Travel Sites: Reviews

Reviewers say that the first step in researching the best air, hotel, cruise and car rental prices should be a visit to a travel search engine, and by a large margin, most reviewers identify Kayak.com as the best of the… breed. Kayak searches more than 400 airline websites, online travel agencies and other travel sites, including some international ones, to come up with the best offers. Those looking to book a flight will appreciate an interesting tool lets Kayak users find the best fares for similar routes found by other search engines. You can also get fare alerts and compare search results to other travel sites like Expedia.com. There are no booking fees (Kayak refers you to other sites to make the actual purchase).

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If you can deal with a small amount of uncertainty, Hotwire.com offers great deals on hotel stays, users and experts say. Although you won't know the name of the property or its exact location, you can select hotels based… on their ratings and general locale (though some neighborhoods are geographically large). Car deals are also blind; you'll know the price, but not the specific agency in advance. For flights, cruises and vacation packages, Hotwire.com works just like the other major booking sites.

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Yapta.com's flight search is similar to those found at other travel sites, and, like many other sites, it will track an itinerary for you and alert you when the price has dropped. However, Yapta.com earns attention for… doing something no other site does -- tracking flights after the tickets have been purchased. If a price drops enough to cover any re-ticketing or cancellation fees, Yapta.com sends out an alert -- something that's happened over 600,000 times since this past March, saving air travelers more than $160 million.

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Priceline.com's model of bidding for airfare, hotel stays and other travel does provide low prices, experts say. The catch, of course, is that you won't know precisely where you are staying or what airline you are flying… on -- or even exactly when you are leaving -- until after you've bid on and paid for your travel. That makes Priceline.com a bad fit for the business traveler, but a great resource for bargain hunters willing to put up with a little uncertainty. Like Hotwire.com, you can specify neighborhoods and hotel class, but you can still wind up with a hotel that's a bit removed from the most desirable spots. For air travel, you can specify the day, but not the time. Complaints about odd flight times, multiple connections and endless layovers have diminished now that Priceline.com offers guarantees regarding flight quality as well as price.

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With literally millions of user-written reviews, TripAdvisor.com is a great resource for learning about hotels and activities before you book. Maps and user-submitted photos are available for many locations, as well as… recommendations. Some users complain that the site isn't well organized, but stress that searching by destination will usually net you the information you seek. TripAdvisor.com is also a travel search engine that looks at online agencies, airlines and hotel chains to find the best deals.

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