Do you remember the days when travelers were forced to either go to a physical travel agent to book their holidays or speak on the phone directly with flight companies to book a flight somewhere? I may be a little young to completely reminisce on those days but today’s budding travelers are fortunate to have such wonderful third-party operators such as Expedia.

Let’s be honest, even the die-hard folks out there who want to stay loyal with their local travel agent have to admit that going through a centralized hub where you can book everything in one swoop! It’s just so simple. Even my mum (sorry!) who is not the most technologically advanced individual in terms of computers could navigate her way around the wonderful world of Expedia.

Let’s look at the top 5 benefits of using Expedia, which in turn certainly help expedite the planning, and processing of your travels.

Ease

As I indicated, Expedia is a very simple, self-explanatory user interface that allows travelers to select what they are wanting to search for, whether it is a flight, hotel, car rental, activities, cruise or a combination of all these. Everything you need for a vacation is easily accessible from this website. As you go through the process of indicating where you are traveling to and what form of transport, the search engine behind the scenes is always locating the cheapest possible fares.

Once you have found what you are looking for, the ordering process could not be any simpler especially if you have an account with them. You have the ability to save your details just like with any other e-form but also store passport information and other important traveling credentials.

Flexibility

When searching for flights for example, most people have set dates in mind. However, if you are flexible and want to search for the best deal, Expedia facilitates this by providing you with various options, obviously differing with price.

Expedia Rewards

We all hear about frequent flier miles and hotel reward clubs but unless you are truly devoted to the same airline and hotel chain, it can be very difficult to accrue sufficient miles/points to earn anything worthwhile yet you feel like you have spent a fortune on your travels. The solution to all of this has to be Expedia Rewards. This is a great way to centralize your reward earnings and every time you process an order, whether it be for a car rental or a short weekend hotel stay, you can earn enough points in return for hotel stays or flight discounts. I have found that although you may not earn a great deal of points, the best way is to book vacation packages because there are frequently ‘double points’ available which certainly help increase your totals.

Groupon Getaways

How many of you have used Groupon? This is such a great way to find daily deals on merchandise and recently on vacations or hotel stays. After teaming up with Expedia, Groupon offers a variety of amazing deals (trust me you can get 5 day trips to Tahiti that usually would cost in excess of $6000 for around half-price). Every day these deals are updated though the slight catch is that there is only a limited timeframe and select dates when the Groupon’s can be used.

This is a great way to catch a last minute vacation or to save some money especially if you are unsure of where you want to go. There is likely to be something that takes your fancy so take advantage of this great service! Frequently partnerships don’t work out too well for either company, but in this case I think this is a great investment from both and the customer is ultimately the one that is rewarded with great deals!

Cheap

We all know about the phrase location, location, location in terms of the ‘ideal’ spot to house something or the optimal place to be! Well, let’s use this same philosophy with price and Expedia certainly comes out on top in terms of the optimal place to find cheap/best deals. There will be cynics out there that can likely find a better deal possibly if you go directly through the hotel chain or airline, but for the most part in terms of direct competitors such as Orbitz, Kayak, Priceline and Travelocity, Expedia comes out on top all the time. Every time I fly somewhere I will generally check out the above sites and I would say that 99.9% of the time, Expedia is the best.

Combining this with all the other benefits that I have mentioned, I think we have a clear winner in terms of best third party travel providers. Long gone are the days where we are thinking about our ‘travel agent’ ripping us off, now it’s just the actual providers (airlines and hotel chains) that are doing this and the intermediaries such as Expedia are just doing their part to expedite and facilitate the booking cycle.

I am sure we are all envious of the folks that are able to travel 24/7 and some are even fortunate to be paid for traveling and report on their findings. Unfortunately the reality is that these individuals are very few and far between and the majority of us have to plot our travels around the day to day activities of work.

Our activity on ‘A Brit and A Southerner’ has diminished since earlier in the year purely because our ‘big’ trip to Australia was so expensive and we are trying to recuperate some of our finances along with performing the stereotypical day to day activities of venturing to the workplace and home living.

