Tag: travel membership

Build Your Own Travel Business At Home

by hotelsetc, posted in business travel, discounted travel, holiday travel, Home, Hotels Etc Travel Club Blog, travel, travel agent, travel club, travel discounts, travel tips, travelclub, White label travel

Do you like to travel? Would you like to travel more? Would you travel more if you could find some real bargains, say 50% or more off the regular retail price, not just the 10% AARP or 10% business discount often available at motels?

If you do like to travel, I’m sure you have gone the route of search-engine searches for discount travel, only to find the major Internet booking engines with their flashy “lowest prices guaranteed” all offer exactly the same prices.

The truth be known, some bargains do raise their heads above all the “cheapest prices guaranteed” but good luck finding them. You must tenaciously search every day, and even then some of those specials are alive for only a few hours. Is there an easier way? I think there is, and you can turn travel into a business.

Yes, those bargains are there, reserved for the travel professional in the form of travel perks, business tax deductions, and sales commissions. Consider these points:

•Own your own booking engine and earn commissions on all travel booked through your site — your own travel and the travel of anyone and everyone that you can drive to your booking engine.  https://www.hotelsetc.com/private-label-program/

•Operate a legitimate travel business and you can apply business tax deductions to your own travel as long as you include that travel in your business plan, and you keep accurate records. https://www.hotelsetc.com/go

•Many travel industry businesses offer familiarization trips, FAM trips for short, to professional travel agents and agencies so that they can then “sell” these services to their clients. These FAM trips may offer huge discounts or free accommodations and trips when the agent books 8-10 clients for the same accommodation or trip.

•Travel agents can build their own membership club business with some form of advertisement back home and generate residual income

This month my wife and I are taking a quick summer vacation to Canon City, Colorado, for a ½ day white-water rafting adventure in Bighorn Sheep Canyon and a 2-hour train ride in a vista-dome through the Royal Gorge. We have acquired two nights’ lodging because we want to further explore the business opportunities in the area. We contacted Hotels Etc. at https://www.hotelsetc.com and saved nearly 70% off our entire trip.

You can indeed travel for less and travel more. In fact, your travel can become your job. What a great life!

Are travel discounts a thing of the past?

by hotelsetc, posted in travel discounts

We expect to find the best travel discounts online and along with convenience, this is the reason we use booking engines as opposed to calling or booking direct with a service provider. Except, maybe you have noticed, the cost of hotel rooms and other travel related services seem to be increasingly expensive and there is a specific reason for this being the case.

las vegas discount

Travel discounts and Rate Parity

Introduced recently, a law called “Rate Parity” stipulates travel brands can only advertise one price across all channels of distribution. This effectively means a traditional booking engine simply cannot offer hotel discounts as they have done in the past. Held accountable by this new legislation, the cost of a hotel is the same on a traditional booking engine as they are on a website for the hotel in question.

The truth is out there

Take for example Kayak, one of the largest travel comparison websites in the world. If you perform a quick search for a hotel room on Kayak you will find the cost of a hotel room is the very same across all of the booking engines out there. Why? As mentioned previously, rate parity. This is the same if you check each individual booking engine and compare the price against the website of the actual hotel.

Providing this is the case, you really do need to ask yourself, what is the point of using these booking engines if they offer no genuine value anymore?

travel discounts

Travel membership: The only way to find genuine travel discounts

However, there is thankfully still a way to find the best travel discounts online and this is by searching within a “closed loop program” such as a travel membership club. Rate parity does not apply to membership clubs and for this reason, it is possible to sign up and start finding the travel discounts which were once available on the traditional booking engines.

Simple and effective, travel membership clubs also have a booking engine of their own on which you can search for the best vacation and avail of the best price.

Hotels Etc in North America

Leading the way in North America for more than 25 years, Hotels Etc is a travel membership club with a 5 star reputation and 4 million members. Essentially, this membership program negotiates the best possible rates with service providers in the travel industry and passes them on to their clients. Ranging from 50 – 80%, these are large discounts which far outweigh any decision to sign up for membership and there is also a trial option during which you can verify this value for yourself.

There really is no more to say other than if you want to find the best travel discounts online, you will need to look past the traditional booking engines and start utilizing the incredible advantages of being a member with a travel club such as Hotels Etc.

Still not sure? Come see for yourself, you can sign up for a free trial today.

Researchers explain why planning a vacation can make you Happy

by hotelsetc, posted in travel tips

Vacations are fun, we all know that, we all want more of them and some of us will almost live for them. But do they make you happier? It might seem like a question with an obvious answer but a group of researchers in the Netherlands set out to answer this precise question while also determine what it is exactly that causes someone to feel this way.

Almost 2,000 adults took part in the research, half of which had taken a vacation during the previous year and the results threw up a very interesting point. Yes, there were no surprises that these people experienced happiness while on the trip, whether they were relaxing next to the pool, swimming at the beach, eating out in a fine restaurant or sipping cocktails as the sun went down but what about afterward or what about before?

“The practical lesson for an individual is that you derive most of your happiness from anticipating the holiday trip,” said Jeroen Nawijn head of the research. “What you can do is try to increase that by taking more trips per year. If you have a two week holiday you can split it up and have two one week holidays. You could try to increase the anticipation effect by talking about it more and maybe discussing it online.”

You see, much of the findings for this research pointed to the fact that most adults felt relaxed returning from their vacation, they felt energized and rejuvenated but what they did not expect, was to learn how extremely happy these same people felt when planning a vacation. That’s right, the research showed that the longest, most prolonged and enjoyable part of their trip was the actual part of planning a vacation. Marveling at wanderlust inducing photographs online, imagining how relaxing it would be on the beach, checking the best places to stay in the Caribbean and then of course, looking for the best hotel discounts, vacation deals and general value. People felt good about being able to find the best online travel deals, joining travel membership clubs for cruise discounts and knowing that they had found the best place to stay at the best price.

