from 04/13/2013 to 04/15/2013 yields a lowest price of Economy car (incl of taxes) as $38.31 (Payless), $38 (Payless) and $37.82 (Alamo) as shown below 
1. Expedia Pricing
2. Priceline pricing
3. Costco Pricing
Step2: Go through the website "Zalyn" to see what are the coupon options it presents: You do not need to sign up for the service and your intent is to get listing of different possible coupons. Zalyn does a good job of listing good set of discount coupons and codes as shown below. 
4. Zalyn showing different discount coupon and codes!
Step3: Use Step1, Step2 and Car rental vendor's website to figure out the pricing for your rental: This step involves using data of approximate price for your rental from Step1 combined with different discount codes provided by Zalyn in Step2 to determine what further discounts you could get. Since we know that Payless and Alamo were the lowest, it would be best to try different codes provided for Payless and Alamo above. Selecting "Payless - Save 15% on your rental" gives a code which discount's Payless cost to $34.47 (all inclusive) for Economy Car as shown below. 
5. Payless website with 15% off coupon
Step4: Is this the best? Check one more thing!!
One area where "Zalyn" lacks is in the ability to determine if you can earn any "Airline Miles" and thus assigning a discount code and coupon to earn those miles. Since rental from "Payless" does not earn any "Airline Miles" but "Alamo" does earn them you might want to check if there are any special promotion code at "frequenflyerbonuses" which gives you a good discount as well earn "Airline Miles"? (Note: Earning Airline miles adds a cost of $.75/day to $1.5/day and earns from 50 miles/day [UA, Delta] to 600 miles/rental [Southwest] or 1000 miles/rental [Virgin Atlantic] , so you might want to take that into account in your car rental). Best of luck for your NEXT CAR RENTAL search!!
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 Most of the airlines would charge 12.5k miles for one-way travel within the Continental USA at saver level in coach. Thus a round trip travel would come at 25k miles. This would be a good redemption if you plan to fly from east coast to west coast or vice-verse. But what about a short distance travel of let's say from LAX-SFO or DFW-IAH? You would still have to spend 25k miles for this trip unless you have "British Airways Avios" at your rescue. Here is why you should consider using British Airways Avios for these trips.
1. British Airways do not charge any surcharge for flights originating and ending within United States (including Hawaii). 2. The award chart for British Airways is distance based starting at only 4500 Avios for distance of 1-650 miles. Thus for LAX-SFO or DFW-IAH you would only pay 4.5k Avios miles as oppose to 12.5k miles on American Airlines. You can calculate the Avios needed by using this link. 3. British Airways is One-World Alliance member and thus you can redeem the reward on any of the One-World Alliance member or any other British Airways partner airlines. Thus in the U.S.A. you can redeem Avios on American Airlines as well as Alaska Airlines when there is an award available at saver level with them. 4. There is no close-in charges for booking ticket within the 21 days window of flying, thus it is useful for booking last minute flights as well. Additionally below are other benefits which are "by-mistake" I suppose and could end up any time: 1. When you cancel the award ticket online the cancellation fee is less of the taxes you paid or $40 fee. Thus for your award travel if you paid only $5 as taxes, that is what you will lose when you cancel the award and the Avios will return back to your account. 2. You get priority boarding on American Airlines for any award booked using British Avios. Although there are few "cons" below which you want to look out for: 1. British Airways Avios are charged segment based. Thus if there is no direct flight from SFO to LAS on any of the partner airlines and you have to fly SFO-LAX-LAS you will need to pay 9k Avios each way as these are considered two separate segments. 2. As the distance increases the cost of award ticket would go up and thus could be a bad redemption. For e.g. east coast to west coast travel might cost much higher Avios compared to 12.5k American Airlines or Alaska Airlines miles 3. Not all the partner (e.g. Alaska Airlines) and One-World Alliance member flights are bookable online, and so you will need to shell out $25 per passenger per award telephone booking fee as well as deal with their bad telephone booking staff and the long hold time which is often associated with the telephone booking. 4. The reward can only be booked for One-World and partner airlines if they are available at saver level only. But overall as stated if you are looking for short distance flights or flight to take on short notice and if the seats are available on saver level, there is no better value than using the British Airways Avios. Also if you have got excited about Avios and want to start collecting them, there is an awesome offer going on for British Airways Credit Card from Chase which currently offers 50k bonus avios after $1k spend on the card for $95 annual fee and would be something you might be interested in. |
AuthorI love traveling / backpacking. This blog focuses on below 3 aspects of travel: Archives
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