Aqua Palms & Spa pool, Waikiki.

I was fascinated to see that Travelzoo’s top three hotel deals in Hawaii feature two hotels that my husband and I stayed in on our recent trip. The third is a direct competitor, very close to another hotel we stayed in.

This is not so surprising as it might seem. We reserved all three hotels through Priceline’s blind bidding, and the hotels offering the best deals through Priceline are likely to be offering discounts elsewhere.

In each case, we paid less through Priceline than the deals featured on Travelzoo or the hotel’s website. But bidding through Priceline has its own uncertainties. You can never be sure of what hotel you’ll get — just the quality rating and area. And you have to pay in advance, with no refunds.

So we paid $60 per night for the Aqua Palms & Spa in Waikiki, compared to the $69 deal promoted on Travelzoo. The Travelzoo deal included an IHOP breakfast that ours rate did not.

We paid $82 a night for the Hyatt Regency Waikiki Beach Resort & Spa, compared to $149 via Travelzoo.

We paid $90 a night (plus $15 a night for parking) at the Hapuna Beach Prince resort on the Big Island of Hawaii, a competitor to the nearby Waikoloa Beach Marriott Resort & Spa, promoted on Travelzoo at $169 (plus $20 resort fee).

You can take two lessons from this, I suppose. One would be that Priceline’s name-your-own-price blind bidding feature will usually but not always yield a considerably lower rate than the best published rate. Another would be that if you’re uncomfortable with the uncertainties that attend blind bidding, you may still be able to find a good deal at the same hotels.

Just posted my new photo gallery of Waikiki and Honolulu. Have a look.

Waikiki.

I’m returning to Hawaii in January for my fifth visit, and I’ll be sure to hear about it from envious friends and readers. But when I ask them whether they’ve been to Hawaii, they’ll tell me it’s too far away and too expensive.

Well, it hasn’t gotten any closer. It still requires an eight- or nine-hour flight from the East Coast. But it has gotten cheaper, and I’m going to share some tips on how to enjoy Hawaii at a minimal cost.

Hawaii’s tourism industry is suffering terribly, with 8.2 percent fewer visitors so far this year than last year — which was already off from 2007, the Associated Press reports. And those visitors are staying for shorter periods and spending less.

In response, hotels and resorts have slashed prices.  Air fare bargains also have been popping up, though more sporadically. I flew to Honolulu from Bradley in May for $400, round-trip, all taxes and fees included. My husband and I are returning in January for an unbelievable $256 round-trip from Newark.

So, if you think that you might like endless sunshine, beaches, palm trees and a laid-back vibe, now would be a good time to plan your trip to Hawaii. Here are my ideas on how to do it at the lowest possible cost:

- Time it. Plan to go in the next six to 12 months because hotel rates, air fares and other costs will rise when the economy recovers. Look particularly at the slow periods between Thanksgiving and Christmas and in the last three weeks of January for bargains.

- Watch it. Keep an eye on air fares through airfarewatchdog.com or your favorite booking engine or metasearch site. When you see a deal, act quickly. When we got tickets for our January trip, the super-low fare was available only for a day or so, and only from Newark

- Consider award tickets. If you have frequent-flier miles, a trip to Hawaii can be one of the best deals you can get with them. You must be flexible, however, as award seats can be scarce. Instead of checking to see whether seats are available when you want to go, try wanting to go when seats are available.

- Shop hard for a hotel. I recommend booking a hotel well in advance at a refundable rate. Check the hotel’s Web site frequently and if you see a lower rate, cancel and rebook. If you like four-star hotels and fancy resorts, wait until about a week before departure and start bidding on Priceline or booking through Hotwire‘s opaque search engine. Beach resorts have been going for less than $100 a night through these services.

- Consider Honolulu. The capital of Hawaii is the most livable city of more than 1 million people that I have ever seen. It has pleasant beaches, great nightlife and a relaxed feel. Oahu’s public bus system is excellent, and will even take you on a 45-minute ride to the magnificent snorkeling at Hanauma Bay, saving you the cost of renting a car. And if you stay on Oahu, you don’t have to buy interisland flights.

- Consider a condominium rental. Many people keep condominiums as second homes in Hawaii and rent them out to visitors. The can be excellent bargains, particularly for families or larger groups. Some condo owners advertise discounts on Craig’s List, though I’m more comfortable if they also have listings with an established site such as vrbo.com.

- Educate yourself. Visit the excellent Beat of Hawaii blog to learn about deals, destinations and insider details.

Coincidentally, I was there just last week. If you click on the photo below, you can see some more of my pictures from the bay:

Hanalei Pier

The annual beach award is a little bit contrived. Previous winners are retired so that a new beach can be named each year. It’s all for a good cause — to raise awareness and support for beach conservation.

Hanalei Bay is an excellent choice, a beautiful two-mile stretch of sand with minimal development. My husband dislikes the concrete pier at one end of the beach, but I enjoy walking out on it.

I made a trip to Hanalei Bay one of my top priorities when I got to Kauai last week. When I arrived I found people swimming long-distance across the bay, fishing on the pier, surf paddling, sailing, doing tai-chi on the beach. Yet the bay is so big it never seems crowded.

I walked from one end of the bay to the other, stopped to do a yoga lesson with help from my iPod, swam and soaked in the placid, clear Pacific and swam across the gentle, refreshing Hanalei River. It was truly idyllic.

