There are quite a few “booking engines” or “online travel agencies” available to help you perfect your search for your dream vacation. Many of them are quite helpful; while others seem more concerned about the fees they can tack on to your total every step of the way. There are plenty of ways to get cheap domestic flights and hotels, but heading to Africa can pose a bigger problem.
Many of us rely on Travelocity, Orbitz, and Expedia for our domestic travel, but these U.S. sites are nowhere near as valuable or reliable as some of the other international companies. They specialize in domestic travel, car rentals, and hotels, but they do not have the same depth of information regarding overseas travel.
The best way to go about booking foreign travel online is generally to go through either a foreign site, or a site that specifically focuses on foreign travel. There are many different companies that specialize in booking trips to Africa; there are even sites that share information about attractions, and backpacking around the various countries on the world’s second largest continent.
Saflights.co.za is a South African site that specializes in international and domestic South African flights. There are six different airlines for domestic travel through saflights, and their site is especially helpful as it also lists a variety of popular destinations.
Reservesa.co.za allows you to create your own travel package based on personal preferences. Instead of pre-created packages with certain hotels and airlines that choose to sign up with the booking engine, you are able to combine your favorite hotel companies, airlines, car rental agencies, and more to get the utmost satisfaction from your trip. This site combines your accommodations with your leisure activities and preferences.
Though flightsfirst.com is an American-based site, it is a really great resource for your travels to Africa. Many online booking sites get you really excited about cheap flights, and then tack on fees and taxes at the end. With Flights First, all of the flight prices include fees and taxes from the beginning, so you know exactly what you are getting yourself into.
There are also online booking engines such as aboutanywhere.com that do not work for commission with the individual companies, so you are not getting pushed to choose an airline or hotel that you may not want. This booking engine is a little different in that they expect you to know what it is you want. You should know where you want to go, and even at which hotels you might like to stay. This is a lot more like an online booking engine rather than an online travel agency.
If you want to get the most out of your trip to Africa, you should definitely search around. Use a combination of travel agencies and online booking engines to find the best deal. Sites such as africantravelexperts.com are great for planning your trip because they combine the ease and convenience of online booking engines with the personal touch of customer service.
This is a guest post from Ryan Frank, giving his perspective of these websites that can be used for booking travel in Africa. He also writes for an Orange County news site, OCLNN.com.
Blogger Muzi Mohale
I’m Muzi Mohale, based in Roodepoort (South Africa). Blogger with www.travelwires.com. Love Travelwires.com since I get to travel our beautiful country through blogging and get first hand tourism experience.
With the proliferation of booking engines and international travel sites nowadays, its best to look for an online destinations travel agency that focuses on their home country. This way, you know that they are truly travel specialist for a specific destination.
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There are actually many sites in SA that compare domestic and international flights. Almost every single one of them use travelstart's search technology.
True, Travelstart is the only fully fledge booking engine in South Africa providing confirmed booking. Ryan is based in the US and I allowed him to do his own research, therefore that is what he was able to discover.