Oceania Travel Guide

Surfing For Airfares

The "big three" online travel agencies, Expedia.com, Travelocity.com, and Orbitz.com, sell most of the air tickets bought on the Internet. (Canadian travelers should try expedia.ca and Travelocity.ca; U.K. residents can go for expedia.co.uk and opodo.co.uk.) Each has different deals with the airlines and may offer different fares on the same flights, so it's wise to shop around. Expedia and Travelocity will also send you e-mail notification when a cheap fare becomes available to your favorite destination.

Of the smaller travel agency websites, SideStep (www.sidestep.com) has gotten the best reviews from Frommer's authors. It's a browser add-on that purports to "search 140 sites at once," but in reality only beats competitors' fares as often as other sites do.

By all means check airline websites, especially those which fly to the islands, and the sites of the package tour companies specializing in the South Pacific, some of whom sell air tickets separately from hotel rooms. You can often shave a few bucks from a fare by booking directly through the airline and avoiding a travel agency's transaction fee. But you'll get these discounts only by booking online: Most airlines now offer online-only fares that even their phone agents know nothing about.

I don't like such uncertainty, but if you're willing to give up some control over your flight details, use an opaque fare service like Priceline (www.priceline.com; www.priceline.co.uk for Europeans) or Hotwire (www.hotwire.com). Both offer rock-bottom prices in exchange for travel on a "mystery airline" at a mysterious time of day, often with a mysterious change of planes en route. It's sort of like buying a car, a horse-trading process I personally detest. If you're new at this, the helpful folks at BiddingForTravel (www.biddingfortravel.com) do a good job of demystifying Priceline's prices. Priceline and Hotwire are great for flights within North America and between the U.S. and Europe.

For much more about airfares and savvy air-travel tips and advice, pick up a copy of Frommer's Fly Safe, Fly Smart (Wiley Publishing, Inc.).

Surfing For Hotels

Shopping online for hotels is generally done one of two ways: by booking through the hotel's own website or through an independent booking agency. These Internet hotel agencies have multiplied in mind-boggling numbers of late, competing for the business of millions of consumers surfing for accommodations around the world. This competitiveness can be a boon to consumers who have the patience and time to shop and compare the online sites for good deals -- but shop they must, for prices can vary considerably from site to site. And keep in mind that hotels at the top of a site's listing may be there for no other reason than that they paid money to get the placement.

The best independent site for South Pacific hotel discount shopping is Fiji-based www.Travelmaxia.com, where scores of properties throughout the region post their specials. You can search by country for resorts, hotels, bed-and-breakfasts, dive operators, and cruises.

Another tactic is to check with the South Pacific inbound tour operators. In addition to selling tours and day trips to visitors already in the islands (that is, at hotel activities desks), these companies put together the local elements of tour packages -- such as hotel rooms and airport transfers -- for overseas wholesalers. They have the advantage of being on the scene and thus familiar with the properties. Some sell directly to inbound visitors as well as other tour companies. In Fiji, two small companies specialize in discount travel arrangements, including hotel rooms: Impulse Fiji (www.impulsefiji.com) and Sun Vacations (www.sunvacationsfiji.com). In French Polynesia, Tahiti Nui Travel (www.tahitinuitravel.com) has a variety of local packages in French Polynesia. Based on Rarotonga, Island Hopper Vacations (www.islandhoppervacations.com) books hotels and puts together local packages in both the Cook Islands and the Samoas.

Of the "big three" sites, Expedia offers a long list of deals and "virtual tours" or photos of available rooms so you can see what you're paying for (a feature that helps counter the claims that the best rooms are often held back from bargain booking websites).

Travelocity posts unvarnished customer reviews and ranks its properties according to the AAA rating system. Also reliable are Hotels.com and Quikbook.com. An excellent free program, TravelAxe (www.travelaxe.net), can help you search multiple hotel sites at once, even ones you may never have heard of -- and conveniently lists the total price of the room, including the taxes and service charges.

Another booking site, Travelweb (www.travelweb.com), is partly owned by the hotels it represents (including the Starwood chain, which has properties in Fiji and French Polynesia). Therefore, it plugs directly into the hotels' reservations systems -- unlike independent online agencies, which have to fax or e-mail reservation requests to the hotel, a portion of which get misplaced in the shuffle. More than once, travelers have arrived at the hotel, only to be told that they have no reservation.

It's a good idea to get a confirmation number and make a printout of any online booking transaction.

Surfing For Rental Cars

All of the South Pacific's major car rental firms are franchises; they're owned by local interests and not by the big companies such as Avis and Budget. They also are relatively small operations. Consequently, you're unlikely to find them featured in big discounts and special deals on the major firms' websites. The best deals will appear on their own sites, which I give in the following sections.

All the major online travel agencies offer rental-car reservations services, so it never hurts to look there. Priceline and Hotwire work well for rental cars, too. The only mystery is which major rental company you get, and for most travelers the difference between Hertz, Avis, and Budget is negligible.