Using Twitter to Find Budget Friendly Travel Tips for Thanksgiving

Budget friendly travel tips for summer and spring break abound, but it is slim pickings when it comes to money saving travel tips for Thanksgiving or Christmas. That is, until you get hip to the Twitter universe.

Find Money Saving Travel Tips on Summary Sites
If you do not want to follow dozens of travel sites in the hopes of getting one tweet with a decent flight deal, check in with tweet summary sites such as Cheap Tweet. The entertainment and travel section features up to date tweets from a variety of vendors and third party resellers.

The downside: You need to wade through numerous postings, some of which are locale specific.

Follow the Pack
If you are a newbie to the Twitter universe and in desperate need of budget friendly travel tips for Thanksgiving, but you don't know whom to follow, simply follow the pack. The Taragana Blog suggests following Jet Blue, Travelocity and Marriott. These companies have the largest followings on Twitter.

The downside: You get tweets on discounts at the same time as one million of other Twitter followers. The race for the deals might be over by the time you are ready to act on the tweet.

Speaking of Jet Blue ...
While you might not want to add to the million plus Jet Blue twitter followers, you may want to give Jet Blue Cheeps another look. This site updates every Monday with hot deals, which specifically pertain to a limited number of seats on predefined flights. If you are not a compulsory tweet reader, this one is a must.

The downside: You need to be prepared to act fast when looking for Thanksgiving travel tips. This might involve arriving earlier or leaving later than planned.

Diversify Twitter Followership to Get Hot Off the Presses Travel Tips for Thanksgiving
Cheap Ticket Links explains that by strategizing your followership on Twitter, you can get hot off the presses deals and tips. For this year's Thanksgiving travel tips, follow Rick Seany, Airfare, and The Negotiator.

The downside: You need to sift through the various tweets you receive - some sites are prolific tweeters - to get the nuggets you want.

Target Your Twitter Followership by Location
If you are looking for money saving travel tips for Thanksgiving to a set locale, ferret out vendors and airlines that primarily do business in that locale. For example, Pleasant Holidays tweets last minute Hawaii deals, some of which are actually packages that also cover transportation.

The downside: If you do not know the location intimately, you have no way of differentiating a nice neighborhood from a so-so venue, or gauge the need of transportation.

Now that you are hip to the Twitter universe for your money saving tips for Thanksgiving, what else can you do to hedge your bets? After all, some of these deals and steals demand fast action!

Price the Cost of Your Stay
Develop a baseline cost for your planned Thanksgiving travel. Tips for this endeavor would include transportation, airfare, hotel stay, meals and visits to attractions. Find out how expensive it will be to book all accommodations separately or bundled via third party vendors. Armed with this knowledge, you can quickly evaluate if a hot tweet actually saves you money or not.

Extend Your Twitter Followership from Hotels to Management Companies
In the day and age of corporate takeovers, mergers and buyouts, it is hard to follow who owns what and what is managed by whom. That being said, narrow down your target hotels, and sign up to receive tweets from their management company. Incidentally, this can tip you off to hotel construction noise you would rather avoid: look out for "planned expansion" related tweets.

Money Saving Travel Tips for Online Booking
With few exceptions, booking your hotel stay at the property's website saves money over booking it through a third party vendor. Be sure to check both vendors before making the final decision.

Capitalize on Best Price Guarantees
Do not quit seeking out deals after you buy from a third party vendor. For example, Expedia allows you to exercise its best price guarantee, which allows you to receive the difference in price plus $50 in coupons if you find a better deal within 24 hours. Read the fine print!

From Twitter to Facebook
It is interesting to note that Facebook is another viable source of finding Thanksgiving related money saving travel tips. Oftentimes a vendor will maintain profiles on both Twitter and Facebook. Some, however, offer different deals at different times. A prime example is Joie de Vivre Hotels, which features a Facebook Friday posting and a Twitter Tuesday follow up.

Sources
http://cheaptweet.com
http://blog.taragana.com/
http://twitter.com/
http://www.cheapticketlinks.org/
http://www.expedia.com/
http://www.jdvhotels.com