T-NET International • Discipling Disciplemakers • June 2003 |
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Guide to Good Stewardship: Cyber-Assisted Conference and Travel Savings
Dr. DIMM knows how that the conference budget is the first to go when the finance committee is trying to cut the fat out of the budget (for the eighth time). If they would just think ahead and put a little fat in once-in-a-while, it would be easier to find when they need it! The Internet brings unprecedented opportunities to save on your travel budget. They’re all just a few mouse clicks away. For example: renting a car in LA for $16 a day from Avis no less. Dr. DIMM doesn’t guarantee you will get the same rate, but he can show you how to stretch your travel allowance dollars by getting the best price possible. First of all − car rentals. If you are just calling up your favorite car rental company next time you go on a trip, you are wasting God’s resources . . . no doubt about it. To save money on air travel, you have to put up with a fair amount of ambiguity in scheduling. However, renting a car by Dr. DIMM’s method is a guaranteed no-brainer because you will know exactly what you are getting. First you go to www.Hotwire.com and click on the car rental category. Enter the info and Hotwire will give you a very good price. But don’t accept it yet because you are using this as your baseline. Now you know what a good price is. Notice they won’t tell you which car rental company it is, but they deal only with major companies like Avis, Hertz, etc. No Rent-A-Dent included. After you get the Hotwire price, you have two hours to accept. Now you hustle over to www.Priceline.com. Click on their car rental section and enter the same information. They require a credit card because you will be making an actual bid and, if accepted, the deal is done. Listen up now! You don’t want to make any mistakes here, so do what Dr. DIMM does and be certain your spouse is looking over your shoulder. (They’ll be impressed with all the money you save.) Now you will enter a bid that is a bit lower than the one from Hotwire. You would be amazed what you can get. Dr. DIMM has gotten a compact car for $16/day from Avis at LAX airport. Just recently, Dr. DIMM got a standard-size car at Colorado Springs for $20/day (also from Avis). How does this work, you ask? Well, Avis does not make money if their cars are sitting in the lot. Yet there are plenty of people willing to pay the going rate, so why advertise rates that are one-third to one-half their regular price. Through Hotwire and Priceline they can receive your bid, evaluate if they have extra cars, and this way they have the best of both worlds. High priced clientele and cut-rate bargain hunters like Dr. DIMM. Priceline will get back to you in a matter of minutes by sending you an email with a link to check back with or you can just keep clicking on the response link on their website. There is one other step between Hotwire and Priceline, if you want to take the time. Go to www.Google.com and search for the words “discount” “car” “rental” and include the name of the city you are traveling to. This will give you independent search engines that sometimes have some very aggressive pricing, but often include agencies that are offsite, or less convenient to the airport. They can add up to quite a savings and, in places like LAX where all agencies are offsite, the only difference you will find is that five or six Hertz busses will go by before your bus from Advantage ever comes around. The difference with these sites is they specify the company and location so you know exactly what you are getting, unlike Priceline and Hotwire. So there is no risk involved. You can even call the location and evaluate how close they are to the airport. Now, let’s say you want to take your wife to Florida for that special anniversary celebration, but you have no money. (Hard to imagine, huh?) Try Dr. DIMM’s Internet Lowball Method. To do this you need to start well in advance. You try Hotwire again. Experiment with different dates. Some resort areas might have high traffic on Friday, Saturday and Sunday flights so see if by exercising scheduling flexibility, one of the luxuries of being a Pastor, you can get cheaper rates. Also try www.Orbitz.com, or better yet www.Travelogia.com search engine that searches other search engines (one of which is Orbitz). Take the time to download their free “Boarding Pass” program (http://www.Travelogia.com/boardingpass/download.asp) for better results than searching from their website. You’ll get al list of flights from a host of different search engines compiled for you all in one place. Get an idea of what would be a bargain fare. And then, after doing your homework, trot your mouse on over to www.Priceline.com. Bid a ridiculous amount (but remember you want your spouse agreeing to this before you click the send button because you just might get what you wish for). The way Priceline works is they will accept any offer, though they will try to talk you out of a really low bid. (Dr. DIMM has had several bids accepted after such warnings, so don’t be a patsy, okay?) Now, you will probably not get your super low bid, so then you will be required to make some changes before you can make another bid. You might change the day or the airport. You might just wait a month and submit a similar bid, just a little bit higher. This is one way you can see if there is a trip at a price you can afford. The only downside here is that Priceline can schedule you any time on the day you choose so, if you are planning a week-long trip, you might come back a few hours earlier than you would have chosen to, but you also might save hundreds, even thousands, of dollars if you are taking a family. Again this works the same way as Priceline only books you on major airlines and these airlines will see you as a way to hedge against empty flights. What’s to keep you from just lowballing going incrementally higher till you get the best price? Well after your bid is rejected once, you must change at least two entries on your bid. However, if you start far enough ahead of time you can wait 30 days and then try again. On the other hand, if you have a flexible flight schedule you can change the departure date, up the price a bit and try again right away. One other option is to utilize a consolidator. These are agents who speculate by purchasing blocks of tickets in advance from airlines at highly discounted prices. Dr. DIMM has found online consolidators are sometimes a good option especially on international flights, but sometimes no better than conventional channels. Now let’s say you got your cheap, cheap tickets to Florida and you need a place to stay. This is where Priceline excels. Dr. DIMM knows a sales rep who tells him he stays in Sheratons all the time for $55-$60 a night. Again, you can use Hotwire as a point of comparison. Then go to Priceline. In larger cities you will choose a district so you don’t end up in a hotel on the other side of town from where you really want to be. Then make your bid. You can pay bottom dollar for a topnotch place. Dr. DIMM once booked the historic Palmer House in downtown Chicago for $65 a night. Only problem was it wasn’t until after he booked that Dr. DIMM realized he had only asked for one night rather than the two he needed to round out a great anniversary celebration away from the kids. Dr. DIMM ignored his spouse-looking-over-the-shoulder-rule for Priceline . . . but after all, it was to be a surprise. Maybe if you bid the same price for the second night you will get the same result? No such luck. Dr. DIMM ended up with the newly remodeled “W” Hotel which is at the other end of the traditional to contemporary scale. But the important thing was that Mrs. DIMM was impressed that the good Dr. went out of his way to give her a breadth of experience in honor of the incredible leap of faith she took in saying “I do” way back when. |
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