Travel search websites have revolutionized the entire travel industry. Sites such as Hotels.com, Priceline, Hotwire, Travelocity, Expedia, and Orbitz have put you and me in the driver's seat when it comes to booking our own travel. These may be the most popular search engines, but are they the best? As someone who loves to travel and never pays the full price for anything, I am going to give you my advice on where to look and let you in my little secret... the 3 best travel search sites you've probably never heard of.
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This is by far my favorite. It combines two great features into one site. First, it shows all of the best deals by very search friendly categories that have been researched by their team. Sometimes they are hotel deals, other times they are last minute trips to Europe, but whatever deals they are advertising on their homepage are usually hard to beat elsewhere.
They have also recently added a feature called "Supersearch", which allows you to enter your travel specifics once, and then you can search multiple recommended sites without having to re-enter your information every time (which I hate!). Plus, you can sign up to receive a weekly email that has their top 20 deals of the week which are usually quite amazing. -
This comes in a close second to Travelzoo for me. It works more like a traditional travel search engine, but it seems like time after time I am able to find better rates here than on the Travelocity and Expedia type engines. After using it a lot, it really focuses on tropical destinations such as Mexico, Jamaica, Bahamas, etc., so if that is where you are headed, make sure you try here first. The only drawback of this site is that it can load slowly at times.
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I love Kayak first for its extremely simple interface. There are not a lot of moving slide shows or pictures of places you may want to go, just a simple place to plug in your information and search. Kayak is great because it searches over 140 different travel sites to get you the best deal.
They have also added this other fun little feature that lets you see if they rates they find you are better than some of the other major sites (such as Expedia, Orbitz, etc.). Then after you have selected the item and price you want, it sends you right to the site of the provider (i.e. Delta, Alamo, etc.) to rent directly from them saving any kind of convenience or handling fee.
So next time you are looking to travel, take a break from the big travel search engines and try one of these...you might actually save some money!
