Travel Deals, Reviews and Resources
Below is a collection of websites that I have found both helpful and fun for business and personal travel. To recommend another site for this page, please contact me.
| Travel Research & Tools |
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Trip Advisor (www.tripadvisor.com)
Trip Advisor offers unbiased user generated reviews for travelers. The site has over ten million traveler reviews and opinions of hotels, vacations and more. It's a particularly good resource for learning about what to ask for and avoid at certain hotels (ie the room on the noisy street). It's usually the first site we check before deciding in a place to stay. |
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Yapta (www.yapta.com)
Yapta tracks fluctuations in airline ticket prices, similar to a stock ticker and notifies you when a ticket you have already purchased or are interested in buying drops in price, so you can get the best deal. If you have already purchased a ticket, Yapta will tell you how to contact the airline to for a refund or will make the request automatically. I saved $80 the first time I tried it. Couldn't have been easier. |
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Seat Guru (www.seatguru.com)
I love this site and use it all the time. Seat Guru helps you find the best seats and seats to avoid on any type of aircraft for each airline. Their custom seat maps show which seats are noisy, don't recline, have extra legroom, etc. Each seat map is specific to both the carrier and the type of plane. |
| Travel Search
Engines |
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Kayak (www.kayak.com)
A very cool site which shows you best the possible prices based on
your preferences from many different travel websites. Kayak.com searches for flights, hotels, and other deals from hundreds of travel sites, and you compare deals and choose where to buy from. You can specify price range, location, quality, and get personalized results. |
| Advanced
Booking / Online Travel Agents |
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Orbitz (www.orbitz.com)
One of the better overall online travel sites. Does a great job of
showing you options based on your preferences and usually has the
lowest advance purchase prices. They often have great last-minute travel deals and vacation packages. |
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Cheap Tickets (www.cheaptickets.com)
One of the original discount airfare aggregators, Cheap Tickets now
offers great prices on pretty much everything that requires a booking, including train tickets, live events, car rentals, and cruises. |
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Travelocity (www.travelocity.com)
Travelocity is similar to Cheaptickets with bookings for everything. A nice feature is that you can search for events by date in the area you're traveling to, and they even give you ideas on what to do during your vacation. |
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Hotels.com (www.hotels.com)
Hotels.com offers a great service for booking both domestic and international accommodations. While they also have flight packages, the focus is on finding the best accommodation based on your interests, whether its B&B, hostels, or resort packages. They also offer group bookings for weddings, business meetings, etc. |
| Last Minute
Travel Deals & E-Savers |
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Last
Minute Travel (www.lastminutetravel.com)
Great site for a variety of last minute travel deals including hotel, airfare, and activities. They sort deals by what type of trip you're looking for at the price you want to pay. Whether its a wining and dining excursion in NYC or helicopter lessons in Dallas, they have packages for thrill seekers and luxury connoisseurs alike. |
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Smarter
Travel (www.smartertravel.com)
Subscribe to Smartertravel and get an aggregated list of weekly last
minute airfare specials (e-savers). They also offer editors' picks of vacations to take and places to stay in addition to travel guides, advice, and specialty travel such as student discounts. |
| Advance Booking Travel Discounts |
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Priceline (www.priceline.com)
Ability to name your own price and bid on tickets, hotel rooms, cars, etc.
You won’t know who the service provider is until your price
is accepted. Some flights may have multiple connections, so make sure
your schedule is flexible. Great for booking hotels and rentals in your price range, and you can be confident that you'll get a well-known brand. |
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Hotwire (www.hotwire.com)
Same principal as Priceline, except you can see the price, but not
the vendor. Once you agree to the price, you will be given the details. I would recommend using this mostly for hotels and car rentals. They also have some interesting features such as TripStarter, which is a program that shows you the best times to travel to different destinations, and Travel Value Index, which shows the easiest ways to stretch a dollar in different cities. |
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For
both of the above sites (Priceline and Hotwire), check out www.betterbidding.com.
It’s a very cool site where people post the actual prices paid
and service received on Priceline and Hotwire so you can make a more
educated bid or purchase. |
| Direct Owner Rentals & Worldwide Travel |
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Rent Me A Vacation (www.rentmeavacation.com)
Find great properties to rent worldwide listed directly by owners. Often much cheaper than comparable options. You can search by country, property type, price, and location compared to other options. |
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Cyber Rentals (www.cyberrentals.com)
Same as above, except with more focus on rentals within the US. |
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Just Landed (www.justlanded.com)
JustLanded.com is an online guide to world travel and living. To date, they feature complete travel guides to 31 different countries with advice on healthcare, insurance, housing, language, and everything else you need to know when moving to or working in a new country. |
About This Page
The internet has changed travel, but it’s also made it overwhelming. There are almost too many discount travel websites out there for air travel, travel deals, travel tips and cheap travel. Another popular category of sites is last minute travel, with many sites e-mailing you mid-week for last minute travel deals, often pitching travel insurance or AAA travel. Gear reviews include Travelpro luggage reviews, Eagle Creek Luggage and backpack reviews as well as North Face backpack reviews. Check back every few weeks for new additions. Recent additions include the Yapta review, Kayak review, Hotels.com review, Trip Advisor Review, Seat Guru review.
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