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The Most Trusted Travel-Review Sites

Hundreds of online platforms post traveler reviews, but only a handful police recommendations for fake or promotional content. Which ones should you rely on when planning a trip? Our expert weighs in.

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Any number of concerns are on our radar as we plan our next trip, from serious issues like how destinations are working to mitigate tourists’ environmental impact to inconveniences like months-long passport wait times. In this column, our travel expert addresses your questions about how to navigate the world. 

There are so many online review platforms out there—Google, Tripadvisor, Yelp. When I’m planning a trip and looking into hotels and activities, which one should I trust the most? —After Good Advice

Online, everyone has an opinion. Even seasoned travelers can find themselves easily led down the rabbit hole of online review platforms and come out overwhelmed.

A friend of mine was recently considering vacationing in Hawaii and interested in the Hana-Maui Resort. Five-star reviews on Tripadvisor tout the property as a 2022 Tripadvisor Travelers’ Choice winner, with comments highlighting it as “Exceptional” and a “Bungalow in Paradise,” though others cautioned, “Not Quite as Expected” and “Don’t Stay Here.”

When she looked further into the critiques, she discovered that the negative reviews complained of the lack of air-conditioning and TVs in rooms (who goes to Maui to watch TV?) and of wind and rain during their stays—the latter something no hotel could remedy. Knowing I live part-time on Maui, she reached out to see if I had any first-hand intel. The handful of negative comments on varying review sites gave her pause.

I believe nothing compares to word-of-mouth recommendations, particularly from someone who knows you and your travel tastes. My friend relayed that she and her husband were planning to use points to stay at a trio of Hyatt properties on Maui—in addition to the Hana-Maui Resort, they’d booked the Andaz in Wailea, and Hyatt Regency near Lahaina, both tony, amenity-laden areas on the south and west coasts, respectively.

The town of Hana, on the eastern side of the island, is the exact opposite: remote, undeveloped, sleepy. I knew my friend and her husband preferred the ocean to hiking, and they loved restaurants and nightlife. While I thought the Hana-Maui Resort was heaven, I knew they’d be bored to death and said as much.

“We’re not perfect, but we are constantly working to stay one step ahead of the fraudsters,” says Brian Hoyt, a spokesperson at Tripadvisor.

Trust plays a huge role in our travel decisions. When a friend who shares your tastes posts rave reviews about a hotel or restaurant on their Facebook page, you’re more likely to check it out. When we don’t have personal recommendations to go off, we tend to turn to review sites to see what others thought of it.

Online reviews can be a great tool for anyone planning trips, as well as for businesses looking to drum up interest from prospective adventure seekers. But how do you know which reviews and which platforms to trust?

Where to Find Reliable Reviews

For starters: no one site can (or should) be considered the only option. Because users are providing the information, the sites can inadvertently post misinformation, says Nick Ewen, director of content at The Points Guy, a travel-resource site that reaches over seven million people each month. It’s best to use multiple sites, as casting a wide net allows for a wide variety of perspectives.

Based on my interviews with dozens of travelers and industry veterans, including agents, hotel owners, and tour operators, Google, Tripadvisor, Trustpilot, and Yelp have the most reliable user-generated content. These companies have policies in place to ensure the trustworthiness of the reviews that appear and allow users to dispute content or to click icons within the post to flag suspicions, such as a review that’s promotional or not based on a genuine experience.

Tripadvisor , the world’s largest travel-guidance platform with more than one billion total reviews, has an investigations team of experts specializing in network forensics and fraud detection to help spot suspicious reviews. Shady posts often include review boosting, where a business owner asks someone connected to their company to sing their praises; review vandalism, in which someone tries to slander a business with negative reviews; or review optimization, which occurs when companies are paid to falsify reviews on a business’s behalf.

“We’re not perfect, but we are constantly working to stay one step ahead of the fraudsters,” says Brian Hoyt, a spokesperson at Tripadvisor. Last year, 1.3 million reviews were identified as fake and removed from the platform, and 72 percent were caught before being posted, he says.

Yelp also maintains a team of moderators who keep a hawkish eye out for companies that might be engaging in compensated or incentivized review behavior, which is strictly prohibited. In 2022, Yelp closed more than 77,400 user accounts for violating such policies. Both Google and Trustpilot, too, use software to automatically screen for fake reviews or promotional content.

Tips for Navigating Travel-Review Platforms

Even when you feel solid about a site, it doesn’t mean you’re immune to the barrage of opinions, good and bad. Here’s how to filter what you’re finding.

1. Consider When the Content Was Posted

The more recent the review, the more relevant an experience might be, but older reviews can paint a picture of more consistent experiences had by travelers over time. If reviews suddenly go from positive to less than glowing, consider whether the hotel, restaurant, or tour operator might be under new ownership. If someone is complaining about limited things to do at a resort while visiting in the off-season, that won’t apply if you’re planning to visit during peak periods, says Ewen. And remember: post-pandemic, the service industry continues to lack sufficient personnel; as a result, you might see more negative reviews than positive ones on this front.

2. Read Beyond the Stars

Everyone has different travel preferences, so take time to read the actual review closely, whether it’s a five- or one-star rating, says Ewen. “Someone might give an all-inclusive resort a one-star review because they were traveling for their honeymoon and couldn’t stand all of the families,” he says. “That’s hardly a negative if you’re traveling with your kids.”

3. Look for Consistency

Gather insight across review platforms to look for trends. If a hotel boasts high marks on multiple sites, chances are the reviews are accurate and it’s great. If it has mixed ratings, however, you may want to reconsider. Similarly, when looking at tour operators that run trips in multiple destinations, make sure you’re seeing positive reviews in all of those places but specifically where you’re headed. If, for example, its experiences in California are five-star but those in Utah and Colorado have been rated as mediocre, you might want to do more research or even call the outfitter and enquire about the inconsistency.

4. Use Search Filters to Save Time

As noted, first make sure you’re sorting remarks by most recent. Then use any other filters to zero in on things like the time of year you’re visiting (Tripadvisor has this functionality), specific mentions of amenities (Google has this), or even specific keywords you want to search, such as surfing or hiking (both Tripadvisor and Google offer this), recommends Ewen. With restaurants and hotels, he typically starts a search with Google, as it provides both the location and star rating together.

5. Take Bad Reviews with a Grain of Salt

You can’t please everyone. When I looked for comments about Yellowstone National Park, one of America’s most visited destinations, on Google Reviews visitors lamented, “There was no service and no way to update my Instagram” and “They don’t even let you touch the geysers, and there’s only black and grizzly bears no panda.” Before you write off an experience because of some bad reviews, take the time to actually read the criticism and decide whether it’s warranted. If there’s one bad review but 20 great ones, likely someone had a bad day.

It’s also worth noting whether anyone from the company responded to a negative post. “A bad review is a great opportunity to showcase your true colors,” says Melanie Fisher, an Oregon-based travel agent who also rents a property on Airbnb. “As the business owner, how you respond is very important. If you come across as rude and condescending, you are just confirming the bad review was deserving. Instead, if you respond, explaining how you couldn’t meet the customer’s needs—unsafe, unrealistic, never agreed upon, natural disaster—and you did everything in your power to make it right, others will understand more about you and your business—and in most cases respect the business more.”

Go Beyond the Reviews for Information

Tripadvisor’s forums and journalist-reported travel stories , on topics like family-friendly Greek islands and epic road trips in Ireland, can offer helpful vacation tips and trip inspiration. And take a gander at traveler- or diner-submitted photos. Yelp’s Ask the Community feature allows users to post queries for Yelpers to weigh in on, like how much time you should budget for a visit to New York City’s Museum of Natural History (at minimum four hours).

When looking for activities, Ewen’s first stop is often the website of the local tourism board. “While these marketing organizations have a vested interest in promoting the destination, they also have no incentive to send you on a bad tour, because that’s a loss for the destination itself,” he says. “Virtually every tour or activity I have booked in this way has been positive.”

Magazines, both print and digital (like Outside ), are another great source to legitimize any opinions you read on user-generated review sites. Additionally, the social-media feed of a company can provide insight. Have travelers left positive comments on a hotel or tour operator’s Instagram or Facebook feed? Has that company made an effort to interact with customers? Finally, if you’re mid-trip and still looking for recommendations, chat up the locals. I’ve discovered some of my most memorable meals and hikes based on tips from a bartender.

Have a question of your own? Drop us a line at [email protected] .  

Outside correspondent Jen Murphy is one of the most well-traveled people we know, and we’ve long relied on her expert advice about awesome adventures and how to get there in a sane way.

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Best online travel sites 2022

Use the best online travel sites to plan your trip ahead of time so you can enjoy your time away.

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The best online travel sites are wonderful not only plan your next trip for peace of mind, they're also a fun way to get excited ahead of your next adventure. You can simply go to one site and plan most of your trip's main parts from flights and hotels to rental cars and excursions. If what you're after is just hotel bookings, check out our list of the best hotel booking sites .

While what many of these sites offer is similar, it's the way in which they do it which is important. The last thing you need is a stress-inducing website when planning to go away to relax and unwind. So we've reviewed the best sites based on their price, of course, but also on the way they work, with the ease of use and clarity as important features. We also checked to make sure you won't suffer any extra charges added on top at the last minute. Plus, we took rewards schemes into account, which could help you save money upfront or in the longer term if you use some sites more than once.

With all that in mind, these are the very best online travel sites out there right now.

The best online travel sites

1. expedia.com: best online travel site overall .

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Expedia is a big name in online travel sites and hotel booking services and owns many popular sites like Hotels.com and Hotwire.com. We're fans of the original, though, thanks to its clean and straightforward to use interface. Hit the packages section of the site, and you can add up to five connecting flights, choose to add accommodation for all of or only part of your trip, and tag on car rentals too. 

It's all suitably well laid out, and it only takes a few seconds to start putting together your itinerary. However, we do wish there were a few more options for filtering out accessibility issues. Still, for most people, Expedia.com has everything they'll need, and there's even the option of a cruise too if you fancy it. It's as aspirational to look at as it is useful to, well, use and there are extra discounts for booking multiple parts of your vacation with the site. A Things To Do section rounds off the site's bid to help you plan your entire trip in one place.

2. Booking.com: Best for ease of use

Booking.com

Booking.com is a giant in the world of holiday bookings and not only offers over half a million properties in more than 207 countries but also offers flights and car rental services too. As such you can do it all from this one spot which makes it a very easy-to-use option. That said, there is a lot going on, and the user interface can be a little overwhelming at times. 

But with a superb rewards program, it is a great option that encourages you to keep coming back, making it easier to use as you become accustomed. You can even sort your taxi hire from this site meaning there is very little to think about when you get traveling as it's all been planned ahead of time. You also don't have to pay a booking fee on lots of hotels, allowing you to remain flexible – ideal if you're traveling about a lot on your journey.

3. CheapTickets.com: Best for finding things to do 

CheapTickets.com

CheapTickets is another site acquired by Expedia, but it does things a little differently. You can easily add on flight, hotel, and car or any combination of the three for package deals, although multiple flights are under a different option. So far, so Expedia (if less intuitive), but you can also clearly purchase event tickets from the site, which is far more useful if you want a one-stop-shop place to buy your trip. It's something other sites provide, but CheapTickets is that bit keener to entice you into the process, even if the site itself is a little cheesier looking than others. 

There's also the site's Vacation Value Finder, which lets you tweak how much you're willing to spend and what you're looking for from a vacation before making some fun suggestions. It's perfect for finding a last-minute deal if you don't have your heart set on one place. Students will also appreciate a section dedicated to them with extra discounts once you verify you're a student. All in all, it's a great varied site for numerous different needs. 

