16 Useful Travel Websites!

Jenny Chang / BuzzFeed

Chelsey Pippin / BuzzFeed

1. Triptease

triptease.com

At Triptease, you can browse user-provided itineraries while the site’s built-in search engine searches for the best rates and opportunities for your trip. Combining the best of professional and community travel advice, Triptease allows you to search for specific locations or use a stumbling feature to inspire your wanderlust.

Best for: Getting good deals on highly reviewed travel experiences.

2. Homestay

homestay.com

Homestay is a unique and personal accommodation option that focuses on connecting like-minded travellers with local hosts in their home. With locations around the world the Homestay.com community offers a tailor made local experience for travellers, and an equally unique and gratifying experience for hosts. Simply load up the site to browse and find the right places and people to make the most of your trip.

Best for: Planning a trip to a new or remote location so that you have built in local support, or getting to know a familiar holiday spot in a new way.

3. Skiplagged

skiplagged.com

Skiplagged helps you find the cheapest flight possible by making use of hidden city opportunities. If you want to fly from San Diego to Chicago, it’s sometimes cheaper to buy a San Diego to New York ticket with a Chicago layover, and simply not take the Chicago to New York connection. Skiplagged keeps track of these money-saving opportunities so that you can easily find the cheapest flight to your destination.

Best for: Shorter flights and one-way trips.

4. Rome2rio

rome2rio.com

Rome2rio is a super useful site that will help you take your entire travel time into consideration. Before booking your plane, train, or boat tickets, plug your home postcode and precise travel destination into the site’s interface for an accurate estimate of exactly how long your full travel time will take over several different transportation methods and routes.

Best for: Travellers on a tight schedule.

5. The Man in Seat 61

seat61.com

Seat 61 is an excellent way to find alternative transportation. If you’d rather take boats, trains, and busses than planes, look no further. Just plug in your start and end points to see what routes and methods are available to you.

Best for: European travel, backpackers and budget travellers, travellers with fear of flying.

6. Jet Lag Rooster

jetlagrooster.com

If you’re crossing time zones, Jet Lag Rooster will design a personalised sleep schedule to help you avoid jet lag on your trip. Plug your travel details in 3 days before your flight, and Jet Lag Rooster will do the rest!

Best for: International travel, business trips.

7. Black Tomato

blacktomato.com

For luxury travel experience, you must check out Black Tomato which allows you all kinds of specific options to find a travel experience tailor made for your needs. Most notable is their Unusual Holidays, sure to inspire your creativity and wanderlust.

Best for: Honeymoons, bug budget travel.

8. Responsible Travel

responsibletravel.com

Responsible Travel is a brilliant travel agency that provides environmentally conscious travel packages so that you can enjoy your holiday and preserve the earth for holidays to come. The service puts an emphasis on respecting local cultures and local environments to encourage a more tolerant and better cared for global community.

Best for: Conscious travellers.

9. iFly

ifly.com

Once you’ve booked your flights, there’s no better airport resource than iFly, which will keep you up-to-date on delays as well as give detailed information about any airport. iFly will help you plan trips between terminals, find the best places to eat and shop on a layover, and put you easily in touch with any airport’s lost and found.

Best for: Making the best of your layover!

Chelsey Pippin / BuzzFeed

10. Context Travel

contexttravel.com

For a truly informative walking tour, there’s no better resource than Context, which provides tours around the world given by prominent professors, archeologists, historians, and urban planners.

Best for: Curious tourists and history buffs.

Spotted By Locals

spottedbylocals.com

Spotted by Locals offers you a real deal travel experience. Check out 57 city guides across Europe and North America compiled from local tips to discover true gems.

Best for: Finding tucked away restaurants and less crowded activities.

11. Trover

trover.com

If Instagram and TripAdvisor had a baby, it would be the unique and lovely Trover. Trover’s interface allows users to share striking photos of their travels combined with reviews of their experiences, and is easy to browse for unique and vetted ideas as you plan your own trip.

Best for: Off-the beaten path adventures, travellers who want a local experience.

12. Peek

peek.com

Peek is the must-have itinerary planning resource. The site curates a wide variety of high quality activities to pump up your holiday, and provides exclusive city guides from celebrities and well-known tastemakers, like Adrien Grenier and Wolfgang Puck.

Best for: Foodies, fashion fans, and trend hunters.

13. Triposo

triposo.com

Triposo is an extensive travel guide covering dining, tours, and accommodations that is completely available offline, making it super useful for trips abroad.

Best for: Offline travel tips.

14. Sandeman’s New Europe

neweuropetours.eu

If you’ll be visiting one of the 18 cities serviced by Sandemans free walking tours, you mustn’t miss it. Tours are operated by local guides who work on a donation basis, and there are usually several run at each location everyday. The tours are good for getting an insider peek at famous cities, and are a great way to explore a city on a shoestring budget.

