For tickets on many major carriers, Priceline allows you
to cancel without penalty until 11:29 p.m. Central Time
the business day after you book. When you book on a
Friday, you have until the following Monday to cancel if
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Finally, don’t forget that you might have enough miles
to book an award seat or access negotiated airfares that
aren’t publicly available. Have an account with, say,
Chase or American Express? Sign in and use their
booking engines to check for negotiated fares. Also
check the airline’s website for award bookings—many
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available for 10,000 miles or less each way.
BEST WEBSITES FOR BOOKING
ACCOMMODATIONS
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accommodations. As with Google Flights for air travel,
heavyweights such as TripAdvisor and Airbnb work
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TripAdvisor acts not only as a repository for traveler
reviews of hotels but also as an aggregator of hotel
prices from both OTAs and the hotels themselves, once
you put in your travel dates. This lays bare the one-
room-many-prices conundrum, but it’s also useful
for savvy travelers who are planning on staying at
chain hotels.
Chain hotels aren’t right for every trip, but if you’re
eyeing one, it’s worth familiarizing yourself with best-
rate guarantees. Chains such as Marriott and Hyatt
don’t want to pay commissions to OTAs when they can
avoid it, so they’ll often match the lowest third-party
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Booking directly with a chain hotel is also often the only
way to get free Wi-Fi access and loyalty-program credit.