4. Priceline.com: Best for user reviews 

Priceline.com

Priceline is a big deal in the online travel site world for a good reason. It's effortless to use with options available for flights, cars, hotels, or any combination of the three. It's mildly annoying that Priceline's super cheap Pricebreaker deals don't extend to bundles, so you won't get an incredible bargain like you would if you booked separately. However, combining the set is still a worthwhile deal with discounts offered for the more you bundle together. 

One thing we really appreciated is that every hotel we looked at had dozens of reviews, and they're all from verified customers. It takes seconds to gain a reasonably accurate picture of what to expect from wherever you're considering booking. That's the perfect peace of mind when you're booking online, and you can't be sure of what you're getting without user reviews backing hotel statements up. Clearly laid out, you can focus on enjoying rather than worrying. Finally, Priceline is keen to make its VIP scheme easily accessible with straightforward discounts offered to you over time -- something that not all sites so clearly highlight. 

5. Kayak.com: Best for aggregated results 

If you're short on time, Kayak is pretty useful. That's because you simply enter where you want to go, and it aggregates results from multiple different sources. While it means you never book directly with Kayak, it does mean you get results quickly and without having to search around yourself, even if you will feel a bit overwhelmed with adverts while you search. 

The site itself looks a little basic, but under the hood is a surprising number of different filters (although no accessibility ones to speak of) and all the critical information you could require, although obviously you'll be sent to another site for the full details. The site also has a deals section, which has some great bargains for things you can do once you reach your destination, along with cheap car rental deals. It might not be pretty, but if you simply don't want to do the groundwork yourself, Kayak has you covered. It can be a real time-saver, and we reckon it's particularly useful if you're mostly researching possible trips in the future and want rough price estimates. Just watch out for the fact you can’t bundle in car rental deals. 

6. Hotwire.com: Best for renting properties 

Hotwire keeps things straightforward. All you need to do is enter what you're looking for, and a somewhat dated interface tells you what's available. It's not as pretty as some sites, but we really liked the extensive property type filters available. Want to stay on a houseboat or in a chalet at your destination? Hit the relevant filter, and you can find out if that's an option in the locale. That might not matter if your heart is set on a hotel, but it's a nice bonus even amongst the awkward site layout. 

Elsewhere, it's mostly business as usual, but that's no bad thing. Well laid out discounts are available to compare reasonably quickly, and most locations have plenty of reviews. If you feel like tracking down specific deals, you can do that too, with the site keen to offer up discounts to central locations if you're not quite sure where you'd like to visit next. It feels like the site needs updating when you compare it to its rivals, but it works well and speedily enough.

7. Agoda: Best for private home rental in Asia 

Agoda is a great option if you want to look for accommodation that isn't a hotel as this specializes in offering apartments and private rentals. In fact, there are dedicated market managers that work on finding properties, especially in Asia. As such you can find unique destination rentals at decent rates and should you change your mind there is a helpful 24-hour free cancellation policy in place. 

Everything is very easy to use and if you want to make more than one booking you can make great savings. Customer support is also a plus, as there is a 24-hour multilingual customer support service available when booking. With millions of reviews, Agoda makes finding a property very easy with a feeling of trust that can offer great peace of mind.

What to look for in an online travel site

Booking Travel Packages Travel packages can let you combine flights, hotel reservations and car rentals together for a better deal than booking separately. Some companies, like Priceline, pick hotels and flights for you, to get you to your destination for the lowest price. Other companies let you mix and match flights, hotels and car rentals to fit your schedule.

Booking Airfare One of the biggest reasons for searching on a travel site is to find cheap airfare. While there are dozens of airfare-specific websites, travel sites also give you the option to add hotel stays and car rentals. The best travel sites combine flight information from over nine different airlines and let you sort flights by price, number of stops, duration and flight class.

Booking International Travel Finding airfare for international travel is the easiest part of booking an overseas trip. AirGorilla helps you find accommodations and rent GPS units with your rental car, so you can find your way around. Often, sites will recommend hotels that are far from your actual destination or event. Searching for reservations on a site that gives accommodation recommendations will help you schedule an international trip with less stress.

How we tested the best online travel sites

We looked at how easy each site is to use during our testing, such as how quickly the site loaded and how easy it was to find what we were looking for. We considered whether the site felt cluttered with adverts or seemed like a dated interface. We also looked at how easy it was to find Contact Us pages, price guarantee information, and any kind of special deals section. 

We also considered how easily bundle deals could be arranged and how extensive they were and any potential discounts tied to them. We checked filter options to see how flexible and easy it was to look up different needs along the way.

We looked at trips between Los Angeles and Miami, Paris to Lisbon, and New York City to Los Angeles during testing. We also looked at lesser-known routes to see if they were also catered for appropriately.

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Jennifer has been freelancing for over 10 years. In the past, she's written about all things tech and gaming wise for outlets as varied as The Independent, Playboy, Eurogamer, and TechRadar. In her spare time, she spends far too much time watching films, attempting to train her pet guinea pigs, and mastering making the perfect burrito.  She's a full time freelancer, but a regular tech news contributor to Top Ten Reviews.

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We compared 7 travel-booking sites to show you what each is best at

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Planning a vacation or trip is undoubtedly stressful. You're bombarded with seemingly endless options for flights, lodging, and things to do, and it can be difficult to figure out where to start. Many travel aggregators strive to present you with the best deals, but they all end up looking very similar to each other.

These similarities make it easy to know what to do and expect when you first visit a site. Typically, you enter your destinations, dates, and number of travelers. After you click search, you can further filter based on price range, airlines, and departure times for flights; amenities, hotel stars, and location for hotels; and type of car and rental car company for cars. 

So what makes one site better than another?

It all depends on your priorities and preferences. Everyone travels and plans for that travel differently. Here are seven travel sites and the factors you should consider when choosing a site. 

Booking.com

Booking.com is a huge bank of information, offering more than 1 million properties in 117,000 destinations in 225 countries and territories. Wherever you'd like to go, you'll find it through this site. It offers booking for flights,  hotels, vacation rentals, and rental cars.  Clicking  restaurants will take you to OpenTable. 

Highlights:

I found their desktop homepage to be cluttered and a lot to look at compared to the homepages of other sites, but their app experience was noticeably simpler, which makes sense as travelers increasingly turn mobile. 

One feature on the homepage that stood out to me (shown above) was the "Are you traveling for work?" option. Clicking "Yes" will present popular business travel options like WiFi and breakfast.

Another feature was its flexible date suggestions if your chosen destination is a popular choice and accommodations are more than 50% reserved during your selected dates.

Best for: 

• Wide variety of options, including hostels, homestays, and bed and breakfasts
• Easy access to your plans and searches by syncing your account across your devices 
• Getting the best deals with their Price Match offer 
• Destination travel guides and articles 

Lacking or not the best for:

• Bundling hotel, flight, and car packages

Book a trip with Booking.com

Expedia offers booking for  flights, hotels, vacation rentals, rental cars, cruises, and things to do. 

You can bundle flight, hotel, and car deals so you don't have to go through the headache of looking separately and trying to coordinate all the deals. 

The "My Trips" section is helpful for managing your entire itinerary in one place, so you don't have to search through endless emails and accounts to figure out your vacation plan. 

If you sign up as a member, you can earn Expedia+ points to use toward future trips. Use the mobile app to earn 2x Expedia+ points. 

Like Booking.com, Expedia also offers suggestions for date shifts, date extensions, and route changes to get you to the cheapest deal. 

• Hotel, flight, and car bundles 
• Coordinating your whole vacation itinerary 
• Reward points system
• Single bookings. The site is best utilized for its bundle packaging.

Book a trip with Expedia

Tripadvisor.

TripAdvisor offers booking for flights,  hotels, vacation rentals, restaurants, and things to do.

It's well-known for its user-generated reviews, so as you're booking, you get the added benefit of reading reviews all in the same place. While I'm partial to Yelp for food recommendations and believe it to be better for US destinations, TripAdvisor is much more widely used in the international community. 

TripAdvisor is the most experience-driven travel site. You are not just booking somewhere to live — you're signing up to experience and explore a destination. 

• Detailed filtering (e.g. style for hotels and distinctive features for vacation rentals) 
• Comparing deals across aggregators 
• Strong user-generated review community 
• Bundling hotel, flight, and car packages 

Book a trip with TripAdvisor  

CheapOair offers booking for  flights, hotels, and rental cars.  Clicking on its cruises  tab takes you to another site, Cheap Cruises.  

The "Travel by Interest" section offers special deals for senior , military , student , and last minute travel . The military and student discounts emphasize keeping costs low, while the senior discount focuses on senior friendly destinations at an affordable price. 

Whether you're coordinating a reunion, wedding, or corporate event, a Group Travel Request is a good option. You can work with an agent on your travel needs. 

• Specific travelers like senior citizens, military, students, and large groups
• Higher than usual service fees (e.g. $32 per night per room for hotel bookings)

Book a trip with CheapOair

Hotwire offers booking for  flights, hotels, and rental cars.

Hotwire gives you all the filters and options you need but maintains the balance of not giving you too much. It keeps its sections simple, so you don't need to worry about something you may be missing out on. 

Thanks to partnerships with other travel sites like Hotels.com and Expedia, Hotwire can offer extremely low prices. There is also a free 24-hour cancellation policy on most flights. 

• Focused searchers who do not want to be distracted or overwhelmed by too many options, things to do, and city guides. Destination guides and inspiration can be found on a separate blog page. 
• Travelers on a budget
• Travelers with very specific preferences like hotel brand or car brand

Book a trip with Hotwire

Travelocity.

Travelocity offers booking for  flights, hotels, vacation rentals, rental cars, cruises and things to do.  And no, you're not seeing double. Expedia owns Travelocity, which may explain why the two homepages look almost exactly the same. 

From what we can tell, the most noticeable difference is Travelocity's Roaming Gnome, which represents the inspiration and wanderlust of traveling. The "Inspiration" section contains interesting articles like "Best Foodie Finds in Airports Around the World" and themes like "Luxury" or "Romantic." Expedia's travel blog, on the other hand, is relegated to an easy-to-miss link near the bottom of the page. 

• All the benefits of Expedia but with a more exploratory inspiration angle 
•  Single bookings. The site is best utilized for its bundle packaging.

Book a trip with Travelocity

Priceline offers booking for  flights, hotels, rental cars, and cruises.  

The " Express Deals " option rewards flexible travelers with up to 60% savings on hotels. The site will give you the location and star rating, but not the name of the hotel. You can still choose the bed type for many of the options. 

Another way to save is the Name Your Own Price feature where you input the location, star rating, and price bid for a hotel. 

For car rentals, you can also Name Your Own Price and bid for a car. If you don't have big preferences on the car brand, you'll be able to find a car for a price less than the search listings give you. For example, I was able to get an economy car with unlimited mileage for $30 a day, while the general search yielded cars that were all at least $37 a day. 

The cruise section is clear and easy to navigate. The search option is similar to searching for flights, with more dropdown selections than other sites. This feature is ideal for travelers who know exactly what they want for their cruise experience, and are not merely shopping around. 

• Travelers with low hotel and car brand loyalty who want to find a great deal
• Having a more focused cruise search process 
• Travel inspiration or destination guides
• Low risk takers who like to know exactly what they're getting

Book a trip with Priceline

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The 50 Best Travel Websites and Travel Resources 2024

March 28, 2024

Here’s my collection of the top 50 travel websites and travel resources for all stages of dreaming, planning, booking and remembering your trip based on decades of professional travel. 

The Best Travel Resources for Booking and Planning Your Trip 2024

As a regular contributor to  The Independent’s 50 Best Travel Websites feature , I know my way around travel websites. As a frequent traveller myself, I practically live on the things.

