Because of the nature of coupon sites and the marketing strategy of travel sites such as Travelocity, Orbitz, Expedia and Hotwire.com, the use of travel coupons and finding legitimate coupons has become rather difficult. Today I am going to teach you the ins and outs of travel coupons.
Lets use the online coupon site GoPromoCodes.com and their travel listings as an example. There are 4 types of “coupons” and deals listed here.
The first type is the standard coupon with an actual promotional code. These are the only ones listed that will actually save you money on a purchase by entering the code at checkout. The best example here is the code THANKS10 for CheapOAir.com. By entering this code at checkout, a user will save $10 on their Thanksgiving flight that they normally wouldn’t have saved by going directly to CheapoAir.com. These are the best types of coupons to look for on coupon sites.
The second type is the coupon that says something like 30% off San Francisco Hotels at Orbitz.com with an expiration date but no promo code. These are a little more confusing if they actually give a discount, because it is hard to determine what the 30% discount is coming from as there is no original price. However, I do believe that this type of coupon is a discount off the normal price because there is an expiration to the savings and I do think that these are valuable to use when trying to save money on travel expenses.
The third type of listing is the coupon that says something like this: Orlando Flights from $109. This isn’t really a coupon at all. It is merely listing the lowest possible price available at a specific time to a specific destination. These listings aren’t nearly as beneficial to the user unless you are looking for flights to a specific destination with flexible flying dates and flying times. However, it is possible that a user will see this posting and get a great price on a travel arrangement that works for them, so it can be somewhat useful.
The last type of coupon that sites list is the generic posting for travel sites; something like, Up to 70% off flights at Hotwire.com, or cruises up to 55% off at Orbitz.com. These are pointless coupons that don’t provide any benefit to the user. Fortunately GoPromoCodes.com doesn’t post links such as this, but I have seen other sites post these non-deals in an effort to get the user to click through to the advertiser site. Do not be fooled by these links, you will just be disappointed and wont get any benefit from them.
To recap, the travel coupons you should be looking for contain an actual promotional code, or an expiration date. If the coupon doesn’t contain an expiration date or promo code, it is very likely that the coupon site isn’t providing anything extra than what you can find by going to the website directly.
