Planning for a Panama Retirement

Here are some of my favorite sites for making travel arrangements online. Check these out when booking your next trip to Panama.

Air Travel To Panama

• Kayak (http://www.kayak.com): Kayak is by far my favorite site for booking airline travel. It pulls ticket prices from multiple airline sites to save you the work of manually checking all of them. It searches up to 140 different travel sites to get you the best prices available. You can also have Kayak send you emails daily or weekly with the lowest available fares to Panama City. That way if your travel dates are flexible, you’ll be able to take advantage of the best deals available.
• Hotwire (http://www.hotwire.com): I don’t personally use Hotwire (I stick with Kayak), but my brother-in-law swears by it for his travel. When I compared airline prices between Hotwire and Kayak for a given date, the Kayak prices were considerably lower than those found by Hotwire. However, on another travel date, this might be different, so both are worth a try.
• CheapTickets (http://www.cheaptickets.com): I only recommend this because it often has the lowest fare tickets offered by Kayak, so you can check here directly if you’d like. However, again, by using Kayak, you’ll already get this fare if it’s the lowest.

For air travel around Panama (for example, from Panama City to Bocas Del Toro), check with one of the regional carriers, Aeroperlas or Mapiex Aero. Regional travel is not terribly expensive. For example, a round-trip ticket from Panama City to Bocas Del Toro runs about $140.

Hotels In Panama

Many of the same sites used to book airline travel can also be used to book hotel rooms.  Not all though. Hotwire, for example, can be used to find your airfare, but can not find hotel rooms in Panama City. Then there are some sites that are specific to finding hotel accommodations.

• Kayak (http://www.kayak.com): As with air travel, I’d start your search with Kayak. They search through multiple hotel booking sites to find the best deals. They have the star rating of the hotel and guest ratings and reviews to help you select the best hotel for you. In a recent search, I found two 5 star hotels for under $140/night.
• Hotels.com (http://www.hotels.com): Hotels.com is one of the premier sites for finding and booking hotel rooms around the world. It also offers star and guest ratings, along with guest reviews. You can see the hotels on a city map to help you plan your stay. However, since Kayak searches Hotels.com as part of it’s hotel search, you may as well start with Kayak.
• Priceline.com (http://www.priceline.com): While Priceline built it’s reputation based on the “Name Your Own Price” tag line, they also offer conventional booking services. Priceline will search available hotels and it offers convenient services like letting you view the hotels by star rating or location on a map.  And for those who want to give it a tray, they still offer the “Name Your Own Price” service.

Do you have a favorite travel service that wasn’t listed here? If so, please let me know in the comment section what it is and why you like it.