From dreaming about a trip, planning a trip, writing up a trip and reviewing trips for work, these are the travel resources, online booking sites, search engines and route planners I use to help me get the job done. Booking travel without travel agents has never been easier – even if it doesn’t feel like it at times.

So here’s my list of the best travel websites for 2024. It’s the best time to uncover the best places.

If you book or buy through the links on this page, we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. However, we only ever recommend things we believe in and use ourselves. We also don’t earn a commission from all of these travel websites. Alas ;-)

The Best Hotel Booking Sites for Special Occasions

To find the best hotels needs a little bit of legwork. If you’re looking for somewhere beautiful to stay with a real travel experience, then try these sites first. If you’re looking for something more practical, jump on down to the next section.

Here are the top travel websites when it comes to boutique hotels:

Design Hotels

Beautiful, stylish and with up to 40% off for members, the chic and sleek Design Hotels website is a firm favourite of mine. Membership is free, quick and easy on the eye.

Best Loved Hotels

Best Loved Hotels gathers together properties from the UK and Ireland that show a real passion for what they do. From countryside manors to city break boltholes, I’ve stayed in several of their properties and have loved each one.

Mr & Mrs Smith

You may be forgiven for thinking this gorgeous collection was all about romance, but beyond finding great places for anniversaries and honeymoons, Mr & Mrs Smith cover great child friendly places too. Not just a website for inspiration, you can book directly on the site.

Small Luxury Hotels

The name says it all. Small Luxury Hotels   collect together independently minded hotels on their website and promise – and deliver – an authentic travel experience.

Leading Hotels of the World

Another website that wears its heart on its sleeve, Leading Hotels of the World gather together more than 375 luxury properties (including resorts) around the world.

MyBoutiqueHotel.com

With a great eye for design, MyBoutiqueHotel.com , as the name suggests, sources boutique hotels from around the world available for direct booking. Properties are combined into an easy on the eye collection, with curated lists for main cities plus the ability to create your own shortlists as you narrow down your choice. Membership is free and the themed lists save hours of research. You’ll find budget and luxury boutique hotel choices and can drill down to those suitable for work, for the kids, for romantic getaways and more.

The Best Hotel Booking Sites for the Best Deals and Specifics

These are the best travel websites for 2024 for booking flight and hotel packages together or for searching for accommodation when you have very specific needs. These online travel agencies let you trawl through thousands of places to stay in the blink of an eye. Plus, several offer exceptional hotel deals for your next adventure.

cozycozy.com

Describing itself as a search engine for accommodation, CozyCozy.com is an exciting newcomer on the hotel booking block. It rounds up offers from hotels, rentals, hostels, treehouses and boats into one easy to use platform. You’ll find the giants, like Booking.com and AirBnB and VRBO, as well as smaller accommodation solutions too. By searching with Cozycozy.com, you can save yourself a lot of time. They won’t cover everything. But they come pretty close.

A few more things to note. They guarantee that the price you see is the price you pay. They have a range of filters that go further than the rest (think searching for a hairdryer or washing machine.) And, my favourite. They have an “unusual” tab that opens up possibilities you may never have known existed. Yurt for one anyone?

Lastminute.com

I’ve grown old with Lastminute.com , originally because I fell in love with the name. But over the years, I still find them useful for last minute city break or resort based holidays (vacation packages if you’re from the US.) They’re an online travel agency with easy to navigate interface and lots of last-minute deals!

Expedia is SO big and all-encompassing that it’s sometimes easy to get lost within the website. But that’s also its strength for when your travel plans don’t fit into the travel sites I’ve mentioned above.

TripAdvisor

The great green travel website can really give you an inside look at a hotel. Yes, some of the reviews are fake but even the bad reviews can be helpful. One person’s “bad review” because there was no nightlife is another’s blissful discovery if they want a quiet, relaxing stay.

Plus, you get the benefit of booking through a trusted source with backup. AND the TripAdvisor community is really helpful if you have specific niggly questions about tourist destinations or are looking for great ideas.

Booking.com

Booking.com offers more search filters for hotels than anything else I’ve come across in the travel industry. When the specifics really matter (rather than the sense of atmosphere or design) then I turn to Booking.com It’s a powerful hotel search engine, with guest houses and self-catering options as well.

Top tips for finding the best travel deals

• Look for off peak options whenever you can.
• Don’t just stick to the big booking websites. Check out the smaller, unique travel websites as well.
• Consider flying from regional airports.
• Have a system! Our handy Travel Toolbox © will help with this.

Finding Great Flight Deals

There is, quite simply, an art to finding a good flight. Not just in terms of cost but also in terms of comfort and connection. It really is a useful life skill to be able to skip the travel agent and find what you want yourself.

With that in mind, check out our guide to the  best flight booking hacks for savvy travellers here.  

Then, get acquainted with the following flight search engines, for both domestic and international flights.

Skyscanner is the travel agent boyfriend or girlfriend with special deals you never had. Skyscanner listens, remembers your birthday, cleans your windscreen and empties the bin even when it isn’t its turn.

Well, OK, it doesn’t do any of that but  it DOES make it very, very easy to look for flights. Instead of forcing you to enter the same details in, or tie you to a date, Skyscanner uses filters and choices that simplify the flight-finding process. You can also search by price and switch currencies between dollars, euros, sterling and more. For both domestic and international travel.

If you have any flexibility in your planning, Skyscanner can let you search through the whole month for the best fare, slide filters for time of day, number of connections, just about anything. The only weak spot is searching for flights with infants, where the system is a little glitchy. Other than that, it’s one of the best airfare sites.

Don’t be put off by the watery name. Kayak is a meta search engine that crawls the web for flights and lets you sift through the results with ease. If you’re committed to finding the cheapest flights, then make sure you check everywhere you can.

Google Flights

Fellow travel professionals swear by Google Flights, although it’s never quite become one of my favourites. The strength of using Google’s software is that it responds quickly to real time changes. Perfect if your flight has just been cancelled because of weather or some other external event and you need to find your way home quickly.

You can even use Siri. “Hey google, give me search results for flights to New York!”

Travel experiences await.

The Best Travel Websites for Driving Holidays

You’re in road trip heaven here. We love road trips and have everything for them. Check out these great resources for planning a road trip.

Your Road Trip Toolkit

• The road trip essentials you need to know about
• The Ultimate Road Trip Planner  with printables and handbook
• 101 fun road trip questions for your next drive
• I nspiring road trip quotes for your instagram caption ideas.

AA Route Planner

This is another travel website that I love for its simplicity. Want to know how to get from A to B? Enter it in the AA Route Planner. It shows you a map and clear journey times in a split second. You can just leave it at that or add in stop off points and adjust for traffic and so on. The only problem is that it only covers driving in Europe.

MapQuest offers fantastic coverage of the United States and is free and easy to use to help plot our road trips.

Google Maps

Google Maps , on the other hand, cover the world. But it’s slightly more fiddly to use. It’s a lifesaver while actually on the road but it’s also useful in planning.

You can save destinations, plot itineraries and tweak public maps for your own trips. And – did you know that you can download maps and directions offline? Indeed, you can. It’s not only an online travel site.

Car Rental Travel Resources

I’ve driven cars all around the world and used all kinds of car rental companies and rental cars. Sometimes needs must but these days, wherever possible, I book through a reputable, international company. Then I look for car rental deals.

Hertz is one of my favourites. It’s so widespread and well-organised. Plus, as an inside tip, if you sign up to their Gold members programme (for free) you can quickly get lots of benefits.

However, for more of a search comparison site, I use Holiday Autos and then open RentalCars.Com in a new tab.

• Don’t forget to download your free copy of our car rental checklist here.

Healthy Tray of Treats Room Service at One Aldwych, Covent Garden

The Best Travel Resources for Health

Centers for disease control and prevention.

Clearly, you should consult your own doctor before you travel. But, the CDC Travel Website is the one my medical friends recommend. So, don’t rely on it entirely. You do need an appointment with a real person. But it’s helpful to get an idea of what vaccinations and medication you are likely to need for certain countries before you decide to book. This applies all the more if your situation has changed due to a recent illness or pregnancy.

The Best Travel Websites for Saving Money

Money saving expert.

Martin Lewis’ Money Saving Expert website firmly focuses its attention on a UK audience. It provides regularly updated and researched guides on essentials from currency exchange to travel insurance and finding cheap flights.

They also crunch the numbers with credit cards, publishing spreadsheets and tables to help you navigate the world of credit card rewards and the best way to save money.

Travel Insurance

I’d always recommend checking out the guide above before you book. But one of my favourite places to go for travel insurance is Heymondo.

Roaming Costs: Airalo

Unless you have roaming fees included in your usual phone package, remember to switch off mobile data when you travel.

Instead, embrace the brilliance of an eSIM. That means, you switch SIM cards without having to physically pop the plastic cover out of your phone using the back of an earring, hoping you don’t lose it before you head home again.

I’ve tested Airalo all across the world, including North America, Europe and the Middle East. It’s fantastic. So quick. So much money saved.

Train Travel Resources

Db rail planner for train travel in europe.

I love the DB site. It covers almost all of Europe and has an English version online travel website that is so easy to use.

National Rail Journey Planner

National Rail itself may be long gone but as a travel website, the National Rail Journey Planner is the best I’ve found to negotiate the different rail networks of the UK.

Eurail (Formerly InterRail)

Forget the sweaty backpacker image. The Eurail network includes First Class rail travel through glossy transport hubs. You can buy a range of rail passes or simply use their maps, itineraries and suggestions to help you plan your rail trip through Europe.

Heathrow Express

This remains the fastest way to reach the city centre of London from London’s Heathrow Airport, as well as Paddington Station, the gateway to the west, southwest and Wales. Using the Heathrow Express website in advance, you can book tickets for as little as  £5.50. Plus, children 15 and under travel for free.

The Elizabeth Line in London

A sneaky little bit of inside info. To save money on the Heathrow Express, take the slightly slower “normal” train from Paddington to Heathrow instead. Costs a fraction of the price and is generally more comfortable.

If you’re looking to travel through Japan, then you can’t miss their high speed shinkansen trains. They’re part of what Japan is famous for. Buy your Japan Rail pass before you go to get the best deals as a tourist.

The Best Travel Websites for Honeymoons and Anniversaries

While you can build your own honeymoon through the travel resources above, niche travel website 101 Honeymoons takes the hard work out of the equation for you. It filters honeymoons by month, interest and family situation, with trusted input from some of the top travel writers in the trade.

My Favourite Cruise Travel Resources

Everyone has different tastes. I prefer smaller cruises with plenty of cultural and adventurous options and excursions. Look for cruise lines which aim to introduce people to the destination and respect local customs rather than just keep people on the ship.

I would highly recommend Avalon Waterways for cruises in Europe and beyond and Uncruise Adventures for small ship cruising in Alaska.

In 2022, I took my first giant cruise with Princess Cruises – and you can read what that was like here.

The Best Tour Companies

It took me years to believe it but sometimes joining a tour, just for half a day, is a great way of connecting with locals and learning new skills.

These days, it’s easier than ever to find just the tour you need as one of the latest trends has become a permanent fixture. In popular destinations, it’s also useful to use these sites to skip the queues and buy your tickets in advance.

You can search for recommendations on travel blogs (ahem) or head straight to the big search sites.

I’ve tested both of these across the world and would highly recommend them:

• Get Your Guide has great cancellation policies and an easy booking process.
• Viator has a huge collection of local guides, transfers from the airport, cooking classes and more.

The Best UK Travel Websites

Self catered cottages.

For ease of use, the app that comes with Sykes Cottages makes it easy to plan a trip away in snippets of down time in a busy life. Quality Cottages sweeps some gorgeous luxury cottages into view in Wales.

Glampingly remains my favourite site for finding quirky yet comfortable glamping spots in Europe. Want to know why? Check out this collection of the best treehouse holidays in the UK.

