A Fistful of Deals From Madrid to Machu Picchu

Travel may not be the world’s largest industry, but it’s certainly one of the most active. Each week, the thousands of companies that compete for your travel dollar produce new prices and programs that can affect your next vacation. Here are some significant developments from just the past few weeks.

* Hotwire.com, a Web site owned and operated by six large airlines to compete with Priceline.com, is up and running. With Hotwire, you name the city you wish to go to and the dates of your trip. In less than a minute, Hotwire responds with a discount price that’s acceptable to the airlines. In other words, you don’t propose that cut-rate price as with Priceline; the airlines propose the price. If it’s acceptable, you so indicate and then learn the identity of the airline and the time and routing of your flight.

* It’s not news when tour operators to Italy offer winter packages to Rome and Florence at $599 per person, double occupancy, for transatlantic air fare and five nights’ lodging. Now there’s a similar opportunity for Madrid and Barcelona, also for $599 from New York (add $120 more for L.A. departures and $55 in airport fees) but for only a three-night stay. Although that isn’t as attractive as the Italian packages, you can extend your stay for $38 more per person per extra night and enjoy a week in Madrid and Barcelona, including air fare from New York, for about $699 (add $160 more for departures from L.A. and $60 in airport fees)--still a good price. It’s from Central Holidays, telephone (800) 935-5000, Internet https://www.centralholidays.com.

* Although air-and-land packages to London are heavily advertised, it’s possible to buy cut-rate air tickets to London without purchasing hotel and other arrangements. A company called Ireland/U.K. Consolidated, tel. (800) 577-2900, recently announced a range of breathtaking winter fares to the British Isles, as low as $397 between Los Angeles and London until March 31 (Christmas holidays excepted). There are similar cut-rate fares to Glasgow, Dublin, Edinburgh, Manchester, Bristol, Newcastle and Plymouth.

* Although everyone agrees about the need for an organization that will find travel companions for single people, one such group after another has stumbled and gone out of business. Most have catered to people of post-retirement age. Now younger travelers have the promise of Internet help in finding travel companions. On https://www.travelchums.com you fill out a member profile, including your travel desires, and high-tech electronics put you in touch with a suitable companion.

* There’s a boom in travel to Peru, resulting from an intense air price war and increased interest in Machu Picchu, the Lost City of the Incas. In just two months, the cost of air-and-land packages to all the Peruvian highlights has fallen to $944 from Los Angeles. That covers round-trip air fare to Lima, with two nights there, and five nights in historic Cuzco, from which you’ll visit Machu Picchu. The price is valid from January through April with the Intervac tour company, tel. (800) 401-5897.

* I can’t think of a more delightful holiday activity than hiking around the hills and lochs of Scotland, and an inexpensive way to do so is with a quasi-public organization called HF Holidays of Britain. On periodic dates throughout the winter and then continually, starting in April, HF Holidays will be operating its eight-night “Rover Tour” in Scotland, supplying you with accommodations at a country-house hotel, a three-course dinner each evening, a massive Scottish breakfast each morning and a picnic lunch each day, as well as guided hiking. All this costs $628 plus air fare. You’ll find all the details at https://www.hfholidays.co.uk.

* There’s so much discounting in the cruise industry that I hesitate to single out bargains. But I’ll make an exception for four successive weekly sailings of the elegant Norwegian Majesty from San Juan, Puerto Rico. If you contact the consolidator Galaxsea Cruises, tel. (800) 662-5450, you can buy those seven-night cruises in January for as little as $364 per person, plus $137 in port charges, for an inside cabin, double occupancy. Galaxsea will also help you with cut-rate air fares to San Juan to pick up the ship.