As the summer season approaches and the warm air begins to creep in, the itch of the great summer vacation begins to form. Although vacation is meant for relaxation, picking and choosing the right trip without breaking the bank is always stressful. Today, Tech2U is going over some of the top applications and websites to make choosing your next vacation a breeze, a warm, summer, breeze.
Wherefor is built around the traveler who is unsure where they can go on a budget. Once you enter in your travel budget and the destination you desire, the site will list you the cheapest flights and hotels that fit your budget. Wherefor will also list out the highest rated hotel and flights so you don’t have to worry about sleeping on a wet cot during your vacation.
Skiplagged is a great tool that will show you the cheapest flights to any destination. All you have to do is enter in your departure and destination locations and Skiplagged will show you the cheapest possible flights, often taking paths you would never search for. For example, say you wanted to fly from San Diego to Miami. Instead of taking a direct flight, Skiplagged might find you a flight from San Diego to Austin, and then Austin to Miami which could save you tons of money. Skiplagged advertises up to 80% savings on your flight.
Another great flight planning tool is Hopper. Hopper is similar to Skiplagged in it will try to give you the cheapest possible price on a flight. It differentiates itself by using historical data to analyze a flight and determine if it is the correct time to buy. By telling the user to either book or wait, Hopper is superb at saving money on travel expenses. You can also “watch” any flight and the app will notify you when the price hits its predicted low.
If cruises are more of your thing than we have the perfect website for you. CruiseCompete offers over 300 different travel agencies to give you the lowest possible prices for cruises all over the world. No personal information is ever given for the quotes and CruiseCompete can even accommodate advanced and last minute booking. Once you specify the dates and ports you desire, CruiseCompete will handle the rest and give you the best possible price!
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App of the Week:
Pocket is a free app for iOS, Android, and your web browser that lets you save website articles and videos for later use. By saving them locally, you can continue reading or watching your favorite blogs or videos even when you don’t have an internet connection. Visit https://getpocket.com to find out more!
Video Transcription:
Interviewer: …weather, clear skies, many of you may be already planning that summer vacation. Mike Wispy [SP] is back, Tech 2U, with some new websites and apps that can help you get away without breaking the bank. So, good to have you back here, Mike.
Mike: Thank you.
Interviewer: So, where’s the first place that you want to go to, to figure out if my champagne budget, caviar dreams, you know, what are we looking at here?
Mike: Yeah, sure. There’s an app called WhereFor, and what that let’s you do is, you put in your budget. So if, say, you have about $300 and you want to go somewhere, you’re not sure where, put that into WhereFor, tell the app what kind of dates you’re looking for, and then it’s going to just go through the whole world and pick some destinations for you. So, if you have a $50 budget, it may be San Francisco.
Interviewer: Well, it could be a driving day trip. It could be a camping thing. I’m sure they’ll find something.
Mike: They’ll find something for you, yeah.
Interviewer: There’s always something.
Mike: They’re going to give you a hotel, as well. They’ll give you the cheapest flight and a top-rated hotel that’s in your budget.
Interviewer: Okay, like that. So, what about values that maybe some of the average people can’t find? Is that all part of that?
Mike: Yeah. What that app will do, as well, it will kind of give you suggestions. If you have no idea and you just don’t know what you want, that will give you some suggestions. And there’s another app, actually, that is kind of along that line, where if you know where you want to go, and it’s called SkipLagged.
Interviewer: SkipLagged.com, okay.
Mike: Yeah, and what that will do, that will… Airline pricing is kind of strange. It’s not logical. So, it might be, if you want to go to Chicago, say from Sacramento to Chicago, it may actually be cheaper to book a flight to New York because it’s a more competitive route, and the flight will be cheaper. So, what you can do, this app is going to let you know if it’s cheaper to do that, and the layover may be Chicago. Well, it should be Chicago.
Interviewer: So, would you get off?
Mike: You would just get off the plane…
Interviewer: If you have carry-on.
Mike: Yeah, that’s the thing. You do need to make sure you only have carry-on because your checked baggage will go through to the final destination.
Interviewer: Right. I’m finding too, on a side note, that a lot of times it’s cheaper to book two one-way flights than the round trip, and that’s what’s popping up a lot lately.
Mike: You’ll be able to find apps that will tell you that.
Interviewer: Right. What about hopper.com. That’s another one you have.
Mike: Yeah, the Hopper app is actually… You enter the date and destination, and it will give you the cheapest price for that destination. So it has color-coded results, and you just put in… You have to know where you want to go for this one, and then it will tell you which weekend or which day is the cheapest to get there.
Interviewer: Okay, let’s say we want to go a little bit bigger. What about a cruise?
Mike: So, yeah, those who like to cruise, there’s Cruise Compete. That’s an app that will search 300 different agencies to show you the lowest prices and from different ports. So, perhaps, it might be cheaper to sail from Seattle instead of somewhere down in Mexico or something like that. It will give you all the details, and you can sign up for an email list there. You don’t have to give them too much information, but they will send you an email with the best offers for you.
Interviewer: Like that. Okay, you always have an app of the week for us. What is it today?
Mike: App of the week is Pocket.
Interviewer: Pocket.
Mike: Pocket, yeah. It does exactly… It’s kind of like a pocket. What you do is, you go through your articles, your news feeds, videos that you’d like to watch, and you can put them in Pocket, and Pocket will save it so you can view it later, maybe when you’re not online, you’re traveling. And you could just go into Pocket and pick up the content there. And the really good thing about that is, it will sync it across different devices.
Interviewer: I like that.
Mike: So if you have a phone with Pocket installed and a tablet with Pocket installed, you could read something on your phone on the way to work or whatever, and then pick it up on your tablet when you get to work.
Interviewer: I like that. And the official website on that is GetPocket.com.
Mike: That’s right.
Interviewer: GetPocket.com, we like that. Mike Wispy with Tech 2U, thank you, sir. And if you don’t need a vacation, maybe just a fun day instead…