With a mix of glamping and alternative places to sleep, C anopy and Stars fills in the gaps.

A special, self-catered foodie twist

To add a sense of luxe to your self-catered holiday, order in a gourmet meal from One Fine Dine. This private jet catering company now packages up incredible meals with full instructions on how to finish them off and plate them up. Adds a lovely sense of occasion to a self-catered trip away.

In Conclusion

And one last note. Are you American and wondering why I’m not talking about dream vacation packages? I am, we just call them holidays in the UK. And car rentals are hire cars. And travel guides are, well, travel guides. I guess some things stay the same after all ;-)

Did you enjoy this collection of the best travel websites and travel resources for 2024? Bookmark this list of travel websites on Pinterest for later.

For more travel tips, check out our travel resources on how to plan your next trip here.

Our Favourite Travel Resources for 2024

• Download your FREE pre-trip checklist
• Download your copy of the Ultimate Travel Packing Checklist

Some of the best travel resources can be those you create yourself. Here are some creative travel journal ideas to get you started. Future you will be grateful!

Compare flights from 100s of sites.

Big names, great deals, filter for what you want, track prices, more than flights, start your travel planning here, search flights , hotels & rental cars.

• Hi New York City Hostel $67+
• West Side Ymca $108+
• Pod 51 $160+
• The Gallivant Times Square $167+
• Pod Times Square $176+
• Radio Hotel $176+
• Pod 39 $177+
• Paramount Times Square $188+
• DoubleTree by Hilton New York Downtown $189+
• OYO Times Square $193+
• DoubleTree by Hilton New York Times Square West $194+
• The New Yorker A Wyndham Hotel $200+
• YOTEL New York $202+
• The Manhattan at Times Square Hotel $209+
• Hotel Indigo NYC Downtown - Wall Street $212+
• Flight Atlanta - New York (ATL - LGA) $36+
• Flight Atlanta - New York (ATL - JFK) $36+
• Flight Fort Lauderdale - New York (FLL - LGA) $45+
• Flight Fort Lauderdale - Newark (FLL - EWR) $45+
• Flight Atlanta - Newark (ATL - EWR) $50+
• Flight Chicago - New York (ORD - LGA) $51+
• Flight Miami - New York (MIA - LGA) $51+
• Flight Orlando - New York (MCO - LGA) $63+
• Flight Houston - New York (HOU - LGA) $64+
• Flight Houston - New York (IAH - LGA) $64+
• Flight Detroit - New York (DTW - LGA) $69+
• Flight Orlando - Newark (MCO - EWR) $69+
• Flight Houston - Newark (HOU - EWR) $70+
• Flight Houston - Newark (IAH - EWR) $70+
• Flight Dallas - New York (DFW - LGA) $71+
• Monumental Movieland Hotel $48+
• Grand Hotel Kissimmee At Celebration $62+
• Rosen Inn International $62+
• Flight Charlotte - Orlando (CLT - MCO) $36+
• Flight Atlanta - Orlando (ATL - MCO) $37+
• Flight Houston - Orlando (IAH - MCO) $54+
• Book A Bed Hostels $23+
• Generator London $25+
• Palmers Lodge Swiss Cottage $28+
• Nx London Hostel $33+
• Flight New York - London (JFK - LGW) $300+
• Flight Newark - London (EWR - LHR) $308+
• Flight Atlanta - London (ATL - LHR) $325+
• Flight Boston - London (BOS - LHR) $325+

Fort Lauderdale

• Days Inn by Wyndham Fort Lauderdale Airport Cruise Port $56+
• Plaza Hotel Fort Lauderdale $61+
• Red Carpet Inn Airport Fort Lauderdale $64+
• Flight Newark - Fort Lauderdale (EWR - FLL) $45+
• Flight Raleigh - Fort Lauderdale (RDU - FLL) $48+
• Flight Atlanta - Fort Lauderdale (ATL - FLL) $51+
• Green Tortoise Hostel Seattle $63+
• Travelodge by Wyndham Seattle By The Space Needle $122+
• La Quinta Inn & Suites by Wyndham Seattle Downtown $135+
• Flight Las Vegas - Seattle (LAS - SEA) $37+
• Flight Ontario - Seattle (ONT - SEA) $48+
• Flight Los Angeles - Seattle (LAX - SEA) $51+
• Fabhotel Royal Residency Ii $17+
• The Manohar Hyderabad $32+
• Katriya Hotel & Towers $38+
• Flight Washington, D.C. - New Delhi (IAD - DEL) $589+
• Flight San Francisco - New Delhi (SFO - DEL) $593+
• Flight San Francisco - Mumbai (SFO - BOM) $601+
• Best Western Sapporo Odori Koen $48+
• Smile Hotel Premium Sapporo Susukino $50+
• Comfort Hotel Sapporo Susukino $52+
• Flight Seattle - Tokyo (SEA - NRT) $535+
• Flight Los Angeles - Tokyo (LAX - NRT) $537+
• Flight San Francisco - Tokyo (SFO - NRT) $552+
• Ohia Waikiki Studio Suites $119+
• Kuhio Banyan Club $120+
• Pacific Marina Inn $124+
• Flight Los Angeles - Honolulu (LAX - HNL) $151+
• Flight San Francisco - Honolulu (SFO - HNL) $169+
• Flight San Jose - Honolulu (SJC - HNL) $194+
• Super 8 by Wyndham Dallas Love Field Airport $46+
• Dallas Love Field Inn $55+
• Wyndham Garden Dallas North $60+
• Flight Atlanta - Dallas (ATL - DFW) $38+
• Flight Chicago - Dallas (MDW - DFW) $39+
• Flight Chicago - Dallas (ORD - DFW) $45+
• OYO Hotel And Casino Las Vegas $25+
• The STRAT Hotel, Casino & Tower $27+
• Excalibur Hotel & Casino $33+
• Harrah's Las Vegas Hotel & Casino $35+
• Flight Los Angeles - Las Vegas (LAX - LAS) $33+
• Flight San Jose - Las Vegas (SJC - LAS) $33+
• Flight Burbank - Las Vegas (BUR - LAS) $38+
• Flight Oakland - Las Vegas (OAK - LAS) $39+
• Freehand Chicago $41+
• HI Chicago Hostel $49+
• Chicago Getaway Hostel $54+
• Flight Dallas - Chicago (DFW - ORD) $39+
• Flight Boston - Chicago (BOS - ORD) $46+
• Flight Atlanta - Chicago (ATL - MDW) $47+

San Francisco

• Hi San Francisco Downtown Hostel $41+
• The Mosser $66+
• BEI San Francisco, Trademark Collection By Wyndham $122+
• Flight Los Angeles - San Francisco (LAX - SFO) $48+
• Flight Ontario - San Francisco (ONT - SFO) $48+
• Flight Santa Ana - San Francisco (SNA - SFO) $77+

Washington, D.C.

• Generator Hotel Washington DC $51+
• Days Inn by Wyndham Washington DC/Connecticut Avenue $91+
• Motto by Hilton Washington DC City Center $122+
• Citizenm Washington DC Noma $122+
• Glover Park Hotel Georgetown $130+
• Citizenm Washington Dc Capitol $132+
• Washington Plaza Hotel $138+
• Hyatt Place Washington DC/US Capitol $141+
• Arc Hotel Washington DC, Georgetown $149+
• State Plaza Hotel $151+
• The Churchill Hotel Near Embassy Row $152+
• Henley Park Hotel $154+
• Flight Atlanta - Baltimore (ATL - BWI) $36+
• Flight Orlando - Baltimore (MCO - BWI) $40+
• Flight Boston - Baltimore (BOS - BWI) $47+
• Flight Detroit - Baltimore (DTW - BWI) $56+
• Flight Fort Lauderdale - Baltimore (FLL - BWI) $74+
• Flight Atlanta - Washington, D.C. (ATL - IAD) $80+
• Flight Dallas - Baltimore (DFW - BWI) $80+
• Flight Los Angeles - Baltimore (LAX - BWI) $83+
• Flight Houston - Baltimore (IAH - BWI) $84+
• Flight Houston - Baltimore (HOU - BWI) $85+
• Flight Denver - Washington, D.C. (DEN - DCA) $97+
• Flight Boston - Washington, D.C. (BOS - IAD) $100+
• Hotel Casa Mallorca $57+
• Wyndham Garden Cancun Downtown $69+
• Real Inn Cancún $69+
• Flight Fort Lauderdale - Cancún (FLL - CUN) $181+
• Flight Chicago - Cancún (ORD - CUN) $190+
• Flight Philadelphia - Cancún (PHL - CUN) $190+

United States

• Flight Dallas - Las Vegas (DFW - LAS) $40+
• Tip Top Motel $179+
• Kauai Palms Hotel $195+
• Castle Kaha Lani Resort $245+
• Flight Los Angeles - Hawaii (LAX - USHI) $151+
• Flight San Francisco - Hawaii (SFO - USHI) $169+
• Flight San Jose - Hawaii (SJC - USHI) $194+
• Stay Classy $55+
• California Suites Hotel $76+
• Super 8 by Wyndham San Diego Hotel Circle $81+
• Flight Sacramento - San Diego (SMF - SAN) $37+
• Flight San Jose - San Diego (SJC - SAN) $38+
• Flight Oakland - San Diego (OAK - SAN) $42+
• Shared Living Not A Hotel $38+
• Extend-a-Suites Phoenix $49+
• Super 8 by Wyndham Phoenix West $51+
• Flight Dallas - Phoenix (DFW - PHX) $43+
• Flight Salt Lake City - Phoenix (SLC - PHX) $49+
• Flight Los Angeles - Phoenix (LAX - PHX) $54+

