Ultimate Review Of Travelzoo.com

Travelzoo.com is a global travel and entertainment company, with nearly 30 million members in the United States, Europe, and Asia Pacific, and nearly 30 offices worldwide. They partner with more than 2,000 travel-related businesses, including airlines, hotels, restaurants, and spas to provide low-cost travel deals to some of the most in-demand locations in the world.

Started in 1998, Travelzoo thrives on perhaps one of its most popular features, a Top 20 section on their website that details their current travel deals and trends for that week. This rotational feature offers myriad opportunities to see the world, including everything from 10-day Russian River Cruises and Multiple City European vacations to sports tickets for important events and individual performance ticket deals for shows in New York City, Las Vegas, and other locations.

In other words, Travelzoo can’t be simply contained by one definition of travel resourcing. It can be, and is, everything to everyone. No matter what you’re looking for, you can seemingly find it on Travelzoo.com.

The first thing to know about Travelzoo is this – they aren’t hard to find. With more than three million Facebook fans and a massive list of present and past customers, their social presence is vast, though true, honest reviews about their services and offering are limited. That’s the aim of this post – to give you an honest review of Travelzoo.com from people who have used the website.

Myself being a bit of a “techy”, and Tracy being an artist, the first thing we notice about any website is the design and layout. Travelzoo’s website is what you would want from a massive, global travel company – well-designed, easy to use, and attractive.

Personally, I like the simplicity of the website. With plenty of whitespace, the Travelzoo site has easy-to-find directional buttons, including a location to login to your account, a drop-down menu on the left, and (Tracy’s favorite feature), a design that tells the reader to “keep scrolling down” to find more deals.

What you’ll notice are quick navigational tabs at the top, including a direct link to the weekly “Top 20” deals, as well as other themed excursions and deals such as hotels, vacations, and cruises. If you’re not looking to surf the site, per-se, but are rather aware of what type of deal you’re looking for, you can use either this feature or the easy search bar located in the same featured area.

If you are perusing, scroll down for a vast array of different features – from cookie-driven local attractions (can you tell we live in Miami?) to international flight and trip deals. You’ll find all of this under the “Latest Deals & News” section, which scroll down several sheet lengths to the bottom of the page, where you can “set your location” (where you’re browsing from) to help Travelzoo’s state-of-the-art technology locate featured deals for your current location.

The first time we used Travelzoo.com to find deals, and one of the areas where we enjoy the value the most, was in booking a cruise. How you can navigate to this area, most simply, is by simply clicking on the “cruises” button at the top in the featured area (per above). However, you can also simply select the dropdown feature in the same area and select “cruises” from the drop-down.

Here, you’ll see a selector that helps you either manually type in the area you’re looking to cruise, or select a location from one of the drop-down options.

Once you arrive to the cruises page (or whatever page you select), you’ll notice that the layout is, again, simple and easy to understand. The options are located into previously-designed areas, within each area there are numerous cruise offerings from various providers for lengths of time, dates, and itineraries.

Keep in mind that search classifications within website like this work by multiple classification, meaning the cruise you’re looking for may not be exclusively the keyword listed, but rather will include it. In other words, if you’re leaving from Miami to go on a cruise that goes to both the Bahamas and Cancun, it’s likely that this deal will be listed under both “Caribbean Cruises” and “Mexico Cruises”. It’s a simple wrinkle, but nice to remember.

In other words, the navigational tools are set up to help you find what you’re looking for, make a decision, and book your trip. The goal is not to simply keep you clicking aimlessly on the site. In fact, you can even filter the results (using the filter button above the deal listings), to drill down further into what type of cruise/excursion you’re looking for (as seen above).

The listings, themselves, will be subtitled with the time of year the excursion is available, the company/partner that has listed it on Travelzoo.com, and some basic listing information. You can simply click on the excursion of your choice to drill down further. Once you do this, you’ll be prompted for your e-mail address and forwarded to the end company who is supplying the service.

In this example, the end company is iCruise.com, where you’re taken to complete booking of your trip.

This is important to remember about Travelzoo.com. In a way, they are an aggregator who makes relationships with companies to bring their offerings more directly to you, but not (in many cases) the actual provider of the tour or trip. They do, however, audit their partners often and closely monitor their level of responsiveness and service to make sure they’re actually giving you the service they proclaim to offer.

From here, you’ll complete the booking process on whichever site of the provider you’ve chosen. No actual transaction will take place at Travelzoo.com, but the offers will often be from providers you would rarely have heard of.

We’ve booked numerous things on Travelzoo, from symphony tickets and entry into sporting events, to regional flights and cruises. When you sign up, you’ll additionally be added to the top of their list, and receive e-mail promotions on the top deals in their market.

If you’re looking for a one-stop shop for the best in travel offerings, both foreign and domestic, both multiple-day excursions and afternoon happy hours at your favorite local bars, Travelzoo.com is a great place to go.