Cheap Flight Search

Sitting in a dreary London hotel room wishing you were in the South of France?

Check out the options for cheap flights at skyscanner.net, an online search engine that includes Ryanair and other European discounters in the search results.

The site offers some cool tools like a quick start guide, cheap flights map, and a whole month option.

Not too picky about the destination?  Try the everywhere search to find a bunch of bargain travel suggestions.

Listings for cars and hotels are also searchable.

Exploring made Easy

Know when you want to travel but are flexible as to where?  Try Kayak’s handy travel tool, Kayak Explore.

Just plug in your departure city and time period, and Explore will display on a world map several destinations from which to choose.

Ticket prices are shown and criteria may be narrowed by budget and desired activities such as golf or skiing.

Great for browsing or for booking your next trip.

Rental Car Comparison

If you like websites that do the legwork for you, comparing prices to help find the best deals, then you will want to try vroomvroomvroom.com.

vroomvroomvroom.com  compares rates among the major US rental companies for US cities as well as some international destinations. You may book and pay for your rental directly from the site.

The Frugal Traveler  recommends it because it “is utterly intuitive and presents your options in a simple list with no bells or whistles”.

This reviewer found the site lacking when it comes to options for European rentals.  For Europe, you may want to try Kemwel.

Local Deals made Easy

Are you a fan of daily deal sites such as Groupon.com but wish you had access to deals beyond your designated city?  You may want to explore the aggregator site , Travelzoo, featured in a recent Practical Traveler column.

Rather than having to sign up for each preferred location separately and be barraged by unwanted emails offering discounts on car washes or picture framing in Orlando, Travelzoo lets you choose your destination and offers deals on services most likely to be of interest to travelers.

Other sites reviewed in the article include Dealery and Yipit.com.

Practical Traveler suggests using Travelzoo as your starting point, but visit the other two sites just to cover your bases.

Be sure to check expiration dates to confirm the deals will still be valid during your travel dates.

Hotel Reviews

A web site that has partnered with Kayak.com. It pulls information from over 200 web sites to provide hotel reviews and rates.

Search Multiple Hotel Sites with One Click!

This web site allows you to search for a hotel in one click. The results include the hotel location, daily rate and hotel reviews.

Farecast – An airfare prediction site

This is a new site that helps predict the rise and fall of airfares.

Aggregators/Meta Sites

Cheapflights www.cheapflights.com Searches multiple airline and online travel sites.

Kayak www.kayak.com partially owned by AOL. A “comparison shopping” website. Searches multiple online travel sites. Prices are listed in decending order. The least expensive is first on the list. You will be directed to the actual travel site to book your trip.

Mobissmo www.mobissmo.com International focus. Includes Asia and the Pacific online travel resources.

Qixo www.qixo.com Includes Jet Blue, Spirit and ryan Air in search results. Charges $20 per reservation.

Sidestep www.sidestep.com Comparision shopping web site.

Travel Zoo www.travelzoo.com Discount travel deals from hundreds of online travel companies throughout the world.