I've used STA Travel in the past, found them quite reasonable on their package deals. You also only need R1000 to secure the trip, which is good as I remember booking a trip via PenTravel and when I had to postpone my trip a month before hand, they couldn't give me back my money...all they could offer was a change in date which would cost 60% of the original amount I paid. Lesson learned, is always do a deposit with travel agencies and make sure your travel insurance provides for cancellation due to obscure events. Most of the travel insurance the travel agencies offer don't for weird things, also the one the banks offer don't offer for weird things. But if your bank offers you free travel insurance I usually take that with the one I end up paying for.
My last trip, I did it fully by myself which was way cheaper than the quotes travel agencies where giving me.
Some things to insure are:
- Air plane tickets, go out and pay for flexi-tickets its usually. I have at one point ended up changing a return flight date, luckily it was free since I opted for the flexi-ticket.
- Get a frequent fly miles, if you travel at least once a year (especially with the same airline) the miles will add up, and may become of use.
- Bookings.com is the best, some say airbnb. But whatever it is, make sure you accommodation offers free cancellation (up until a certain period), also no requirement for deposit.
- Booking flights: Google Flights helped me out, especially since it can show you the trending period (select the price graph option) and when flight becomes cheaper depending the period you wish to travel. And if you can get Google to send you an alert if prices for a specific route become cheaper, due to some sale the airline is having.
- Travefy.com. A great tool to build up your itinerary, especially if you need to go hand one in for your visa application
With regards to Travel Package specials,
Travel Start is one of the more centralised websites where they get deals from every travel agency & airline in South Africa