Best for: Budget travellers, students.

15. Travellr

travellr.com

Get quick and specific travel advice by using Travellr. This handy site connects you to experienced travellers for tailored advice on everything from the best places to eat, the cheapest airport shuttles, to the most customer friendly hotels and anything else you could dream up.

Best for: Honest reviews and quick advice.

16. Foodspotting

foodspotting.com

Foodspotting is useful at home and away. Find the right place to get the food you’re craving by plugging in your location and desired dish. Foodspotting then provides you a digest of nearby eateries and reviews that suit your food mood.

Best for: Foodies, impromptu travel, travelling with kids.

Booking a Cheap Flight

Plane ticket prices fluctuate constantly. There are bargains to be had if you catch them at the right time. If you’re flexible on travel dates and times and you do your research, you can book an affordable flight or even a free one.

Guide to Booking Cheap Domestic and Overseas Flights

1. Set fare alerts immediately”

Do this as soon as you know you want to travel. On sites such as Airfarewatchdog, you type in your desired trip (departure and destination cities), and they email you whenever the price drops. This is important, because specials promotion price drops can happen at any time. You don’t want to keep obsessively checking prices, do you? They take care of that….for free.

2. Check regional airlines”

Many regional airlines run very limited routes, but offer fantastic savings if you can make their routes and times work. Check these websites directly, as many of these do not show up on Priceline or other searches.

3. Be flexible which season you travel

Many people travel to Europe during the summer months (hence the term “tourist season”.) If you don’t mind a bit chillier weather, you can sometimes book flights to Europe during the off-months for dirt-cheap prices. Plus the sites aren’t as crowded.  This year, tickets to major cities in Europe during April were selling for around $500 each.  **Be aware, if you travel in reeeeally off-months, not all tourism sites or lodging places may be open.

4. Travel mid-week

In general, flights are cheaper if travel you Tuesday, Wednesday, or Saturday – The cheapest day of the week to fly is Wednesday. Flights to Europe tend to be cheaper if you fly out Monday through Wednesday.  The worst days to travel? Friday and Sunday, by far.  We’ve seen prices fluctuate four or five hundred dollars just by traveling on a Thursday instead of a Friday. If you have flexibility on travel days, you can save a ton.

5. Choose the ‘flex-days’ option on websites when pricing tickets

This will let you see the prices for the same itinerary two or three days before and after your desired travel date.

6. Book your overseas flight 8 to 10 weeks in advance

The earliest bird doesn’t always get the cheeeep ticket (corny joke, we know). A recent study showed that the cheapest domestic tickets in the US were purchased 6 weeks before takeoff. We usually book 8 weeks prior for an international flight. We have found that’s about the time that the price drops drastically for our tickets. (Note: our friend thought that the cheapest price to Italy would be if she purchased waaay in advance. She paid $1400 for her ticket. We waited until 9 weeks before our flight and paid $900.)

7. Book your flight on a Tuesday afternoon

Airlines drop their prices on Tuesday and usually raise prices throughout the week. According to research, the best time to search for ticket prices is Tuesday at 3pm EST. The worst time to buy is on Saturday evening.

8. Be flexible which city you fly into or out of

Some search engines have the options to “search nearby airports.” A group of us tried this once when traveling to Florence, Italy. Instead of flying directly there, we flew into a smaller nearby airport and then took a train to Florence. It would have saved us money….had we not taken the wrong train! We would recommend this strategy if you’re going to save a significant amount of money to make it worth your hassle.

9. Look at promotional package deals

It may seem counter-intuitive, but sometimes flight AND hotel/car package deals are actually CHEAPER than just the flights themselves. Or even just a few dollars extra. Companies make travel deals with airlines and hotels and put them together as promotional packages…and pass the savings on to you.

10. Name your own price through Priceline.com – Video tutorial below!

You may not get the exact flight times you want, but friends of ours sometimes save 30-50% on their last-minute flights by naming their own price. Check below for an overview on how to bid on Priceline or see our post on HOW TO BEAT PRICELINE bidding on tickets.

11. Consider a multi-city or open-jaw ticket

All this means is that you fly into one city and then fly out of another city to return home. We sometimes get hit with skepticism on this one. People often say, “Oh, it’s very expensive to do that!” But in reality, we’ve often priced multi-city tickets that were the same as a “normal” ticket. Why would you want an “open-jaw” ticket?

Consider this: You’re flying into Paris and wandering around Europe for two weeks. You plan to venture down to southern Italy toward the end of the trip. You could either travel all the way back up to Paris to depart for home (a day and some money spent) or just fly out of the Rome airport. Price both options and see which is best. Most times you’ll find an open-jaw option works really well if you want to travel in more of a straight line than a loop.