More and more hotels, airlines and destinations are turning to Twitter to dole out the deals to faithful followers.
As technology marches on, you simply have to do social media if you’re looking for a deal in a lot of sectors, especially travel. Twitter has nosed out Facebook a bit with companies doing more and more up-to-the-minute bargains if you follow their tweets.
Years ago, I was a fan of Southwest Airlines’ Ding program, where if you signed up they would send you alerts about exclusive short-lived airfare deals. It turns out Ding was way ahead of its time. I saw a story on BankRate.com about people getting good deals on hotels and flights on Twitter and being able to snag them before they disappeared.
If you have a certain airline you like to fly or a certain hotel you like to stay at, be sure to “follow” that airline or hotel on Twitter so their tweets show up in the feed on your Twitter page. Then jump on those deals before they’re gone!
Hotels are especially in transition with how and where they make their deals available. Cheapos like me have traditionally used Priceline and Hotwire for the blind booking of accommodations. But now competing sites will offer short-term deals where the hotel names are actually published.
One such site is a free members-only portal called SniqueAway.com. This site offers deals on profiled resorts, hotels and destinations and you have so many days to book. If you’re a registered member, you can click on their calendar and it will show you what dates the special you’re interested in will be available. That eliminates the frustration of calling a hotel up and finding there are blackout dates.
I was disappointed in SniqueAway early on because the deals they initially offered were only on very expensive 4 and 5-star accommodations that wouldn’t appeal to everybody. But they’ve changed their business model so now they offer deals on all kinds of properties to appeal to more people.
Editor’s note: This segment originally aired in April 2011.
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