We love to travel but don’t have tons of money to do it. I’ve visited dozens of travel sites and used plenty of apps while planning our trips over the past few years to Toronto, western Massachusetts, South Carolina, Asheville, Dayton, New York City, Puerto Rico, and a two-week cross-country road trip. Here are the ones I’ve found most useful:
Flights
KAYAK Explore: This site is coolest. It’s an interactive map that you can use to find fare rates. Want to see where you can go for less than $500 in the summer? Done.
Hipmunk: My favorite user interface of any travel website, I think. You can search by specific dates or get price graphs. The search results are very visual and easily sortable by duration, time, agony, and more.
Bing Travel Price Predictor: The idea behind the price predictor is really cool – it advises you whether to buy or wait on the airfare you’re stalking. I’m not sure how accurate it is, but I use it nonetheless.
(We book all our car rentals from our car insurance provider. Most affordable rates I’ve found.)
Hotels
Trip Advisor: Hundreds of reviews to scour and I like being able to search for hotels with certain amenities like a pool or free parking.
Oyster: This isn’t available in every city and doesn’t have every hotel, but it’s a great source for a summary of all the reviews in a simple pros-and-cons format. Save your time and just read these, Ashley. (Except I can’t. I will still read every review I can get my hands on. I have a PROBLEM.)
Airbnb: Rental properties are a great way to save money on vacation! We snagged a beautiful two-bedroom apartment in San Juan for a mere $100 a night over Christmas when all the hotels in the area raised their rates to $300 and $400. Not only did we save money, it was also nice to have a little more space to ourselves. And an apartment enables you to cook your own food, saving more money. I loved using airbnb, because it was easier to contact the hosts, read reviews, and check availability than on other similar sites like VRBO or Homeaway. It also seemed to have more updated listings than those sites (I saw a few apartments in San Juan that said the availability calendar was last updated in 1997 on Homeaway!) The user interface is easy to use and beautiful. I was able to search by amenities and on the map for a good location.
The hotel’s website: If I know where I want to stay (by using Trip Advisor and Oyster), I usually can find the best price and package options on the website itself. Plus, there is more flexibility on the part of the hotel when you book directly with them .We got a room in a resort in Puerto Rico for just $129, which included a breakfast that wasn’t on any of the hotel sites. And our hotel in Toronto was cheaper on the hotel’s site than any other site (and since they knew it was Mike and Gabe’s birthdays that weekend, they LEFT I’ve mostly stopped using hotel deal sites unless I don’t care as much where I stay.
Hotwire: For when I am flexible about where I’m staying, but want to save money. Hotwire doesn’t tell you what exact hotel you are booking, just the general area it will be in, the amenities it has, and was percent of visitors would recommend it. We recently used this to book a hotel for our staycation in Cleveland – we snagged a 3-star hotel for $68 a night. It was going for $160 on their website for the same weekend. WIN. Most of the time, though, I care too much about the location to use Hotwire. I want to be able to choose exactly where we stay based on my obsessive review reading.
Eating & Doing Stuff
Yelp: When traveling, at least domestically and in Puerto Rico, Yelp has been a lifesaver. I use it to search for and bookmark places to try before our trip and to find places nearby while we’re traveling. I love that I can filter to find places that are currently open when we’re looking for coffee in the morning and get directions in the app while we’re walking. I wish it was searchable by attributes (namely: if it’s good for kids), but it’s absolutely perfect aside from that.
Trip Advisor: I always take look at their list of Things to Do where we’re going and that helps inform our plans. Again, more reviews to read and obsess over!
Frommer’s and Fodor’s: Okay, this is old school, because I actually like to get the BOOKS. I know, right? I’m so old-fashioned. ;) I check the book out from the library (most recent edition possible) and like to keep one in our bag with us while we’re out and about. The itineraries are great – you can choose a 2-day, 3-day, or 4-day trip and figure out what the can’t miss things are.