Los Angeles

• Freehand Los Angeles $48+
• City Center Hotel $101+
• Four Points by Sheraton Los Angeles International Airport $109+
• La Quinta Inn & Suites LAX $122+
• H by H Hospitality $133+
• USC Hotel $139+
• Sonesta Los Angeles Airport LAX $143+
• Flight San Jose - Los Angeles (SJC - LAX) $39+
• Flight Dallas - Los Angeles (DFW - LAX) $45+
• Flight Oakland - Los Angeles (OAK - LAX) $47+
• Flight Phoenix - Los Angeles (PHX - LAX) $50+
• Flight Seattle - Los Angeles (SEA - LAX) $51+
• Flight Portland - Los Angeles (PDX - LAX) $58+
• Flight San Francisco - Los Angeles (SFO - LAX) $60+
• Miami Gardens Inn & Suites $64+
• La Quinta Inn by Wyndham Miami Airport North $69+
• Motel 6 Miami. Fl $81+
• La Quinta Inn & Suites by Wyndham Miami Airport East $82+
• Holiday Inn Express & Suites Miami-Kendall $94+
• Holiday Inn Miami-Doral Area, An IHG Hotel $95+
• The Palms Inn & Suites $99+
• Courtyard by Marriott Miami West/FL Turnpike $100+
• enVision Hotel Miami International Airport $101+
• Best Western Plus Miami Intl Airport Hotel & Suites Coral Gables $101+
• Holiday Inn Miami West - Airport Area $102+
• Flight New York - Miami (LGA - MIA) $49+
• Flight Charlotte - Miami (CLT - MIA) $63+
• Flight Dallas - Miami (DFW - MIA) $65+
• Flight Chicago - Miami (ORD - MIA) $69+
• Flight Atlanta - Miami (ATL - MIA) $71+
• Flight Raleigh - Miami (RDU - MIA) $74+
• Flight Boston - Miami (BOS - MIA) $75+
• Flight Houston - Miami (HOU - MIA) $76+
• Flight New York - Miami (JFK - MIA) $77+
• Flight Baltimore - Miami (BWI - MIA) $79+
• Flight Newark - Miami (EWR - MIA) $81+
• Super 8 by Wyndham Denver Stapleton $65+
• Hometowne Studios by Red Roof Denver - Glendale/Cherry Creek $66+
• Motel 6 Denver Co Downtown $73+
• Baymont by Wyndham Denver International Airport $81+
• Microtel Inn & Suites by Wyndham Denver Airport $87+
• La Quinta Inn & Suites By Wyndham Denver Airport Dia $95+
• Days Inn & Suites by Wyndham Denver International Airport $97+
• Flight Ontario - Denver (ONT - DEN) $58+
• Flight Los Angeles - Denver (LAX - DEN) $61+
• Flight San Diego - Denver (SAN - DEN) $61+
• Flight Minneapolis - Denver (MSP - DEN) $68+
• Flight Chicago - Denver (ORD - DEN) $71+
• Flight Seattle - Denver (SEA - DEN) $73+
• Flight Austin - Denver (AUS - DEN) $78+
• Hi Boston Hostel $70+
• Ramada by Wyndham Boston $142+
• Temple Place Suites $174+
• Flight Atlanta - Boston (ATL - BOS) $37+
• Flight Baltimore - Boston (BWI - BOS) $47+
• Flight Chicago - Boston (ORD - BOS) $47+
• Ramada Plaza by Wyndham Atlanta Airport $61+
• Microtel Inn & Suites by Wyndham Atlanta/Buckhead Area $72+
• Crowne Plaza Atlanta - Midtown, an IHG Hotel $82+
• Flight Boston - Atlanta (BOS - ATL) $33+
• Flight Houston - Atlanta (HOU - ATL) $34+
• Flight Baltimore - Atlanta (BWI - ATL) $36+
• Generator Madrid $23+
• C&H Aravaca Garden $29+
• Toc Hostel Madrid $32+
• Flight Newark - Paris (EWR - ORY) $298+
• Rodeway Inn Fairgrounds-Casino $67+
• La Quinta Inn & Suites by Wyndham Tampa Fairgrounds - Casino $68+
• Tampa Inn Near Busch Gardens $69+
• Flight Newark - Florida (EWR - USFL) $45+
• Flight New York - Florida (LGA - USFL) $49+
• Flight Philadelphia - Florida (PHL - USFL) $56+
• Flight Atlanta - Tampa (ATL - TPA) $49+
• Flight Baltimore - Tampa (BWI - TPA) $55+
• Flight Chicago - Tampa (ORD - TPA) $55+

New Orleans

• Super 8 by Wyndham New Orleans $49+
• Ramada by Wyndham New Orleans $57+
• Maison Saint Charles by Hotel RL $79+
• Flight Dallas - New Orleans (DFW - MSY) $49+
• Flight Orlando - New Orleans (MCO - MSY) $55+
• Flight Newark - New Orleans (EWR - MSY) $56+

Frequently asked questions about KAYAK

How do i find travel deals on kayak.

Simply use one of our travel search engines to scan for prices gathered from hundreds of travel sites. KAYAK’s search results pages have loads of filter options to help you find deals, discover exactly what you’re looking for and make booking seamless. Plus, there’s no extra fee from KAYAK.

What makes KAYAK a great travel app?

On the KAYAK app for iOS and Android you’ll find all the great travel offers found on the website and much more. There are special mobile rates and app only deals that allow you to save even more money. Plus, you can get notifications straight to your phone letting you know when prices for your next trip have dropped. But the KAYAK app is much more than just a travel app. Use the Trips function to manage your travel itinerary and get up to date status alerts on flights, check-in changes and to store your boarding pass. Even if you’re in the middle of nowhere on your travels, you can still access your travel notes via Trips, as no internet connection is required.

How can I use KAYAK to manage my travel bookings?

KAYAK Trips creates a travel itinerary for you that will give you flight status alerts, can be shared with friends and more. Simply forward your booking confirmations to [email protected] or use the KAYAK app and sync your email account to keep all your travel plans organized in one app, even if you didn’t book with KAYAK. You can share your holiday plans with friends and family and also check out your travel stats for past vacations, like how far you’ve traveled, your most popular cities and how many times you’ve traveled around the world. Even if you don’t have signal, don’t worry, as you can access Trips to check out your itineraries whilst on the road. Your data is safe and secure with us and you won’t have to re-enter credit card info when booking future trips. If you want to make changes or cancel bookings, then you should contact the travel provider, which is provided on the booking confirmation.

What are KAYAK Price Alerts?

Instead of manually checking back in on the price of your next flight or stay, let KAYAK do the hard work for you with KAYAK Price Alerts. Once you’ve saved your search, our data will determine how the price will rise or fluctuate over the coming days. You’ll then get a push notification letting you know when’s the perfect time to book.

Search flights , hotels , rental cars , travel guides and more with KAYAK. KAYAK searches hundreds of other travel sites at once to get you the information you need to make the right decisions.

17 Best Travel Sites for Hotels, Flights, Tours and Car Rentals

Booking.com tops our list for the best travel booking websites, but there are a few others we recommend for specific purposes.

With so many travel booking websites on the market today, finding the best deals for your travels can be tedious. Thankfully, there are several top travel websites you can use when booking flights, hotels and tours.

From flight aggregators to hostel and hotel booking sites, the websites in this list will make planning and booking your travels a little easier. Whether you’re trying to score cheap flights or find the best tour on the other side of the world, these are the best travel sites for making it happen.

I realize all of this information can be a little overwhelming. Every online travel site out there seems to do something different, and sifting through hundreds of search results to find something you like is time consuming. The offers are endless, but the ideal booking site doesn’t overwhelm its users with options or questionable services.

I have personally used every single company on this list for booking travel , and most play a crucial role in allowing me to adventure around the world. These are the best travel booking sites for helping you plan the ultimate trip.

• Our Top Picks
• Best to Find Cheap Hotels: Booking.com
• Best Hotel Rewards Program: Hotels.com
• Best Site for Vacation Rentals: Vrbo
• Best Booking Site for Hostels: Hostelworld
• Best Booking Site for Hotels in Asia: Agoda

Best Hotel Search Engines & Booking Sites

Finding the right accommodation is one of the most important decisions to make while traveling. Location, amenities, and cost are all factors to consider when looking for the right hotel or hostel for your adventure.

And while there are dozens of hotel booking websites to choose from, finding the right place doesn’t have to be complicated.

Here are the best sites I’ve used for fining hotel deals:

Booking.com : Best to Find Cheap Hotels

Booking.com has, by far, the largest number of hotel search results. With over 5.7 million listings in 227 countries, they’re the first place you should look to find hotels online. In addition to hotels, Booking.com also has hostels, guesthouses, apartments, vacation rentals, and all-inclusive resorts available.

With Booking.com, the advertised price is the final price you pay. Other travel websites may have hidden taxes and fees that aren’t explicitly stated, so you’ll end up paying more than you thought at the reservation desk. But with Booking.com, there are no unexpected fees or hidden resort charges. This makes budgeting and trip planning much easier.

All reservations come with a price match guarantee. That means Booking.com will refund the difference if you find a lower price for your hotel on another website after you book. This best price guarantee is an unbelievable perk that could save you a lot of money in the long run.

And once you make your second booking, you’ll automatically become a Booking.com Genius, which rewards you with member-only discounts and offers (even freebies). It’s like accessing a whole world of insider information without actually having to sign up for anything. Genius members receive 10% to 15% off rates, free breakfast, and free room upgrades.

Plus, Booking.com also lets you search for and book your flight, rental car, and attractions, so you can just put in your travel dates and create full vacation packages from one site!

Hotels.com : Best Hotel Rewards Program

Although they aren’t as big as Booking.com, Hotels.com is still a great option when looking for the best deals on hotels. They have over 300,000 hotels in over 19,000 locations around the world. Besides traditional hotel rooms, they also have apartments, cottages, hostels, motels and all-inclusive resorts.

Like other travel sites, Hotels.com lets you filter the search results by date, price, and amenities. You can also sort by distance to find hotels close to certain attractions or neighborhoods. Plus, look at hotel reviews by real, verified users.

Despite the name, Hotels.com lets you search and reserve more than just hotels. They also have a wide range of vacation rentals available including chalets, condos, and full houses.

One of the main reasons for booking with Hotels.com is to take advantage of their unique rewards program. Once you sign up and book 10 nights, you’ll get to stay one night for free. Your free night can be redeemed at one of their 200,000+ properties in popular destinations around the globe without restrictions or blackout dates. Hotels.com also shares a rewards program with Expedia and Vrbo, so you’ll be able to take advantage of savings with any of these sites.

Hotels.com reward members or app users can also unlock secret deals on accommodation. These are specially negotiated discounts that will save you even more money for certain hotel or accommodation listings.

App users can also find last-minute deals using the “Deal for Tonight” feature. You’ll find huge discounts (up to 40%) when looking for a room with same-day check-in.

Vrbo : Best Site for Vacation Rentals

If you want the comforts of home while you’re halfway around the globe, then Vrbo is an excellent alternative to traditional hotel booking websites. Vrbo is a search engine that lists thousands of homes, vacation rentals, apartments, and condos for anyone who wants to experience a country while living like a local, whether staying in the city center or out in the woods.

Ideal for couples, families, or those needing a bit more privacy, Vrbo lets you relax without the hassle of dealing with a host or other travelers. They also tend to list more luxury vacation rentals that have a much higher standard compared to other rental sites.

For this reason, the vacation rentals on Vrbo might cost more than your average hotel from other travel sites. However, you’ll get much nicer accommodations.

Vrbo also has great customer service. All guests are protected by their Book with Confidence Guarantee, which comes with a 24/7 hotline, payment protection, and even last-minute cancellation coverage. So if your host cancels your booking before you arrive, the Vrbo team will try and find another place for you to stay. You can also buy travel insurance so you get a full refund in case you have to cancel.

In addition, Vrbo has a rewards program called One Key that lets you earn rewards on every dollar you spend on travel. This loyalty program is shared across Vrbo, Expedia, and Hotels.com, so you’ll be able to get package deals no matter how you travel.

Hostelworld : Best Booking Site for Hostels

Hostelworld is the top travel site for researching and booking hostels all over the world. They operate in over 178 countries and have a database of seemingly every hostel in existence.

When looking for a hostel, you’ll find accurate ratings and hotel reviews from real users on this booking site. The review score considers information about security, facilities, services, atmosphere and overall value for your money. And they only accept reviews from people who have booked through Hostelworld, so you know the reviews are genuine.

If you want to save money, Hostelworld is an excellent option for those on a tight budget. That’s because most hostels allow you to book a bed in a dorm room, which is far cheaper than booking a private room. But if you want some extra privacy, some hostels have private rooms with (or without) en-suite bathrooms.

You’ll be able to filter hostels by certain amenities, like free breakfast or on-site laundry. You’ll also see a list of different events happening at the hostel during your stay, from pool parties to pub crawls.

However, Hostelworld really shines when it comes to its great customer service. They will refund the price difference if you find your hostel on another site for cheaper. And if you can no longer go on your trip, you have up 24 hours before check-in to cancel without losing your deposit.

Agoda : Best Booking Site for Hotels in Asia

Agoda started out as the top hotel booking site for hotels in Asia, but since has expanded its offerings worldwide. They also have non-traditional accommodation types like homes and hostels. From capsule hotels in Tokyo to private bungalows in Bali, Agoda has over 2 million properties to choose from.

Generally speaking, prices for Agoda hotels are comparable to other travel websites. However, you can save money by booking a hotel through their secret deals program.

With the secret deals program, the identity of the hotel will remain anonymous until you complete your booking. But you’ll be able to see the hotel’s star rating, neighborhood, and amenities before reserving. Some luxury hotels don’t like to advertise their cheap rooms openly, so this is a way to sell rooms at discount prices without making it too public. If you aren’t set on staying at a specific hotel or chain, this program is an excellent option for saving money on accommodation.

