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Travel Auctions: Are they Good Value for Money?

Summer comes round, and with it your desire to go on holiday, usually quietly nagging away at you, suddenly reaches fever pitch. You start checking destinations, but can’t quite find the sort of price you’re looking for. Then it hits you – how about checking out the travel auctions?

Thankfully, finding the best travel auctions is not nearly as big a task, as searching for a ‘normal’ holiday online (which, let’s face it, can sometimes be exhausting in and of itself!) There are a few major players in the online travel auction world, and a few others you might not have thought of.

Starting Out

One of the first places that many people look to for picking up a cheap holiday in a travel auction is eBay. Yes, really, eBay! After all, people sell cars and even houses on eBay, so why not holidays? Once you’ve got your head around this, you can start to browse the prices. And a quick scan of eBay shows cruises, flights, packages and hotels, going for what would seem to be well below the asking price.

Luxurylink, meanwhile (possibly the English language market leader) is another place to go to for major travel auction savings. A six night package for two at the Grand Bay Hotel, Isla Navidad Resort in Manzanillo, Mexico recently went for $1,705. That still seems pretty pricey until you look at what sort of a place it actually is. For something that luxurious, you’d frankly expect to be paying closer to its original price tag of $3,400.

Different Language – Same Great Savings

The beauty of online travel, though, is that it’s truly global. And if variety’s the spice of life, it’s also the key to attractive prices! Interestingly for any budding linguists, there are some fantastic travel auctions to be had on foreign language sites.

French speakers can usually rely on Nouvelles-frontieres.com to come up with the right holiday at the right prices. But it’s the Spanish who really go for travel auctions (or subasta viajes as they call them) in a big way.

Recent travel auction results on market leader Logitravel include shaving hundreds of Euros of dream holidays to the Dominican Republic, Mexico’s Maya Riviera and a tempting Prague and Budapest package. And while the lots change all the time, but the savings seem to keep rolling in.

Travel Auctions – Yes or No?

As with all auctions – online and offline – the key to getting the right price is knowing your market. When it comes to a travel auction, the only way to do that is make sure you’ve put the time into your research. If you find out more or less what the market value of a holiday deal is, then you’re in a much better position to know how much you want to bid on it. Simple really.

So, to sum up: Are travel auctions good value for money? With savings occasionally up to – and sometimes even over 100% – I think you could say so!

Travel Auctions: Are they Good Value for Money? / Author: pc_traveling

Occupation: Travel Writer
Paul Collins is an English travel writer who dedicates much of his time to the Caribbean, the Canary Islands and Tunisia. A total hispanophile, so many and varied have been his viajes Tenerife (or trips to Tenerife!) that the island has become something of a second home to him!

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