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 This article was contributed by our award winning journalist Steven. Thanks Steve for all the help.

Booking trips, whether for business or pleasure, has never been easier.

Like most people, I like to do my vacation planning online, while I’m supposed to be hard at work. It’s pretty easy to look like you’re performing an important task as well; just furrow your brow, get really close to your computer monitor, and start clicking away at the mouse. It’s a foolproof system, unless of course, your job does not involve a computer. Then the whole activity would look pretty foolish and more importantly, you would not actually be booking a trip.

There is a number of quality websites dedicated to finding a number of different trip options in a matter of seconds. Travelocity, CheapoAir, Travelation, Kayak, Orbitz, Lowfares, Priceline, and my personal favourite Expedia – and this has little to do with preferential service, and everything to do with singing out a twangy “dot com”, just like in the commercial, as I type in the web address.

Every once in a while however, flight prices take off and border on the outrageous. Especially, if you are booking on short notice and need to fly on less than 7 days notice. With limited notice, these websites will return flight prices from their search engines, double what they were a few days prior. At this point there’s no need to type harder on the keyboard, throw the mouse or curse the twangy little “dot com” diddy.

It will save a lot of time – and more importantly, money – to pick up the phone and get a little personal.

Call a travel agent.

It may be a little unorthodox in the wonderful world of technology, but actual people can help. Travel agents will have access to flights a typical search engine will not; because if they didn’t, well travel agents just wouldn’t be around anymore.

On 8 days notice my flight to Dallas was about $550. On 7 days notice the exact same flight was $1275. On 6 days notice, after talking in person to the wonderful people at Flight Centre, the flight was $650.

So if you can’t book early, or maybe if you’re just looking for a better deal, just pick up the phone and get a little personal.

Coincidently enough, it’s also pretty easy to look like you’re busy at work while on the phone as well, so it can even still be done while pretending to work.

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