By booking on Agoda, you have the opportunity to maximize your earnings with the Agoda PointsMAX program. Once you sign up and link your Agoda account to one of your other mileage programs, you can earn up to 6,000 points per stay. Some of their current partners include American Airlines AAdvantage, United Mileage Plus and KLM/AirFrance Flying Blue.

Couchsurfing : Best for a Free Place to Crash

If all you need is a couch to sleep on, Couchsurfing will help you to find it. Instead of spending the night in a hotel, you’ll be using this booking site to find a couch to sleep on in the home of a friendly host. Trust me — it’s not as awkward as it might seem!

For those needing a bit more privacy, some people also list their private rooms through Couchsurfing. But generally speaking, you’ll usually be staying in the same living quarters as the host.

You’ll also be able to connect with like-minded people from all over the world who want to share their culture and show you the best parts of their city. They’ll tell you about the best local hangouts and restaurants so you can avoid the tourist traps. They might even be interested in joining you for sightseeing in the city or drinks at the local pub. In my experience, hosts are eager to interact with their guests.

When you’re browsing for places to stay, you can search for hosts by gender, age, language, and house preferences. Whether you’re allergic to cats or looking for wheelchair-friendly accommodation, you can easily find the ideal housemate. Remember, you should be looking at the host just as carefully as you look at the apartment itself. Make sure you read the reviews left by other guests. The more reviews, the more confident you’ll feel about staying with that host.

The goal, ultimately, is for you to return the favor whenever you’re at home, thus keeping the Couchsurfing spirit alive around the world. (Trust me, it can be just as fun to host as it is to surf.)

But best of all, unlike pretty much all other travel websites, Couchsurfing is completely free! It’s customary to bring a gift or cook for your host as a token of appreciation for letting you stay in their place, but besides that, you’ll be able to see the world without spending a single penny on accommodation.

• Best Hotel Booking Websites
• Airbnb Alternatives
• Airbnb vs. Vrbo
• Airbnb vs. Hotels

Cheap Flight Booking Websites & Search Engines

In the world of online travel, booking a flight is one of the most important initial steps to having a great trip. And unless you’re planning on spending thousands to sip champagne in business class, the cost of your ticket will probably be a significant deciding factor in what you book.

Although you could book directly with the airlines, using online travel agencies (OTAs) allows you to compare pricing to find the best rates for your trip. To help you figure out where to book your next flight, consider one of the flight search engine travel sites in this section.

Keep in mind that these search sites are not booking sites . They simply compare rates for flights and redirect you to other sites to complete your purchase. You’ll get tons of results, but it’s up to you to sort through them. You should also take the time to use more than one website to compare pricing. Results may vary!

If they send you to a small website you’ve never heard of, do your research to make sure the company is dependable (although these OTAs don’t tend to deal with shady booking websites—a big reason these are the ones I recommend). It’s important to look at the fine print, as some companies might have their own cancellation fees or change fees in addition to the fees set by the airlines.

Google Flights

It seems that you can find anything you want from Google. There’s Google Maps, Google Scholar, Google News, Google Earth, and now Google Flights.

Google Flights is always the first search engine I turn to when I’m looking for the best flight deals. They scan through all available flight options for both major airlines and online travel agencies and then sort through the results to show you the best possible option for your trip. Like Google Maps, or anything else from Google, they’ve really mastered the art of searching, and this is one of the best sites to find deals.

The calendar view makes it easy to pick dates with the best price. And if you haven’t locked down your travel dates, you can check for flights with their flexible date tool. For example, you can search for the cheapest flights in January or even a one-week trip in the next six months.

You can also use the Date Grid in Google Flights to see the cheapest flight combinations for different departure and return dates. Or, check the Price Graph to compare how the prices are likely to change over the next few months. This is a great tool for identifying significant price drops for your desired route.

Many times you’ll want to search for a specific airport, but if you’re also flexible with your destination, you can search for flights by continent or country. This flexible search is an excellent option if you’re looking for a last-minute weekend getaway without a set destination in mind.

And unlike other travel websites, Google Flights will make sure you’re getting the best rates by offering money-saving recommendations. They’ll let you know that by flying in two days later — or to a different airport nearby — you could save even more money.

Whether you’re booking an RTW adventure, a weekend getaway to New York or simply browsing for inspiration for your next trip, start with Google Flights. And if you’ve got the time to really learn how to use Google Flights , I highly suggest it. Knowing how to squeeze the most out of this incredible tool is a skill well worth having.

Skyscanner is a great travel site for cheap airline tickets, and it’s always my second stop after Google Flights. They search through over 1,200 different airline companies and smaller OTA sites to compare the best offers for your travels.

You can also use their “Everywhere” search engine to look up the cheapest flight going anywhere in the world. The results show the average price for a country, so you’ll need to narrow down the search by destination city to see the exact price for a specific airport. However, you’ll get a better idea of which countries tend to have cheaper flights.

It’s also easy to filter for nonstop flights, included luggage, nearby airports, departure/arrival time, and more so you can find deals on the exact flights you’re looking for.

I recommend downloading the Skyscanner app. Not only can you search and book flights through the app, but you can also use the “Explore” feature to find destinations for solo travel, quick getaways or last minute trips (which is especially handy if you’re traveling open-ended).

One last bonus: Skyscanner also lets you search for deals on hotels, vacation rentals, rental cars, and even complete vacation packages. This travel site has it all.

Momondo is another flight search engine that should be on your radar. This company scans through thousands of airline companies and OTAs to display rates for both domestic and international flights. And unlike other sites, Momondo shows prices for many of the smaller OTAs overlooked by Google Flights and Skyscanner.

I also use Momondo to find out when the best time to fly is. I particularly love their matrix that highlights an entire month, meaning you can compare prices to find the lowest price possible.

On the search results page, Momondo offers bar charts that show prices for different departure and return dates. You can use this feature to spot any significant price drops for flights if your dates are flexible. Play around with these features — it takes some getting used to, but once you get the hang of it, you can score some fantastic travel deals.

You can also look at the “Flight Insights” page to see price trends and analytics for your exact route. This page uses historical search data to show you the cheapest month, day, and even time of day to book. It will tell you the cheapest airlines that serve your route, along with how far in advance you should be booking to save the most money.

In addition, you can consult the “Price Forecast” feature to see if prices are expected to increase or decrease in the near future. If so, you can set a price alert to notify you if the cost of your flight drops.

Dollar Flight Club

Finding inexpensive flights can be time-consuming, but Dollar Flight Club simplifies the process by sending exclusive deals straight to your inbox. Most of their offers are 60-90% off the list price, with savings averaging around $500 .

Dollar Flight Club uses technology and historical data to find cost-saving deals. Although you can’t search for specific dates or destinations, you will still find great domestic and international deals if you’re flexible with your plans.

When you sign up for the free version of Dollar Flight Club, you’ll get one email a day for your selected departure region. Or, you can upgrade to premium to get four times as many deals for multiple departure airports. Premium members also receive instant SMS alerts as well as deals for cheap domestic flights over the weekend. Signing up for Premium Plus will give you access to their rewards program with more deals and offers for tickets for business and first-class flights.

Going (Formerly Scott's Cheap Flights)

Going was formerly known as Scott’s Cheap Flights, and it is another one of my favorite travel sites for finding affordable flights. Like Dollar Flight Club, they send emails for flight deals on domestic and international airline tickets. Most deals are 40-90% off the original price!

But instead of using an algorithm to find great deals, members of the Going team search all of the fares by hand to find deals. This goes a step above others to make this one of the best travel sites out there.

When you sign up for the free version, you’ll receive 15-20 selected deals per month. Even though you’ll select a specific airport as your preferred point of departure, it includes deals from an array of different cities. If you only want to see deals from your specific city, then you’ll want to upgrade to the premium version. Not only does the premium membership include an extra 30-35 deals per month, but it also includes error fare flights and offers for summer and holiday travel.

While Scott’s Cheap Flights has rebranded and changed the name, it’s still an awesome place to find flights for your vacation package.

• How to Find Cheap Flights
• Cheap Flight Hacks
• How to Use Google Flights
• 11 Genius Hacks to Take the Stress Out of Flying
• How I Booked an $8,967 First Class Airplane Ticket for $5.60

Recommended Tour Companies

Sometimes, we all need a little bit of adventure to keep us on our toes while we’re on the road.

Maybe you’re a solo traveler interested in joining a group backpacking experience through Asia. Perhaps you want an action-packed itinerary full of hiking, diving, and bungee-jumping (just make sure you have travel insurance that covers those adventure activities). Or maybe you simply want an agency to take the stress out of planning by giving you a list of all the top places you must visit. Whatever your reason, here are the best travel sites for tours and fully guided vacation packages.

GetYourGuide

GetYourGuide is a search engine with a massive database of tours and attractions in over 7,000 destinations around the globe. I’m talking more than 40,000 activities like street food tours, skiing and snowboarding trips, skip-the-line museum passes, and boat excursions. You name it, GetYourGuide has it, and their one of the best sites for finding and reserving travel activities.

If you’re visiting a new city for the first time, GetYourGuide also takes the hassle out of planning the perfect itinerary. You can reserve your spot on a tour or purchase your tickets for an event directly through their website or mobile app.

Best of all, all tours come with detailed reviews full of handy insider information, so you can hear first-hand from past clients if the activity is worth it. Not to mention, most of the offers are more affordable than if you were to book directly at the attraction itself.

It’s not the best place for all-inclusive vacation packages, but when it comes to travel sites for tours, GetYourGuide tours are a great way to soak in the culture of a city. From wine tasting to helicopter rides to snorkeling, you’ll be able to get the lowest price (guaranteed) by booking on GetYourGuide.

G Adventures

If group tours are more up your alley, then G Adventures is one of the best sites for you. Whether you’re traveling Europe by train, cruising through the Galapagos, or cycling through the countryside in China, there’s a tour for almost every traveler.

These aren’t your run-of-the-mill group tours. G Adventures are small groups (averaging 10 travelers) that all share a common desire to explore the world. When you look online, you’ll see tours organized by travel style. You’ll be able to book vacation packages specifically catered to 18 to 30-year-olds, tours focusing on health and wellness, and even active tours for adventure lovers.

Solo travelers are also welcome to join a tour with G Adventures. Whether you’re looking for full vacation packages or short day trips, you can expect to meet some awesome people along the way.

They’ve also partnered with National Geographic to create immersive tour experiences. Whether you’re learning how to tango in Argentina or cooking authentic meals with a local Thai family, these tours will give you a deeper appreciation for your destination’s history and culture.

Intrepid Travel

Intrepid Travel is like G Adventures in many ways — they offer small-group tours for adventurous travelers in more than 100 countries. Tours are divided into themes, like adventure cruising, cycling, and culinary. And if you’re interested in meeting other like-minded travelers, they have also organized trips specifically for people between the ages of 18-30.

But Intrepid sometimes goes to places where G Adventures does not, and vice versa. Intrepid also has tons of amazing deals available year-round. Many trips are discounted up to 50% and some tours can be reserved with just a $1 deposit. And if you’re eager to leave ASAP, then you can browse a variety of last-minute deals.

They’ve also partnered with Lonely Planet to create unique, niche experiences. With hundreds of single or multi-day vacation packages, you’ll be able to get off the beaten path to see the world through the eyes of a local.

But the biggest perk of traveling with Intrepid Travel comes down to the group leaders and small group sizes. You won’t feel like you’re just getting carted around because every tour is led by a local guide, meaning you get a more authentic experience.

One important note, for many trips, Intrepid requires you to have travel insurance . That’s a good idea anyway though.