So there you have it in black and white, planning a vacation is just as good for your health and will make you just as happy, as being on the vacation itself. We can’t say we are surprised as for more than 25 years now we taken great pleasure from finding the best hotel discounts for our members here at Hotels Etc. We know that people will always appreciate a good deal when we find one and keep coming back so long as we keep offering the best value vacations. So what are you waiting for? It might be a few weeks, a month or even a year until your next time off but why should that stop you from feeling happy, start planning your vacation and get signed up for a travel membership with Hotels Etc.

Can you afford the cost of travel?

by hotelsetc, posted in travel

When was the last time you packed a small suitcase and left the busy city behind?  There is simply nothing like taking a weekend break or even one night away from the norm, a few days to escape the monotony of a work week and take refuge in a relaxing hotel stay with fine food and maybe even a spa.

hotels etc

Unless you have work at the weekend or an insurmountable amount of debt, the chances are there is actually no good reason not to get away for the weekend. At this point it may seem a little too late to be planning a trip with the weekend closing in but then, how long does it take to make an online booking and put a few clothes in a suitcase? The answer, in case you’re wondering – not long at all.

Taking an annual vacation is obviously a great idea, the perfect way to relieve stress and get back to enjoying the finer things in life. However, is simple process is surely restricted to once a year? No, the simple process of relieving stress and hitting the re-fresh button in life is attainable at just about any moment in every week and it just so happens that travel is the perfect way to make it happen.

Thing is, if it was always as simple as throwing a few clothes in a suitcase and taking off we would do it almost every weekend right? So what’s stopping everyone from taking more weekend breaks?

afford travel

We all know travel can be expensive and even without a debt of some sort looming overhead, it can be difficult to afford the high cost of living these days never mind forking out on a hotel in Chicago for the night. And this is exactly why you need a travel club membership, the easiest and fastest way to find hotel discounts and more to make everything affordable. Rather than just saving on hotels or annual vacations, a travel membership club such as Hotels Etc will also help you find discounts throughout the year for anything from movie theater tickets to restaurant deals. In fact, by the time you have availed of a 60% discount on a hotel stay, it’s likely you will already have saved the remaining cost by utilizing the thousands of other discounts on offer.

There really should be no cost placed on the prospect of taking time out from a hectic schedule and escaping all the noise for a few days but in reality, we do understand there is always going to be a fee attached to the concept of travel. In this sense, Hotels Etc is not here to make travel free or promise you something you cannot afford, but rather it offers a simple membership which will allow you to afford the cost of travel an then to get an awful lot more from it, for a much lesser cost.

You can access all the best hotel discounts and more by signing up today for a travel membership with Hotels Etc.

When life gives you lemons, take a vacation

by hotelsetc, posted in travel, vacation

“He was a walking refutation of that dogmatic statement, Mens sana in corpore sano. His was a sound mind in an unsound body. He proved the eternal paradox of things. He cashed in on his disabilities. He picked up the lemons that Fate had sent him and started a lemonade-stand.” Marshall P Wilder.

Mass production, mass consumption, mass disillusion; earning a living is hard, nobody said it would be easy, but nobody said it would be this hard either. We live in a modern world with endless options and decisions, something made increasingly difficult in the past two decades with the arrival of the online world and the increased amount of competition it has created among peers.

Truth is, frightening statistics have already proven that this mass build up is not only happening, but increasing,  and it is also the number one reason for mass disillusion or even depression. It doesn’t take very much to understand how busy life has become either, it seems more people are working more overtime, and less time off is naturally leading to less enjoyment in life. While earning a living, being successful and progressing a career are all admirable, the value and benefit of taking time out from this busy lifestyle, should not be ignored.

On the contrary, statistics are on hand to show that people who take more time off work and travel on more vacations, are more satisfied and less stressed. Even if the past few weeks or months have been hectic, even if you have worked every hour of every given day for eight months, having a vacation to look forward to and then utilize to distress is worth far more than any monetary value placed on the vacation.

So why do people not take more vacations? Essentially, this will rarely come down to lack of vacation leave or workload, after all a year is a long time and realistically, everyone can afford to put work on hold for 7 – 10 days to take time out.

The reason most people do not take a vacation is budget, as everyone knows that vacations cost money. However, regardless of whether you are working for minimum wage or a high flying senior investment manager, a vacation is affordable for anyone who looks in the right place. Unfortunately most people still see this “right place” as being a booking engine such as Expedia, Orbitz or another major travel brand when the truth is, these websites no longer offer the value they once did. No, since the arrival of the new rate parity laws, travel brands are no longer able to offer varying prices across different distribution channels which in essence stops them from offering any real discounts or special offers.

The solution? Today the only real way of finding genuine hotel discounts, travel offers, or affordable vacation packages is through a Travel membership club which offer discounts of up to 60-80% to their members in return for a minimal fee. These membership clubs may seem like newcomers to the travel industry but actually, they have been around since the 1970’s and Hotel Etc is one such club who have a five star trust rating, 4 million members and the highest number of repeat customers.

Vacation packages are quite affordable in the modern day but should that be slightly out of the current budget, membership with a travel club is the single best way to find the cheapest hotels or most affordable vacation packages. So next time you feel work gets on top of you or life seems to be moving too fast, for too long; organize your time off, sign up for Hotels Etc, take that vacation  you deserve and leave the phone at home.

It really is true; when life gives you lemons, take a vacation.