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The only thing I haven’t figured out is if we should get a travel credit card or some sort of reward program (aside from belonging to all the airline ones). I don’t think we travel often enough or full-price enough to reap the benefits, but let me know if I’m missing out on something great!
Nice list. I’d add a few…
I like WikiTravel for getting a good overview of a city I’m visiting (it’s better for big cities than small cities).
I like Hipmunk in theory, though like all of the airfare comparison websites, it doesn’t include Southwest which makes it virtually useless to me. One upside is that it is very helpful for planning Amtrak trips.
I used to always book hotels by comparison shopping, using Hotwire, Priceline, etc. I recently joined Kimtpon InTouch and book exclusively with them when possible. The rates are rarely the lowest around, but their hotels are top-notch in terms of quality and the perks of being in their loyalty program have proven extremely worth it (wine reception every evening in the lobby, $10 free at the minibar each stay, and they recently gave us a complimentary bottle of champagne and cupcakes for my birthday!).
I love this post. I LOVE traveling too but I always want to do it as cheaply as possible (without staying in a dump obviously haha). I have been a huge fan of tripadvisor for years and I definitely stalk it before all trips. I also use kayak a lot. I’m right now going to check out your house/apartment rental site. I LOVE renting apartments because having a kitchen/space saves SO much money and I hate eating out every single meal anyways. I usually use homeaway though, so I’m interested to see what I can find on your site. I have used homeaway to book two houses, and just used it to book an apartment in DC for April. I am still looking for places for a summer trip though so I definitely need it!
I also still use books! I take out the Eyewitness books from the library and look at all the pictures before I go anywhere! :)
Thanks for posting these great app ideas, Ashley. Working for DISH requires that I travel all over the world, so I am always on the lookout for apps to help make life in the air a little easier; I will give Oyster and Trip Advisor next time I am out of town. While I am here, I would like to recommend some travel entertainment as well. I get stuck in a lot of flight delays and layovers, and I use DISH Anywhere to pass the time. It streams all of my live TV channels or DVR recordings to my phone, so I always have a great way to pass the time whenever one of those unexpected waits come up.
I just time sucked half my night on airbnb haha, oops- great site though! Also I forgot to mention that I have a Capital One Travel rewards credit card. When I first got it, I didn’t love it because like you said, you don’t usually get the best deal when booking through their website and it would annoy me to pay more (even if it was technically in rewards). However, now they have this new “travel purchase eraser” where you can get credit for previously paid for travel. So for example, a few weeks ago Eric and I stayed over at a hotel in NH. I got a good deal and booked directly through the hotel. Then, the next day I went on my credit card and erased the purchase with points :) Pretty awesome. I know having a cash back card is probably similar but if I get the cash I’ll end up spending it on something else so I like spending it on travel :)
Great resources list, definitely ones I already use! I don’t mind signing-up for hotel reward cards, the free ones, but I don’t like signing up credit cards because sometimes they have yearly fees and sometimes I just dont’ want to keep track of so many cards. We’d rather put all of our money on one card and reap the rewards from it instead of spreading our spending thin.
Thank you so much for doing this post when you did. I’m currently trying to plan my husband and my Ireland Honeymoon so it couldn’t have come at a better time. I’ve already started scouring Airbnb for places to stay.
And don’t worry, I bought 3 different books from Barnes & Noble to take with us on our trip. You’re not alone!
Oh, have so much fun!!
This is a GREAT summary, one which I plan to reference as we plan our trip to Europe later this year! One thing I will add is the airfare websites are a great start, but like your strategy with hotels (eventually booking on the hotel’s website), I find that the airline’s websites are usually a few dollars less for the same flights than any of the travel websites.
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Oh, this is extremely helpful. I am going to San Jose this weekend and was looking for a few things to do. Thanks so much.
Hey great list! These are all very interesting since I love to travel and I can’t wait to travel next month with my kids. It would be there first time to ride on a plane and I think I can show them this to somehow orient them with things about traveling. Thanks for sharing this post!