Best Rental Car Sites

For many trips, you’ll need to rent a car to get around once your flight arrives. Finding rental cars can be frustrating and expensive.

Fortunately, by using one of these car rental sites , you can find the best prices and reserve your vehicle ahead of time, so there’s no stress at pickup. These travel websites let you search through many car rental providers, compare pricing, and make a reservation. Here are the best travel sites for finding rental cars:

Rentalcars.com

It’s all in the name here. Rentalcars.com is owned by the same company as the hotel site, Booking.com . It is a search site that lets you find car rentals and easily book them online.

Rentalcars.com has a great streamlined process for searching, filtering, and paying for your rental car. With just a few clicks you can find the best deal and have your car reserved. Plus, listings on Rentalcars.com typically have free cancellation when you book through their site. That’s a big win in my book because I hate stressing about what will happen if my flight is delayed or if I have to cancel my trip.

Rentalcars.com typically has great discounts available. In my experience, I’ve often been able to find the best prices compared to other rental car websites.

They also offer insurance directly though their site, though you may not need it if your travel insurance already covers rental cars.

Ultimately, one of the main things I look for in rental cars is the lowest price possible. Would I like to drive a BMW around on vacation? Sure. But typically I’m saving pennies for a trip and don’t want to spend them all on car rentals.

Priceline is one of the best travel websites to find low-price car rentals. They will often offer “Express Deals” which give you a much lower price than you’d get going directly through a car rental agency.

How do they do it? Priceline was the first travel site to offer “opaque rentals.” While that sounds complicated, it just means that you don’t know what car you’ll get until you pick it up. As long as you aren’t picky, this is a fantastic way to save cash on car rentals.

As a bonus, you can get package deals if you use Priceline to reserve flights, hotels, or even trips with a cruise line. They also have a loyalty program that can help you save on travel over time. For many travelers, this could be a one-stop shop for the ideal vacation package.

Unlike the other travel websites on this list, Kayak doesn’t let you reserve rental cars directly through their website. Instead, Kayak is just a big search site that filters through dozens (or maybe hundreds?) of other rental companies, travel websites, online travel agencies, and other related resources. You put in your travel dates, and Kayak gives you a list of options offering competitive prices. They then give you a link to book your car through the site or company that’s offering the deal.

The benefit of Kayak is that, because it is searching so many different travel websites, you can find great deals that other websites may not show.

If you want help with your entire trip planning process, Kayak also lets you search for flight deals, hotel deals, and even complete vacation packages.

Travel Booking Websites FAQs

What is the best travel site to book through.

Booking.com is the best (and largest) travel booking site.

Is it cheaper to book through a travel agent or online?

Booking online will almost always be cheaper than using a travel agent.

How do I get the best travel deals?

You can get great travel deals by comparing across multiple travel booking sites.

What is the best rental car site?

Rentalcars.com is our top pick for the best rental car website.

What is the best site for cheap flights?

Google Flights is always a good starting point when searching for cheap flights.

Jeremy Scott Foster

I’m curious why Airbnb is not listed, are they not a good option?

Given their high (and increasing) fees, lack of consistency and poor customer service, the TravelFreak editorial team can’t, in good faith, recommend booking with Airbnb. We do consider them to be a viable option, but can’t stand behind them as a company nor recommend them to readers.

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Going (Scott’s Cheap Flights) Review: Is This Flight Tool Worth Using?

One of the biggest barriers to entry when it comes to travel is airfare. It can be prohibitively expensive — especially in this post-COVID travel boom.

As anyone who’s spent time searching for flights knows, finding a cheap one can be an arduous and time-consuming task. Unlike other aspects of travel (say, museum entry fees or walking tour prices), flight tickets don’t have a set price. Instead, tickets are volatile and unpredictable. We can’t expect a nonstop journey from NYC to Tokyo to always cost the same amount (though that would be nice!).

And even if you find an affordable deal, it can be easy to get caught in decision paralysis, questioning whether you should really book it, or if you could find something even cheaper (this is something that happened to me a lot when I first started traveling).

But this volatility in pricing can actually be used to a traveler’s advantage — with the right tools.

That’s where Going comes in. It’s a tool designed to help you find cheap flights.

Formerly known as Scott’s Cheap Flights, Going is a membership-based website and newsletter that finds flight deals to over 900 destinations around the world. Most deals are 40-90% off normal prices, meaning members save an average of $550 USD on international economy seats (first-class flyers save $2,000 USD on average).

That’s a huge amount of savings!

Going started back in 2013 when Scott Keyes found an unbelievable deal from NYC to Milan: just $130 USD round-trip. He immediately booked the ticket, went to Italy, and had the time of his life.

When he came back, friends and family kept asking how he found such a great deal. So, he started sending a regular email to friends with the deals he found. By 2015, Scott’s Cheap Flights was born .

Many years — and over two million members — later, Scott’s Cheap Flights rebranded as Going. Same company, new name. Going encourages its members to take a reverse-booking approach to travel, which means choosing your destination and dates based on the flight deals that are available rather than deciding when and where you want to go and then looking for a bargain. It seems counterintuitive at first, but it means you can find incredible deals if you’re flexible.

I’ve known Scott for years and love what he has done with the company. I think he’s created one of the best tools for finding cheap flights there is. But don’t just take my word for it — here’s everything you need to know about Going to decide if it’s right for you!

How Going Works

At its core, Going is a membership website, meaning you have to sign up for some sort of plan to access its deals (one of the options is free, and all the plans offer free trials).

After signing up, it’s a super simple process to set up your account and get deals landing in your inbox:

There are three membership tiers: Limited, Premium, and Elite. While Limited is entirely free, you can take advantage of a 14-day free trial of both Premium and Elite before signing up.

New users can also get 20% off Premium with the code NOMADICMATT20.

The tiers break down as follows:

Limited (free):

• Small selection of deals on economy-class tickets for international travel, 1-2 days after they are found
• Can follow five US departure airports (but you can’t filter flights in any other way)

Premium ($49/year):

• Immediate notification of both international and domestic economy-class deals
• Alerts about rare mistake fares from your home airport (when the airlines incorrectly price a flight)
• Weekend Getaway alerts (for flights departing within the next month)
• Ability to filter what alerts you get
• Can follow up to 10 US airports

Elite ($199/year):

• Everything in Premium
• All mistake fares Going finds
• Deals on all ticket classes
• Unlimited number of departure airports
• Deals on award flights (for booking with points)
• Priority support

Here’s a full breakdown of the plans:

If you’re just looking for the odd flight deal, chances are the Limited plan will suffice for you. However, if you’re looking to travel more and want to really save money, Premium is a must. It has way more perks and offers a lot of value. And if you want deals on booking with points, you’ll need to sign up for the Elite plan as it is the only plan that includes award flight deals.

(If you’re a new user, don’t forget to use the promo code NOMADICMATT20 for 20% off Premium. )

Once you pick a plan and sign up, you’ll want to enter your home airport, as well as any additional airports that you might be willing to travel to for a great deal.

While the major benefit of being a member of Going is that you can just sit back, do nothing, and wait for a bargain to show up in your inbox, you can also search the Flight Deals page :

Here’s an example of what you can see on this page on the Limited Plan vs. the Elite Plan:

The Limited (free plan) view:

The Elite plan view (as you can see, there are hundreds more deals here, and this is filtered for Economy flights only):

How Going Finds Deals

It might be surprising to hear, but most of Going’s deals are found by their (human) Flight Experts using a set of criteria to determine what makes for a “deal.”

That means that they don’t just send you any and every cheap flight, but instead curate a selection of deals. They won’t send you a flight with several long layovers or an overnight layover, and they don’t send deals on budget airlines.

Instead, Going deals consist of nonstop or one-stop flights on full-service airlines with manageable layovers. They also make sure that a deal has at least ten different departure dates, so you’ll never encounter one that requires to you travel on a specific day. In short, they only pick decent flights, which I really appreciate.

On every deal, you’ll see a breakdown with a bit about the flight and destination, as well as sometimes a write-up including helpful tips and information from the Flight Expert who found the deal:

You’ll also see a price history for the flight, so you can see exactly how good of a deal it is. To me, this is super interesting:

Once a deal comes up that you want, all that’s left is to book it. Simply hit the “book” button on Going, which will then take you to the booking site. Usually it’s Google Flights, but sometimes it might be Skyscanner or similar platforms.

As you can see, when you click through, Going has already set all the filters so that the deal it found comes up:

When booking, you’ll want to act fast. Flight prices change all the time, so snag that fare while it still exists. That’s especially the case with mistake fares, as they’re rare and get scooped up or fixed quickly.

Remember, in the US you legally have 24 hours after purchasing a flight to cancel it, so book first and then quickly figure out any required logistics (time off, pet care, etc.), knowing you can cancel within a day if needed.

And that’s all there is to it!

Pros and Cons of Using Going

• Getting cheap-flight alerts delivered to your inbox (saving you a ton of time)
• Simple and easy to use
• Great, hands-on customer service
• Affordable tiers (including a free one)
• Allows for a variety of departure options to streamline your searches
• Paid membership is necessary for the best deals
• Only works if your home airport is in the US (including the US Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, and Guam)
• Award-flight availability is limited (in beta version for the Elite plan)

Should You Use Going?

Going is for travelers who want cheap airfare and can be flexible on dates and destinations in order to get the best deals. Going calls this its “reverse-booking” approach.

Going is for people that don’t have the time or inclination to constantly check for cheap fares, and would rather pay a small fee (the $49/year Premium plan is sufficient for most people) to unlock a world of deals.

Going also works best for travelers who can act quickly once a deal becomes available. While most deals are for travel 2-9 months in the future, since prices change so quickly, you’ll need to be able to book as soon as you get an email alert (but: remember the blanket 24-hour free cancelation policy on all US airlines).

On the flip side, Going is not a tool that will help you find cheap fares to a specific destination for a specific time. (If that’s all you want, simply set up a Google Flights alert for your required dates and destination.) The very nature of the service requires flexibility in order to take advantage of the best deals.

Going is also not for people who would rather spend the time searching for deals themselves rather than pay for a membership. You can find the flights that Going discovers on your own, as they’re publicly available on search engines like Google Flights, Skyscanner, and Kayak. However, that takes (a lot of) time, and one person would never be able to find all the deals that Going’s team of over 50 people can! Even I get tired of searching for flight deals sometimes!

I think Going is a great resource to help budget travelers find incredible flight deals all over the world. While you can certainly learn the tips and tricks for doing so on your own, Going saves you the time and energy it takes to look for deals so that you can keep living your life, wait for the perfect one to arrive in your inbox, book it, and get going.

Sign up with promo code NOMADICMATT20 to get 20% off a Premium Plan!

Book Your Trip: Logistical Tips and Tricks

Book Your Flight Find a cheap flight by using Skyscanner . It’s my favorite search engine because it searches websites and airlines around the globe so you always know no stone is being left unturned.

Book Your Accommodation You can book your hostel with Hostelworld . If you want to stay somewhere other than a hostel, use Booking.com as it consistently returns the cheapest rates for guesthouses and hotels.

Don’t Forget Travel Insurance Travel insurance will protect you against illness, injury, theft, and cancellations. It’s comprehensive protection in case anything goes wrong. I never go on a trip without it as I’ve had to use it many times in the past. My favorite companies that offer the best service and value are:

• SafetyWing (best for everyone)
• InsureMyTrip (for those 70 and over)
• Medjet (for additional evacuation coverage)

Want to Travel for Free? Travel credit cards allow you to earn points that can be redeemed for free flights and accommodation — all without any extra spending. Check out my guide to picking the right card and my current favorites to get started and see the latest best deals.

