In terms of execution: the formfields should be on top of the page. Put the "your email" field at the bottom. You want people to start thinking about what to enter in those fields. You need to put less text on the homepage, or lay it out better visually so it doesn't feel so much as a wall of text.
For SEO: you could start publishing recommendations/tips (after they were paid for) on aggregated pages too, to get people to link to those, and to show what your value is before people actually use you.
You can probably rewrite a lot of that homepage, make it shorter and convert better.
I like the "Got an awesome deal? we'll find you a better one for $10" approach. ie: encourage people to find the best deal they can find on expedia etc, then get them a better deal. One way of doing it would be to take that approach and build your homepage around that (instead of just making it a sentence in between other sentences). I would imagine that would convert very well.
Minor UI nits:
- your value proposition is in the "it's XXX but you can get there for YYY". Put that front and center and give it a better visual treatment than the insufficiently anti-aliased black sans ;)
- the $10 sleeve makes you think hard where it's at right now. Move everything related to $10 only in one spot. The entire copy under "EXPERIENCED TRAVELERS HELP YOU SAVE TIME AND MONEY" could be compressed to a couple bullet points.
- "How do we do it" doesn't need to be on the front page - it distract from the goal of getting me to try
