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?

I am sure you that many of you have the same problems that we do when we try to make travel plans – finding the time in our crazy, hectic schedules to go somewhere! We generally have a couple of ‘bigger’ trips each year, or at least we try to, but for the most part our weekends away are what we are looking forward to.

Another problem closely related to this is how do you make the most of your weekend breaks? That is the subject of this article because if you carefully plan out your weekend trips, you will be surprised at the amount of things you can do and the money you can save by just following these tips:

Decide when you want to leave

Our weekend breaks would always begin after 5:00PM on Friday when we finished work. The problem with this is that the majority of Friday is gone and then looking forward to a 3-4 hour drive depending on where you are heading could in theory make it very tiring and also a waste of money for a hotel stay (I just cannot justify spending money when it may be 11:00PM or later before you can check-in to the hotel!).

If you are planning on going somewhere in that vicinity (3-4 hours), consider going to sleep a little earlier at home on Friday and then waking up around 4:00AM on Saturday morning and heading out. Not only will you avoid the Friday rush hour traffic, but you will also be refreshed and ready for the day ahead. Whenever we go to Nashville or St. Louis, we leave around 4:30AM and arrive around 8:30-9:00AM just in time for breakfast!

Consider booking your hotel using Priceline

Whenever Heather and I take a road trip to Nashville or St. Louis for the weekend, we have a tendency to either book in the Embassy Suites if we are wanting to ‘splash out’ and enjoy our hotel stay or take advantage of the auction on Priceline. Of course, when you ‘name your price’ on Priceline, you have no real idea where you will be staying; the only control that you do have is to set your preferences in terms of city location and hotel star rating.

If you are satisfied by just controlling these two variables, you can certainly get a great deal. One of the last times we stayed in Nashville, we used Priceline to name our price and fortunately we earned a Saturday night stay at the Embassy Suites in Franklin, just outside of Nashville for $45. Given that paying directly on Embassy’s site or through Expedia was $119 per night, this was a great saving.

Check out www.priceline.com and take a risk or two when bidding for your hotel stay. For the most part, our philosophy on hotels is as long as they are comfortable and clean, we are generally satisfied. I think Heather may have a little higher standard and of course it is nice to stay in the luxury hotels every now and again, but if you can save a few extra dollars go ahead and take advantage of this opportunity!

Plan out your attractions

Just as we have discussed with several other posts regarding travel plans, it is imperative when you are heading away on a short weekend trip that you have your planned attractions pre-determined so that you are not wasting precious time figuring out exactly what you want to do. If you are familiar with the location that you are heading, this of course makes it a little easier especially if you do not want to do all the same ‘tourist’ spots each time.

There are so many great apps out there such as Yelp, Trip Advisor etc. if you have a smartphone and are willing to do some research. We always take our ‘smart’ devices such as iPhone and iPad with us so that we are always connected online to find out the best spots to make random trips. But if you don’t have the core of your trip planned, it can quickly become a disastrous weekend.

We all want to be able to keep our website updated as much as possible, or keep our social media ticking along with latest updates on what we are doing, what is trending in the world or what our favorite celebs are up to! But the million dollar question is, what devices are we using to best meet these needs in a rapidly changing technological whirlwind.

I decided to write this post not only to help others decide or consider what devices they should use to meet their specific needs, but also to help myself as I am currently in the market for a new laptop which is proving to be a more difficult decision that I initially imagined. Let’s start out with the devices that we currently do have and use for our travel and then we will move on to what options are currently out there and where we see the future moving in technology.

Review of our Devices

1. Phone – iPhone 5

In terms of travel, this is the perfect companion for updating your Twitter, Facebook, FourSquare or Pinterest accounts. One of the great aspects that I like about this phone is your ability to take a picture and quickly make this available on your social media fronts. We live in a world where everyone needs to see your favorite images instantaneously and I can’t think of a better device than the iPhone 5 to meet this need.

2. Tablet – iPad

We also both have an Apple iPad, though I have the 2nd Generation and Heather has the slightly newer 3rd Gen. I like to see the iPad as the ‘big brother’ of the iPhone as it pretty much does the same but the bigger screen is much better for doing minor blogging or researching the web. I find the iPad great whenever you are waiting in the airport or are on a short flight and you want to pass the time by watching a short movie or playing a game.

3. Laptop – HP Laptop

This is what I am looking at purchasing next! I have a relatively old HP machine which performance wise is still pretty solid (Intel i5 processor) but with a screen size of 14″ and pretty heavy, it’s not the perfect travel companion!

The Future and Our Next Purchase

I am pretty happy with both my phone and tablet but I am definitely in the market for a new laptop. There are so many devices to choose from and so many different options available in terms of laptop style. I have a wish-list which in reality is not too specific and ‘should’ (being the operative word!) make life a little easier when deciding what machine to purchase. My list includes the following features:

(a) Processor – I want at least a i5 (or equivalent) processor given that my current laptop has this. I am intrigued by Intel’s new Haswell processor which is apparently providing much longer battery life and reducing the weight on machines, both of which are key features for any traveler!

(b) Screen Size – I really think I want a 11.6″ display though I am not completely opposed to a 13.3″ if the machine meets all my other criteria!

(c) Touch Screen – Is this a necessity? Well, given that I really don’t enjoy the Mac OS and I will likely be purchasing a Windows 8 machine, I have to say that yes, it probably is a requirement! Obviously I will ‘never say never’ but it is likely my next purchase will have touch screen capability.

(d) Price – I am sure that this is probably top the list for most people in the market for a new laptop and I am no different. I am completely turned off by the price of Apple laptops (along with the fact I mentioned I don’t like the OS), so I am considering spending in the region of no more than $600-700.

So….I have my criteria and here are some of the options that I am considering to meet this:

1. Ultrabook

I am a frequent daily visitor to Slick Deals which if you are not familiar is a great website providing the greatest and latest best deals out there on the web. It is a great way for me and you to go on there and let everyone else know about the best deals that are available. There has been a great deal advertised on there for a while for the ASUS Vivobook X202E which is available on the Microsoft store for $359 (as long as you have a .edu e-mail address which fortunately I do!). This is a tempting purchase but the processor is the downfall for myself right now as I would be moving from an i5 to the i3 Ivy Bridge predecessor.

Yesterday I was looking around Best Buy and saw a pretty good deal on a Lenovo Yoga 11.6″ Ultrabook for $799 which is a little out of my price range but it had everything that I wanted (except price!) in my criteria. It looks great, it turns into a tablet as the screen rotates all the way over locking the keys when they sit flush on a surface and has a pretty solid processor and components inside.

2. The Convertible

I like the appearance of many convertibles especially the HP Envy x2 which is available on Amazon for a reasonably priced $611. Whether I can justify spending this when there may be more powerful ultrabooks available for the same price, I am not sure but it is worth the consideration!

What devices do you use when traveling?

What laptop would you recommend purchasing in today’s market?