Travelzoo Launches First Ever Search for Britain’s Savviest Traveller

Travelzoo (NASDAQ:TZOO), a global Internet media company, today announced it has launched the first ever search to find Britain’s Savviest Traveller. Through a combination of online and social media, Travelzoo will identify the one person in Britain who is the best at finding a travel deal. The search started this week and will continue until 9 July, when Britain’s Savviest Traveller will be announced to the nation.

More than 1,000 hopefuls from across the UK have already submitted their entries on Travelzoo’s Britain’s Savviest Traveller website, with each new entrant claiming to be the undisputed champion of cheap flights and holiday discounts. To view the very latest submissions or to stake a claim as Britain’s Savviest Traveller, visit the new website at http://www.travelzoo.com/uk/savvytraveller.

Phil Salcedo, publisher of the Travelzoo Top 20, which has 1.8 million readers in the UK says, "We all know that there are some really clever people out there, with all sorts of tricks up their sleeves to find the best deal. Since we launched the search on Tuesday evening, we’ve been inundated with entries. I have to confess; I’m in awe of the lengths some people will go to get an amazing deal.”

Here are some of the latest and most outrageous ways people across the UK have found deals:

• Incredible bargain-hunter Sabine Berendse saved £3,000 on a family trip to Canada and the USA, by taking an unbelievable combination of planes, trains and automobiles. To avoid paying high fares on non-stop flights to New York, Sabine and her family took a low-cost flight from Stansted to Iceland, flew Icelandair from Reykjavik to Halifax and then took an overnight train all the way to Toronto. The family then backtracked by bus to Niagara Falls and walked over the Freedom Bridge from Canada into the USA.
• Rob McMahon could be one of Britain’s luckiest savviest travellers. Rob uncovered a pricing error on a popular online travel agency site and booked himself into a 4-star Marrakech hotel for just £1.53 per night – for an entire month! Gill Jay had a similar experience, after finding a pricing error; she booked herself and her husband into the 5-star Sandals Ocho Rios in Jamaica, for just £8.13 for the entire week, a saving of £4,747.87 on the published rate.
• Angela Stevens bought Gerry Garcia’s (lead singer of the 60’s rock band Grateful Dead) VW Van and drove it down to Mexico. She lived in the van for 6 months, occasionally giving English lessons to pay her way.
• Matthew Thompson didn’t pay a penny to travel around Europe, instead he got a £5,000 tour of the continent for free and was paid for his time. Mathew realised that if he became a tour guide, he could travel by bus and cruise to Europe’s top destinations including Paris, the South of France, Florence, Venice, Barcelona, Madrid, Athens, Mykonos and Santorini, and get paid for doing so. Emma Davies gets paid to travel too. She put her teaching career on hold and signed up to crew a super yacht around the Australia, New Zealand and the Polynesian Islands. She sent her entry in from her super yacht!
• Mike McDonagh missed his package holiday departure to Spain because of a motorway accident, but instead of admitting defeat and going home, he quickly realised he would not be the only person to miss a departure that day. He waited patiently at the airport to see if anyone else failed to check in. As luck would have it, another couple failed to turn up for a Greek Island cruise. A very canny Mike convinced the travel rep to convert his half board package holiday to Spain into an all-inclusive cruise around the Greek Islands – at no extra charge. Apparently it rained in Spain all week, while Mike and his wife enjoyed glorious sunshine in the Greek Islands.
• And finally, the most shocking entry and one Travelzoo absolutely cannot endorse. A British woman, who wishes to remain unnamed, found out that a male acquaintance could no longer travel on a non-refundable, non-transferrable airline ticket worth £800. Instead of letting the ticket go to waste, she changed her name by deed poll and applied for a new passport in the name of her male acquaintance. This allowed her to travel with a valid passport that matched the name on the ticket. She then changed her name back when she got back from holiday.

The search for Britain’s Savviest Traveller will run until Friday, 9 July, 2010. Entrants are asked to describe in under 300 words why they are Britain’s Savviest Traveller. The 50 most-viewed entries will be reviewed by Travelzoo’s panel of travel deal experts who will select a winner based on their originality, creativity and a canny ability to uncover a deal. The winner will hold the title of Britain’s Savviest Traveller 2010 and will receive a dream holiday for two from luxury travel provider Mark’s Travel.

To claim the title of Britain’s Savviest Traveller or read more than 1,000 entries from across the UK, visit http://www.travelzoo.com/uk/savvytraveller and go to Travelzoo’s Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/Travelzoo.UK to learn more.

About Travelzoo
Travelzoo Inc. is a global Internet media company. With 20 million subscribers in North America, Europe, and Asia Pacific and 20 offices worldwide, Travelzoo® publishes deals from more than 2,000 travel and entertainment companies. Travelzoo's deal experts review offers to find the best deals and confirm their true value. In Asia Pacific, Travelzoo is independently owned and operated by Travelzoo (Asia) Ltd. and Travelzoo Japan K.K. under a license agreement with Travelzoo Inc.

About Travelzoo in Europe
Travelzoo has operated in Europe since 2005. Travelzoo’s European media properties, which reach more than 4 million travel enthusiasts in France, Germany, Spain and the UK, include the Travelzoo Top 20® email newsletter, the Newsflash™ email alert service, the Travelzoo® websites (http://www.travelzoo.fr, http://www.travelzoo.de, http://www.travelzoo.es, http://www.travelzoo.co.uk), the Travelzoo Network™, and the SuperSearch™ search tool, and the Fly.com™ search engine.

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