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"Summer is almost here,and if you haven&amp;#039;t planned a vacation (or think you can&amp;#039;t afford one), keep this in mind: Thanks to technology, you have more tools than ever to nab the best price for a great getaway. The tips that follow will help you save time and money, both when deal-searching and while actually on vacation. 1. Airfare secret weapon  You&amp;#039;ve probably never heard about the ITA Matrix website (matrix.itasoftware.com), because it is not a ticket-booking site. But it has one terrific time-saving feature, an ultra-clear calendar that shows the lowest fare each day for one month from your specified departure date. (Click the See Calendar of Lowest Fares button when entering your itinerary; you will see flights listed by the individual airlines, not meta-sites like kayak.com.) At press time, for instance, we typed in a Chicago \u2014 Seattle itinerary, departing July 14, 2012. Instantly, we saw that the lowest fare on 28 of the next 30 days was $383. The only better fare, $381, was to be had on August 14. That&amp;#039;s good to know: It&amp;#039;s not worth spending a lot of time online trying various departure and return dates to save two bucks. Once you&amp;#039;ve settled on a departure date, click that date box on the calendar. That brings up a screen with all the flights, ordered by price, for your itinerary. Now comes the only clunky part: You have to call the airline or go to its website to book that flight, since ITA Matrix won&amp;#039;t do it for you \u2014 or you can click Email This Itinerary so your travel agent can book the ticket. But the at-a-glance ease of the site makes it a terrific time- and money-saver. 2. Go for Web package deals For the biggest bang from your vacation buck, &amp;quot;don&amp;#039;t buy \u00E0 la carte,&amp;quot; says George Hobica, founder of airfarewatchdog.com, an airfare-comparison website. According to Hobica, the biggest Web travel agencies, which have the most pricing power, put together wallet-friendly airfare-plus-hotel packages; he recommends expedia.com above others. &amp;quot;Expedia has all major U.S. airlines except Southwest and Allegiant,&amp;quot; says Hobica, &amp;quot;and like other online travel agencies, it is excellent at combining airlines to get the cheapest fare.&amp;quot; Our Web searches supported this recommendation. First, we pitted an expedia.com package (flight, hotel, rental car) against an \u00E0 la carte booking of the components for a one-week Chicago \u2014 Seattle vacation departing on July 14, 2012. The cheapest package on expedia.com cost $1,772 for two, with accommodation at the Mediterranean Inn, a two-and-a-half-star hotel. Booking the components separately cost $1,978, or $206 more. Then we put expedia.com up against orbitz.com on package rates for the same itinerary. True, Orbitz came up with a $1,572 package, but the hotel was at Seattle-Tacoma Airport, 11 miles south of the city, which seemed penny-wise, pound-foolish. Orbitz&amp;#039;s best in-city package (at a three-star hotel) came to $1,920. 3. Get breakfast for free Cutting out one meal tab saves a bundle (or lets you splurge on dinner). Hotels that offer complimentary breakfasts (though not all will be a hot meal) are listed by a number of websites, among them quikbook.com (28 North American cities) and hotels.com (one-third of the hotels it lists). Embassy Suites offers free breakfast at every one of its hotels \u2014 and it&amp;#039;s not just cold cereal; omelets are on the menu. How much can a bonus like this save you? At Starbucks, coffee and a breakfast pastry or sandwich can cost $4, so a family of four keeps about $16 more a day by eating in. 4. Know when it pays to cash in miles If you&amp;#039;re wondering whether to blow your precious stockpile of frequent-flyer miles this summer, follow a simple formula developed by Matthew Bennett, editor of First Class Flyer (firstclassflyer.com). Use 2 cents as the value of each loyalty-program mile when traveling coach; most U.S. carriers sell miles at 2.5 cents or more. Simply divide the fare you would have to pay (search online) by 25,000 (the number of miles most U.S. carriers charge for a free domestic economy-class ticket) or by the number of miles your carrier charges. If the quotient is more than 2 cents, use your miles--you&amp;#039;re getting good value for them. If the quotient is less, purchase the ticket and earn more miles. So a $500 ticket yields a return of 2 cents, a decent use of your miles, whereas a $250 fare yields a pitiable 1-cent return. 5. Get the best hotel-room rates  Hotel rates aren&amp;#039;t as volatile as airline fares, but they do change frequently. Now there&amp;#039;s a website that helps you nab the lowest rate possible. Tingo.com, just launched in March, is part of a mega travel-website conglomerate, and its hotel inventory is powered by the Expedia Affiliate Network. The site keeps an inventory of hotel rooms; more than 95% of them, according to the company, are flagged as &amp;quot;Money Back,&amp;quot; meaning you can take advantage of price drops after you book your room. Some specifics: Book a &amp;quot;Money Back&amp;quot; room on the site, and Tingo will scan for discounts and automatically rebook your reservation whenever one is available, sending you an e-mail with the new rate and reservation number. This process continues until a day or two before you check in (depending on the hotel&amp;#039;s cancellation policy), ensuring a rock-bottom rate. When we checked out the site, we scanned for hotels in Orlando, FL, and found that the &amp;quot;Money Back&amp;quot; offers for a weeklong stay included a wide range of accommodations. We found everything from a two-star Days Inn for $31 a night to a four-and-a-half-star Loews at $220 a night \u2014 before the discounts kicked in. So how much can you save? Research indicates that one-third of hotel bookings go down in price between the time the reservation is made and the time the guest checks in, with the average price drop amounting to $36 on a two-night stay. But you could save much more. Among the specific examples Tingo cited was a booking in New Hampshire that was originally priced at $616.92, but that had already dropped by $293.76 well before check-in. Other examples are more modest: A Hilton Head Island, SC, reservation for $263.51 dropped by $35.13; a one-night $148.08 stay in Laguna Beach, CA, dipped by $22.96 before check-in. Even if the savings are small, that cash back on your hotel costs can be put toward cool drinks or cute souvenirs when you enjoy your budget-friendly getaway. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.goodhousekeeping.com/life/travel/tips/a18903/cheap-travel/>