All of this ‘non travel’ related activity made me start thinking about what we can do as travelers to pass the time when we are not embarking on global travels yet still remain within the realms of travel focused topics. Here are 5 suggestions to keep your appetites alive and kicking in preparation for your next trips:

Plan your trips

During the times when you are working or just lounging around at home, take this opportunity to contemplate your dream travel destinations. Research where you would like to go and make realistic plans to take trips to these locations. Obviously it will be difficult to set anything in concrete at this stage especially if you are looking long term but go ahead and put together a ‘travel bucket list’ so that you have something to cross-reference. I know this is something that Heather and I have spoken about frequently but we don’t have anything physically down on paper to refer back to and mark off when we visit the place.

Use the Internet as your friend to research optimal times to travel to locations. What are your determining factors for venturing to a specific spot in the world? Price, climate, activities and culture are just a few examples of thought patterns that people follow when deciding when and where they want to travel. Third party travel sites such as Travelocity and Expedia are a great way to plan trips. Sure, you may be able to get cheaper flights and hotels directly through the flight operators and hotel chains but if you are looking to put together a vacation package there are always great deals available on these third party sites.

Social Media

What better way to spend your time that to interact with fellow travelers in the wonderful world of social media! We are very active on both Facebook (A Brit and A Southerner) and Twitter (@ABritSoutherner) along with having accounts on StumbleUpon, Instagram and Pinterest. Networking is such a great way to learn about new locations and also to share your experiences with fellow, avid travelers. You can meet so many different people in social media networks and ‘most’ people are friendly and inviting to share their ideas, experiences and suggestions on how to improve your site.

We are always looking to expand our social media following with our LIKES on Facebook and FOLLOWERS on Twitter. A great way to do this is to just engage with others, re-tweet those stories and ideas that you like and basically just take time to converse with other people out there. There really is no easy way to gain a following and we are only in the early stages of establishing this but what we have found so far is that if you are willing to take time and patience, you can slowly develop a solid foundation of followers who will come back and check out your networks and website.

Photograph Opportunities

This point is kind of two-fold because every day there are opportunities to take photos of things that you may take for granted but other folks in the world would greatly appreciate and enjoy looking at. Use your smartphone to capture that idyllic image and then share to the world using Twitter, Facebook or Instagram. How do you think all those images get on these social media – it’s through folks like us that like to share those vivid memories.

The second part of this is to take time and review all your archived images. Use photo editing software such as Photoshop to edit images but those raw files are usually the best to just upload and share with others. We recently started a “Photo of the Day” contest and although we probably started this before thinking about the scope of the project requiring us to upload a new photo daily, the concept underlying this idea is that we are able to share more images with the world from our travels and encourage people to want to visit those locations themselves.

Clean up your website

There are many travelers out there that want to share their thoughts and experiences with the world, just like we do. Use your free time to clean up the look of your website. We have recently adopted a new, fresh look to our website as we felt it gave us much more room for expansion. We are always looking to improve and appreciate both positive and negative feedback from our visitors. Make sure that your website is aesthetically pleasing to the eye and more importantly that navigation around your site is easy. Another important aspect is that your site is browser friendly to a vast array of browsers. We don’t all use IE and there are many others out there such as Firefox, Chrome and Safari to name just a few!

With the expansion of smartphones and tablets, it is becoming crucial that your website is mobile friendly so take time to check out how your site looks on an iPhone or iPad.

Enjoy the downtime

Traveling is great and can be very relaxing but at the same time it can be taxing in terms of flight hours, drive time and constant wanderings as you investigate new places. Use this time when you are not traveling to recharge your batteries in preparation for your next trip. From our experiences, even when we are not traveling this advice is difficult to follow because we are regularly taking day trips to Memphis (200 miles round trip) which can be tiring and then we only have one day on the weekends to recuperate.

The life of a traveler can be very challenging but it is certainly one of the most rewarding! I would encourage anyone out there reading this to start using some of the above tips because you will become a more well-rounded traveler who appreciates and is appreciated by others much more.

What do you all do when you are not traveling? 

Any recommendations that we have not listed?