“Hey, where's my 'senior' discount?”

Posted: 16 Oct 2010 09:36 PM PDT

Bud and I have to face it. We are now, uh, seniors. Aside from shock of realizing that we're actually as old as our parents were when we thought of them as ancient, we are thinking there might be good news. We're healthy and mobile, we have our brains (mostly) and we should now be eligible for all kids of nifty senior travel discounts.

After all, for years we've seen the little boxes marked "Senior" next to everything from hotel rates to airline fares and sometimes even car rentals. Now we can check those boxes and rack up the discounts, right?

Reality check: I started with airlines, looking for something a senior might need and the airlines might reasonably offer a senior fare on: a one-way ticket to Miami. I scanned airline websites as well as third-party booking sites like Kayak.com, Expedia.com and Tripadvisor.com.

Surprise! The little boxes have begun to disappear. USAirways used to have a senior booking option but now offers only children (2-14) or adults (everyone else). Same is true of Priceline and Kayak. Hmmm. On to American: Yes, there was a box for seniors. The fare I was looking for popped up at $149. Not bad. But then I checked the regular discounted adult fare . . . $149! Expedia offered a senior booking option too, and guess what? Identical fares for seniors and adults.

So much for senior airline discounts.

Thinking hotels night be another story, I plowed on, beginning with the hotel websites themselves. Sure enough, I found that most national chains offer a variety of rate "boxes" to check, often starting with Best Available, and then moving through AAA, Senior, Corporate and so on. But for the most part "Best Available" beat all rates - including Senior. The one exception seemed to be the AAA rate: A room at a Marriott in Baltimore priced out $95.50 for "Best Available" and Senior, but only $85.50 for AAA. Humph!

The big guy: Okay, if individual companies and booking websites aren't providing discounts directly, how about AARP? Bud and I have had AARP cards for more years than we would like to acknowledge but never used them for travel. A quick stop at aarp.com got me to their travel section, expedia-aarp.com. I checked for the BOS-MIA flight. The exact same $149! But the AARP website said "member benefit - no booking fee!"

Great. I bounced back to the regular Expedia website to see what I would save. But guess what? The regular site said "no booking fee!" Another half hour of flight and hotel comparisons brought me to the same conclusion: No matter where I looked or how I booked, being a senior didn't seem to get me respect or savings. In fact, the AARP's "savings" of 25 percent or more on tours, car rentals and cruises don't necessarily get you to the lowest possible fare. As with many affinity discounts, the discounts are often applied to the full, or regular, fare.

What to do? Don't get grumpy; get informed. If you're a traveling senior, your best bet is pretending you're not a senior. Get a computer and learn how to use it. Take the time to search several websites for flights, and when you look at hotels, always, always contact the hotel directly and ask for the best possible rate. When you have a few benchmarks, check out some senior travel websites if you like - then book.

Of course, if you like to lean back and relax, let AARP or AAA book you into one of their tours and enjoy. Just check to make sure you're paying as little as possible.

(E-mail Chase Binder at ChaseBinder@comcast.net.)

This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php
Five Filters featured article: Beyond Hiroshima - The Non-Reporting of Falluja's Cancer Catastrophe.