I had declined all  insurance when I reserved the Jeep online. But when I arrived, the agent at the desk asked whether I wanted the “minimal coverage” or more comprehensive coverage. He didn’t ask whether I wanted to decline the extra coverage, although he had my reservation specifiying just that in front of him.

Tired after three flights, I didn’t pick on the manipulative phraseology. I told him I’d take the minimal coverage — I meant that I wanted none of the extra insurance — and he punched up a contract with $11-a-day CDW included.

When I started to sign the contract, I noticed the price had increased from $250 to $330. I figured out what had happened, and asked the agent to remove the CDW.

And that didn’t make him happy. He launched into a very long hard sell, the likes of which I have never heard anywhere when renting a car. I rented three vehicles from Thrifty during a Hawaiian cruise last year, without the CDW, and got no such pressure.

The agent pointed out, truthfully, that there are deductibles and gaps in the coverage provided by my own auto insurance and by my credit card. But he went way over the top, telling me that if anything happened to the Jeep, I’d have to pay for it all up front, that parts would have to be shipped from the mainland, and that I’d be liable for any “depreciation” if the vehicle was less valuable after repairs. He also alleged that my insurance would not cover damage to another vehicle in a collision.

“That’s why most people get this coverage,” he said, again and again and again. “For the peace of mind,” he said, again and again and again.

Now, among the many things my mother taught me is that just because everybody else is doing something doesn’t mean it’s a good idea. I’ve also learned that whenever someone claims to be selling me “peace of mind,” I’m being extorted.

Consider that $11 a day would be more than $4,000 a year, more than five times the cost of my own auto insurance. And this is for  supplemental coverage, kicking in to cover only what my own insurance and credit card would not.

I didn’t bring any of that up with the agent. I just steadfastly insisted — several times because the agent simply repeated his “warnings” and kept asking if I was sure I wanted to waive the CDW — that he remove it from the contract. He dropped the smiley demeanor he’d first greeted me with, but he finally did as I asked.

This dent was hard to see, with the Jeep parked up against a fence in the dark.

Two other things bugged me about my treatment by this Alamo office. I was told to inspect the Jeep  — at night with the bumper up against a fence — and note any damage on a form.

Only when I got to my destination did I see a substantial dent in the front bumper. I called Alamo and got a (very friendly) agent who told me she’d make a note of the damage and not to worry about it. But when I returned the vehicle, the extraordinarily surly check-in agent questioned me sharply about it and sent me inside to straighten it out with a (very pleasant) clerk.

In the end, the clerk acknowledged that the damage to the bumper had already been recorded and I went on my way.
 
Another annoyance was the key chain, which had a note on it reading, “Minimum Key Replacement Cost: $250.” This for a single key with no electronic chip, and without a remote door opener? Ridiculous.

Years ago, Alamo was my rental agency of choice, offering reasonable prices to leisure travelers at popular vacation destinations. As of now, it’s my last choice.

A little give and take along a right of way to Secret Beach in Kilauea.

For the past six days I’ve been going to the beach, all over Kauai.

I  drive up, park, get out of the car and hit the sand. There is no admission charge and no parking fee — ever. Hawaii is like that. Even where there are no public parking lots or bathrooms, public access trails are well-maintained.

A woman I know who’s lived here all her life said she was astonished when she went to California and found that people have to pay to go to the beach. In New England, too, there are charges to use the local, state and national beaches in the summer.

But what if there was no charge? What if we did as Hawaii does, and maintained parking areas and facilities for all residents and visitors? No private beaches. No fees.

Wouldn’t that be good for all of us, residents, tourists, business people?

“Mesa succeeded in inflicting great harm, not only upon the Aloha corporate entities, but also upon thousands of Aloha employees and their families,” Judge Lloyd King  wrote. … “It is difficult to imagine a court overlooking what Mesa has done and putting its stamp of approval on Mesa’s subsidiary, go!, becoming Aloha.”

In other words: I knew Aloha Airlines, I flew Aloha Airlines and you are no Aloha Airlines.

A price war with go! in the Hawaiian interisland market is widely blamed for driving Aloha out of business. That bitter history is one reason to block the appropriation of the name.

Another is that allowing go! to pretend to Aloha’s 80 years of interisland flying experience would be misleading to the public. As a pilot recently pointed out to me about commuter airlines flying under the brands of the major airlines, customers have a right to know exactly whose plane they’re getting on.

Tunnels Beach, on the North Shore of Kauai.

You can see more photos here.

I don't need no stinkin' mat!

Yesterday I had a private yoga lesson on the beach on Kauai, followed by an ocean-view  lunch of steak and salad. Sounds expensive, but it wasn’t.

The yoga lesson was delivered by my iPod — from the Gentle Yoga series by Rudy Peirce — on a sandbar on Hanalei Bay. I grilled the steak myself at a county beach, with some match-light charcoal from the local Foodland store. Then I went snorkeling.

Hawaii’s beaches are free. No entry fee. No parking fee. No fee to use the bathrooms, or the grills. And nobody looks askance at a middle-aged lady doing a few asanas on a sandbar.

All the more reason to take two minutes to fill out a form to get a Foodland discount card. So I did.

I’ve done this before when staying in accommodations with a kitchen, where I do my own cooking and end up shopping in an unfamiliar supermarket chain. It doesn’t take long to fill out the form, and it can save a few bucks.

Today, it saved me $5. On Kauai, that’ll get you a whole cookie!