Remember Priceline.com? This is the website that introduced the concept of “opaque” booking, in which you learned the details of your flight or hotel only after you had bid – and committed to pay – a certain price. The trouble with Priceline.com in the hotel area was that if you sought an ultracheap room and bid a low price for a tourist-class hotel, you sometimes ended up in the boondocks or at an unknown brand of hotel.
It has dawned on many smart travelers that if they name a very low price to Priceline, yet specify that they must receive a deluxe hotel, they really can’t go wrong. If their bid is accepted, they will get a deluxe property or grand beachfront resort, and who cares which one? A number of people I recently met in Hawaii were paying only $125 a night for deluxe beachfront resorts that normally charge $400 a room – all by using Priceline.com and specifying they wanted deluxe lodgings.
Try Amalfi in March
The Amalfi Coast of Italy – just south of Naples within easy access to Capri, Sorrento and Pompeii – is one of the most attractive places on Earth and is jammed starting April 1. But in March, vacancies exist and prices are lower, even though the Amalfi area already is mild and sunny at that time.
Tourcrafters (800-482-5995, tourcrafters.com) has created a one-week air-and-land package to Amalfi in March for only $729 per person, which includes round-trip air between New York and Naples, a rental car for the week upon arrival, a room at the Hotel Villa Romana directly on the coast, and two meals a day. (You pay only $48 more from Atlanta and $72 more from Chicago).
The biggest ship at sea
Royal Caribbean’s Freedom of the Seas will be the largest ship afloat – bigger than the QM2 – when it goes into service in a few weeks. And because a large part of the public leaps to book such a giant vessel, its early departures are already heavily sold. But as always happens, the sailings scheduled for just after Thanksgiving and in early December are predicted to sell slowly.
If you want to experience the Freedom of the Seas, you can grab a cabin on its Nov. 26 or Dec. 3 sailings of the Western Caribbean for seven nights departing from Miami for as little as $859-$1,019 per person, including port charges. The Internet cruise broker called iCruise.com (866-942-7847) has those prices, and it will book you if you phone quickly.
Barge in on splendor
A luxury fling? The waterways of France used to be traversed by hundreds of barges, of which about 60 have now been converted into hotel barges. Their most attractive features are the breathtaking rural scenery and villages along which they float, and the equally superb cuisine prepared for the passengers by talented French chefs.
The problem of these heavily staffed hotel barges is cost. Though some charge as little as $300 a night a person for a seven-day, six-night cruise, the average is about $500 a night. But to some luxury-loving types, that outlay brings a grand experience. Go to bargesinfrance.com, and you too may be bitten by the barge bug.
Get that passport
A sigh of relief swept through the travel world when the federal government seemed to be relenting on its plan to require people returning to the U.S. from Canada, Mexico and the Caribbean possess passports.
Turns out the report was only partially true. The Department of Homeland Security now will probably recognize a special, inexpensive identity card for such travelers, but only if they are re-entering the U.S. via a land route. All others, cruise and airline passengers, will still require a passport (now $97) starting Jan. 1, says the agency.
Arthur Frommer, who first published “Europe on $5 a Day” in 1956, is budget travel authority.
