I like to take so many vacations that I really need to economize to be able to afford them! The trick is to save money on getting there and sleeping accommodations so that you have more cash to spend on the fun stuff.. like beer drinking and touring! Over the last few years I’ve found a few sites that I routinely use to find the best travel deals. I’ve assembled the top few sites I use to book my trips and added a little bit of info about each below.
Kayak
A great travel search engine that should meet all of your airline, hotel and rental car needs. It particularly excels in air travel in my opinion.
Why I like it: It seems more no-nonsense than Orbitz, Priceline, Expedia, Travelocity, etc. It seems like the coders really care and it has a pretty cool Google-like feel to it. The FAQs and other documents on the site are written in a pretty happy go-lucky manner and the site seems like it’s always adding new features. For the insecure types it also let you view Kayak results next to other major search engines as well.
BiddingForTravel and BetterBidding (for Priceline)
These are two really cool sites that let you ‘hack’ the Priceline and Hotwire systems. Both of these sites are basically just message boards that contain information regarding hotels and bidding strategies for Priceline and Hotwire. They also help you determine what hotel you are actually booking when looking at the blind hotels on Hotwire and have listing of hotels by area in Priceline. People also post winning Priceline bid information that helps provide a little guidance when you try to book a hotel in a given city.
Why I like it: These sites are great money savers. I use them all of the time to snag some great hotel rates when traveling with friends. I’ve used the sites to find information on hotels all over the world. I’ve booked some great deals in Amsterdam, Berlin and Chicago. Once I was even able to book the Waldorf in New York, but an unfortunate delay at the airport meant I missed out on the reservation. The users on these sites are great as well! It’s like everyone is in on a big secret and love helping other people out saving ducats.
Skyscanner
This is a great site for searching discount airlines in Europe. It has a ton of flexible options including weekend searches and my personal favorite: departing airport searches. I used this tool extensively during the summer of 2006 to book over a dozen weekend trips. The departing airport searches will show you every destination country from your selected airport and the price to fly to there. I used this to set up a huge matrix of the different countries my friends and I wanted to visit and after crunching numbers we easily came up with the cheapest itinerary to cover about 15 countries that summer. It’s great for planning last minute trips as well!
Why I like it: This is a spiffy tool for planning trips when you know you want to go somewhere but have no idea where! Just let the tool decide for you as it displays a list of countries you can visit and the corresponding price. It also covers budget airlines in detail, something a lot of the major sites don’t do. Lastly, it checks the prices for you automatically to make sure they’re up to date. Once you’re ready to book it punches you out to the airline site and you’re good to go!
Hostelworld
Another site I found during European Blitz during summer of 2006. Pick the country and city, provide a date and *poof* you are presented with a list of hostels in the area. It lets you book directly on the site which is an added bonus. Also, you just have to pay a deposit of about 15% at the time of booking, very convenient. The list of hostels is very extensive and the photos and reviews of each are great tools when trying to decide where you want to stay. Hostelworld also provides cool little travel guides for a lot of the cities on their site, an added bonus! They’re pretty good too!
Why I like it: The reviews on the site are priceless. I often sort on the rating of the hostels in a given city versus the price. The hostels on the site often have dozens, even hundreds of reviews and tidbits of information from fellow broke-ass travelers. Oftentimes I’ll even use the site as a reference guide, then contact the hostel directly to secure even better rates!
With my travel secrets out, I expect to see more of you Newly Corporate types outside of the office and off vacationing in Europe. If you save a few bucks, be sure to stop by London to buy me a beer to thank me for the financial relief 
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