In order to help out all the thousands of gamers descending upon Indianapolis, Indiana in August for Gen Con Indy 2010, the Gen Con team has partnered with Expedia to create the Gen Con Travel Support site.
From the news release:
Gen Con LLC has partnered with Expedia Affiliate Network (EAN) to provide attendees with a convenient, reliable, and affordable means of arranging their personal travel. The new service is dubbed “Gen Con Travel Support”, and can be accessed online on the right-hand sidebar of the Gen Con Indy Home Page. Users of the new site will enjoy the convenience of booking a broad selection of flights, rental cars, travel packages, and supplemental lodging.
Gen Con Travel Support runs on the Expedia search engine, so anything Expedia has access to (and they are one of the biggest travel websites) you should be able to get access to through this site as well. This is an affiliate site, so anything you book through the Gen Con Travel Support site gives a percentage of the sale to Gen Con LLC.
So what can you get via this Gen Con Travel Support site? Air tickets, rental cars and “alternate housing,” meaning hotel rooms outside of the Gen Con housing block and subject to regular hotel rates for the dates.Rooms at special Gen Con rates must be booked via the Gen Con Housing Bureau; you will need the housing access code provided at the time of registration in order to book inside the Gen Con block (though those rooms sold out at record time back at the beginning of the year).
If you need to book airfare and rental cars for your trip/stay at Gen Con, give it a whirl.
Note: I am of mixed feelings here because I like Gen Con and want to see them continue to succeed, but I have no desire to support Expedia. I have had a couple of really bad experiences with them in the past 8 years (as in leaving-me-stranded-in-Ireland-with-no-way-to-get-back-home bad) and neither use them myself nor recommend them to anyone. Granted, there are thousands out there who have used Expedia with no issue whatsoever, so it’s up to you to make the decision to use them.
These days, I fly mostly for work. For that I’m required to use a government online system. You’d be amazed how poorly designed it is and how often reserved tickets are just never booked.
For personal travel I prefer to drive (air travel is such a pain). But when I have needed airline tickets, I either go directly to the airline web sites, or use Orbitz. I’ve never had a problem with Orbitz and I like how they display flight options.
I tend to use Kayak to get a feel for the price ranges, but 95% of the time, I end up buying directly from the airline. In my case, I made a decision to stick to American as much as possible in order to maximize the miles/points I get in my frequent flyer program. Living in the bottom tip of Florida makes driving anywhere a laughable option, so flying remains my main mode of connectivity with the world for the most part.