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Cruise trips and European vacations are best booked many months in advance. Demand for top itineraries is high, and you need to book a few months ahead to nab the best deals.
But if you're planning a trip at the 11th hour, all is not lost. Some early birds will cancel their trips on short notice, freeing cruise ship berths, airplane tickets and hotel rooms for you. Prices often dip as the departure date approaches. Here are some online tactics for finding these deals.
Cruises
One agency that excels at last-minute cruise offerings is Moment's Notice. Search for cruises that meet your criteria for length, itinerary and amenities. The site will fetch cruises with different prices. (The site sells a variety of other travel products, too.)
Recently on a week's notice, you could have scooped up a cruise on the luxury cruise line Crystal. The Symphony was set to depart from New York City on October 9 for a seven-night cruise past New England's fall foliage. The cabin with a window view cost $2,163 a person, double occupancy (including taxes and fees).
Moments-notice.com stands out for offering vouchers for free second trips. These spiffs are usually hotel stays, not cruises. Recently, one such free trip was a four-day stay for two adults and up to two children in Kona on the big island of Hawaii at the Fairfield at Royal Sea Cliff resort. (Taxes on the free trip are typically $50.)
European getaways
If your heart is set on taking a sudden jaunt to Europe, then your best bet is to head directly to LastMinute.com, which specializes in European deals (not to be confused with LastMinuteTravel.com, which is a U.S.-based site with a domestic focus). Enter your departure point, destination city and target departure date (such as a specific day or "next weekend"). The site will retrieve a list of deals by price and length of stay.
Recently, on five days' notice, we found an offer for a four-night Roman holiday at the Sheraton Roma, about 20 minutes from the city's historical center. The package included nonstop flights on American Airlines, departing from New York City on Thursday, October 6. The cost was $1,188 per person, after taxes, well below the going package rates. We found, for example, a package costing $1,944 per person at the same hotel at online booking site Expedia.com (that price was a typical of rates offered at rivals Orbitz and Travelocity, too). Incidentally, Travelocity recently bought Lastminute.com, but Travelocity won't incorporate the site's offerings until next year.
For last-minute hotel rooms in Western Europe in general, we recommend Laterooms.com, a British-based site that seems to have a broader selection of hotel rooms than Expedia and its rivals. For rooms in Italy in particular, we recommend Venere.com, an Italian-based Web site that lists rooms for several countries but boasts especially deep coverage of Italy.
For more advanced-level tactics for booking at the last-minute, we recommend HotelChatter.com, which gleans intelligence about the best and worst hotels from readers' missives and articles from top travel publications. (At the site, enter the search terms "last minute" to fetch relevant tidbits.)
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