I hope to be in the US in June and July. I need to go to Vegas to renew my license. (No, I cannot do it by mail. Trust me.) I need to keep up my Nevada residency for tax reasons.
I can travel whenever I want. I can stay a long or short time. So given this flexibility, what would be the best general play to reduce hotel and airline prices? (Of course I could just type in various dates, but give me some help.) Avoid weekends? Stay over a weekend? I usually stay at the Suncoast, but this is a general question.
Most of the popular travel websites (Expedia, Travelocity) have options to see the lowest fares over a several day period, or calendars which show what dates low fares are available. You may want to try messing around with several different sites and the options on them to get the best airfares.
In my experience, this is pretty much the wrong approach for Vegas (though correct for almost anywhere else on Earth). It might knock your flight price down a tiny bit, but it’ll waaaaaaay jack up your hotel prices.
Once when I was planning a trip to Dallas I booked my airline tickets on Travelocity. I already had a place to stay, but it turned out that if I booked a hotel room along with my plane tickets, I saved $70. That is, getting the flight AND hotel on Travelocity was significantly cheaper than just getting the flight alone, even though I never showed up at the hotel.
So my point is, look for those kind of combination packages.
