This weekend I made a hotel reservation for later this summer. My wife and I are taking a short trip to a neighboring state for a mini-vacation. I ended up using Hotel.com to book the hotel. I shopped around different sites and Hotel.com was the same price as the direct booking with the hotel company but with Hotel.com I got 3% rebate back from eBates.com. I also noticed that eBates has a 2% rebate for Hotwire.com.
If you're not familiar with eBates you can see my first article on eBates here. In brief, you sign up with eBates and then follow their links from their site go to the online merchant of your choice to buy the items you want. After you make the purchase at the online merchant you'll get a rebate from eBates.
Some of the travel site discounts via eBates are below:
Holiday Inn = 5%
Hotels.com = 3%
Hotwire = 2%
Best Western = 2%
Orbitz = 1%
Travelocity = 1%
Expedia = 1%
Rental cars:
Alamo = 3%
Avis = 3%
Budget = 3%
Enterprise = 2%
Thrifty = 3%
So next time you book travel check eBates to see if you can get a discount.
I'd recommend comparison shopping at all sites you can to find the cheapest one. Then once you figure out which site will get you the best rate check if they have an eBates rebate offer.