The HappiTravel® Journal
Plain-spoken articles on wholesale travel, member economics, and how to evaluate any booking platform before you trust it with a vacation.
Every hotel room on earth has a price the public sees and a price the industry pays. The industry price — the net wholesale rate — is what Expedia negotiates before layering on enough margin to fund roughly $7 billion…
Every hotel room, airline seat, cruise cabin, and rental car exists as a unit of inventory inside a supplier’s distribution system. Before a consumer…
Most advice on how to afford more vacations starts with the same list: skip the morning coffee, set up a travel savings account, fly…
The research is surprisingly consistent: yes, planning a vacation makes you happier — and the effect starts long before you pack a bag. A…
A timeshare pitch always starts with the same promise: own a piece of paradise, come back every year, lock in today’s prices forever. The…
The travel membership market splits into two categories: operators that deliver genuine wholesale access and operators that use the language of savings to sell…
The question has a simple answer and a complicated one. The simple answer: a travel club membership is worth it if the savings on…
The debate between using a travel agent and booking online has been running for two decades, and most of the advice you’ll find treats…
Yes. Expedia is marking up hotel prices. The company’s own financial disclosures describe exactly how: Expedia buys hotel rooms at wholesale rates negotiated directly…
The short answer is yes — OTAs are almost always more expensive than booking direct. But the longer answer matters more, because “booking direct”…
Every hotel room, rental car, and cruise cabin moves through a supply chain before it reaches you. At the top of that chain sits…
Travel agents have been booking the same hotel rooms you book — at lower prices — for decades. The mechanic behind this is not…