Saving money on travel with some help from the internet

My local newspaper carried this very helpful article from the NY Times under the headline of Use Online Tools to Save

I learned of some really interesting tools that can do the work of monitoring price changes for you.  For example, usually after I make a car rental reservation I then check once a week to see if prices have dropped.  Autoslash.com supposedly does that for you and applies and price reductions right up to your date of pickup.  There were a lot of airline price shopping websites listed and I particularly like the description of two of them.  AirfareWatchdog.com is supposed to find cost lowering deals that most of us would miss like discount codes included in airline newsletters.  After you've bought the airplane ticket Yapta.com is supposed to track the price so if the price drops enough to exceed the cost of the rebooking fee you are notified so you can call the airline and get the lower price.

Another interesting one listed was YipIt.com which collects Groupon, etc. deals in 118 cities.  Once you sign up you can search for deals at your destination and potentially get great bargains on meals and activities.

Next time we make travel plans I'm going to try out some of these and hopefully save enough to fund one of those dinners!