Need Help Finding Activities for Your Trip? Get Your Guide is a huge online marketplace where you can find cool walking tours, fun excursions, skip-the-line tickets, private guides, and more.

Got a comment on this article? Join the conversation on Facebook , Instagram , or Twitter and share your thoughts!

Disclosure: Please note that some of the links above may be affiliate links, and at no additional cost to you, I earn a commission if you make a purchase. I recommend only products and companies I use and the income goes to keeping the site community supported and ad free.

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The top travel review sites for tour operators

By Erick Tomaliwan

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This probably isn’t the first time the top travel review sites have come to mind. After two years of pandemic-induced travel pause, you might be curious about what guests seek when researching their next trip and where they’re looking.  

Whether you’re an established or brand new experience provider, here are the review sites you should cultivate a presence that will help when requesting guest reviews.

And when it comes to the best travel review sites, not only do you need to get reviews, you need to sandwich the tasks that lead to guests leaving reviews altogether. 

Why invest in travel review websites

Some of the best travel review websites rely on travelers sharing their perspectives to help determine tour business rankings.

To maximize your reach, it helps to know which sites to list your business, and thankfully, you only need to be active on a few to do well.

One important element to remember is that you do not have to be everywhere. Instead, you can focus your efforts on one or two review sites you enjoy using, you’ll be better off than spreading yourself thin. 

It starts with knowing how to ask for customer feedback by email . And then, once a guest posts something — learn how to acknowledge it and what to say when leaving a reply to customer positive feedback and also, how to respond to a bad Google review .

Cultivating a strategy for asking for and managing reviews can go a long way in helping your business stand out to travelers and encourage them to book with you.

How to be strategic about reviews 

When looking at where you might want to spend a bit of time, consider some of the more popular travel review sites.

For instance, Tripadvisor might attract a different audience than Google. Still, there’s no harm in being in multiple places to make it easier for those who might be looking for ideas and quick tidbits on what to expect. 

Adding guest reviews directly onto your website and sharing them on social media helps prospective visitors learn what previous guests think of your business. 

While out on tour or wrapping up an experience, mention to guests how helpful it is for them to share a review. Ask them to think about what stands out to them, how the guide makes the experience memorable and whether they would return again.

Being casual yet friendly and direct helps point guests in the right direction, takes some pressure off, and makes guests feel like their insight is appreciated and helpful.

Look for opportunities to become more inclusive 

Make a point to ask families, older travelers and guests with mobility limitations for their feedback to learn whether your tour business did enough to make them feel taken care of.

With more travel options, if you have the capacity to invite more people to experience what you have to offer, try to. Plus, you’ll enjoy the benefit of opening up your tours and activities to new audiences. 

What are the best travel review websites

Many travel review sites are geared toward people looking to book hotels, flights and vacation packages. 

But, as a tour operator, you’ll want guests to leave reviews on sites that also work for your tour and activity business. Of course, it’s even better to focus on websites where you already have a travel business listing. Below are some of the top travel review sites for experience providers.

Google My Business 

Google’s platform populates your tour business information when you appear in users’ search results.

Your listing will display your tour business address, phone number, hours of operation and reviews. This online search giant helps experience providers attract reservations from travelers searching for things to do nearby. 

Higher ratings from reviews will increase the chances of people clicking through to your profile. Plus, the benefit for your guests is that they don’t need an account to share a review. Make sure you respond to good and bad reviews within a few days of receipt to gain momentum from Google.

Implementing a policy of a quick response time goes across the board for the top travel review sites. Ideally, if you have a few canned messages at the ready, you can tailor them to reflect a specific guest’s review and save yourself a ton of time in drafting each reply from scratch.

Tripadvisor 

TripAdvisor touts itself to be the world’s largest travel site — while also being a top travel review website. It boasts 570 million reviews for 7.3+ million listings and attracts over 473 million unique monthly active users. Those are some big numbers! 

When thinking about how to get more reviews on Tripadvisor , consider what guests are looking for when they head to the platform. First, images are helpful for guests to have a better sense of what something is like from a traveler’s perspective.

Detailed reviews help travelers decide where to stay, how to travel, activities to book and where to eat. Plus, it’s worthwhile to earn how to improve your TripAdvisor ranking and increase the chances of being seen by more prospective guests.

Since Tripadvisor ranks listings based on quantity, quality, and recency of reviews, it’s in your best interest to direct people to this platform shortly after their experience.

Contributors rate a business on a 5-star scale and can leave a detailed review. Then, fellow Tripadvisor users can vote whether a review was helpful. 

How to Sign Up: Register your business here

Cost to Join: Free to sign up on Tripadvisor. Additional charges apply for a Viator listing , where guests can book through Tripadvisor. 

Expedia Local Expert

Expedia is an online travel site where you can list your tours and activities. Guests search for activities, lodging, and vacation packages. Their site receives 90 million unique visitors and 1.2 billion monthly site page views.

Expedia verifies each review, and listings are filtered based on popularity. This factors into their 5-star rating system, impacting how listings are shown. Guests can also vote if they would recommend an experience to others.

How to Sign Up: Sign your business up here and explore their FAQ

Cost to Join: estimated costs vary depending on your business

A Facebook Business page lets you connect with travelers and increase your online sales. 

It’s also another great place to collect reviews since users have the option to like your page, share with their friends and rate your business by saying “yes”, which they would recommend. 

Previously, Facebook had a five-star rating system and prompted the reviewer to leave comments, but has adopted a recommend or not model since 2020.  Use your page to increase your Facebook recommendations by making it a hub for traveler photos. Guests will be inclined to check the page once they get home and reminisce the memories they created— and hopefully share them with others.

How to Sign Up: Set up your business page here

Cost to Join: Free

Viator is another online travel agent and marketplace where travelers can book and rate tours, activities and other experiences. TripAdvisor recently purchased the OTA, which means it will gain access to their 350 million unique visitors per month.

Viator only allows verified users to leave reviews to ensure quality. Guests rate their experience on a 5-star scale and are encouraged to leave comments. Viator lists search results based on popularity.

How to Sign Up: Fill out Viator’s form and learn more here . Cost to Join: Signing up is free, and they charge a commission on successful sales.

Reviews on Online Travel Agent websites

While OTA’s may not be your typical review site, high ratings can increase your bookings if you sell tours, activities, experiences, etc. on their marketplace. 

When deciding which travel review site is best, focus on platforms you already use to make it easier to integrate into your workflow. You can request and remind your guests to leave reviews. But ultimately, they will only post something on a site that’s easy to use and already in their wheelhouse. 

And when it comes to asking for reviews, the best thing to do is make it incredibly simple for customers. 

You’ll be hard-pressed to get guests to sign up for a new account just to leave a review of your tour business — and they shouldn’t have to jump through hoops to share what makes you an amazing company.

Instead, focus on what benefits guests get from sharing reviews. If you can inspire guests to share their feedback because of the extra effort you put in, it’ll contribute to more positive booking experiences for future visitors.

And you can also remind travelers where to leave reviews by displaying platform icons on your website and including hyperlinks in your emails.

Final thoughts 

While on tour, have guides mention how helpful it is for guests to share their experiences. We’re all busy, so the best time to request reviews is when what you’re asking about is still fresh in their minds.  

People appreciate straightforward guidance. And if you can make it seem like they can give you something in exchange for a delightful experience, it’s a mutually beneficial ask that feels good on both sides. 

Over time, you’ll build momentum, gain trust from prospective travelers and enjoy repeat guests. All while receiving reviews reinforcing why you do what you do as you continue to grow your tour business.

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‘The New Tourist’ Review: Is There a Better Way to Travel?

T he term “tourist trap” seems to have been coined by Graham Greene in “The Lawless Roads,” a Mexican travelogue published in 1939. Greene, a man who knew his way around foreign locales, was referring to cheap souvenirs, but the phrase would soon denote the sort of crowded places that visitors flock to and locals avoid.

The world today is covered in tourist traps—and tourists. In Barcelona, thousands of residents recently took to the streets to protest the number of visitors to the city, a longstanding source of frustration for those who have witnessed rude tourist behavior and seen housing prices skyrocket, a development they attribute to the city’s proliferation of short-term rentals on services like Airbnb. Barcelona plans to ban short-term rentals by 2028. Yet tourism accounts for 15% of the city’s economy. Crowded as La Rambla may be, what would the alternative look like?

Travelers in the modern age are constantly encountering such contradictions. “Tourism shapes our world,” Paige McClanahan writes in “The New Tourist.” “It alters our economies and cultures, as well as our physical environments.” Tourism also “intensifies the commodification of our cultures, even as it sometimes helps to sustain them.” In this thought-provoking book, Ms. McClanahan, a journalist, surveys travel trends while presenting insights gleaned from her own travels and interviews with tourism-industry professionals around the world.

Ms. McClanahan recounts the rise of Lonely Planet, the guidebook publisher that helped shape modern wanderlust. The company was built by Tony and Maureen Wheeler, who landed in Australia in 1972 after journeying from Britain through continental Europe en route to India and Southeast Asia. “They hadn’t set out to write a guidebook,” Ms. McClanahan observes, “but soon after they made it to Sydney, they found there was a huge interest in the notes and anecdotes they’d gathered along their route.”

Their first title, “Across Asia on the Cheap,” seemed to establish the template for a new kind of guidebook aimed at travelers who didn’t want to rely on agents or package-tour companies and instead craved off-the-beaten-path experiences. The Wheelers, Ms. McClanahan writes, “were at the forefront of a small group of restless young adults who would collectively help to open up whole swathes of the planet to adventure-seeking, budget-minded Western travelers.”

In 1996, the author writes, Lonely Planet published 216 titles in 11 languages. Since then, platforms like Tripadvisor, Expedia and Airbnb have made it possible to plan and book a trip with a few taps on a smartphone. Social media, meanwhile, gives us the ability to share updates from our journeys in real time. And like-minded friends, who see those updates, can start dreaming about their own adventures.

No wonder places like Iceland contend with overtourism. A 2015 Justin Bieber music video filmed in an Icelandic canyon led to such an influx of visitors over the next few years that it caused environmental damage and forced officials to close the area temporarily. Yet, as Ms. McClanahan acknowledges, tourism had been a lifeline for Iceland in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis and a 2010 volcanic eruption that shut down European air traffic.

The Icelandic króna had become severely devalued against the dollar, making the island nation a very attractive place for American travelers. To spur growth, the Icelandic government sought to entice visitors by asking residents to create social-media content highlighting the country’s wonders. The campaign was a great success and helped pull Iceland out of recession.

To write “The New Tourist,” Ms. McClanahan traveled not only to Iceland but to other destinations in Cambodia, the Netherlands, India, France, Hawaii and elsewhere. In 2019, she notes, Hawaii saw “a record-breaking 10.4 million tourists [come] to the state. The same year, resident sentiment toward tourism hit a new low, with only 58 percent of respondents agreeing with the statement that tourism had ‘brought more benefits than problems.’ ” The author speaks with a Native Hawaiian state land-use commissioner who says that indigenous Hawaiians have been impoverished, not helped, by the tourist economy.

Ms. McClanahan considers potential policy solutions that could be implemented around the world: restricting short-term rentals, building infrastructure to accommodate visitors better, crafting tourist activities that economically benefit locals. But her chief suggestion is a change of heart.

At the outset of her book, she argues for a shift in the traveler’s mindset, contrasting what she calls the “old” tourist with the “new.” The old tourist “is a pure consumer who sees the people and places he encounters when he travels as nothing more than a means to some self-serving end: an item crossed off a bucket list, a fun shot for his Instagram grid.” The new tourist, on the other hand, is “humbled by her travels,” “embraces the chance to encounter people whose backgrounds are very different from her own,” and thinks through the effect that her travel decisions have on the places she visits.

Travel, despite its challenges, remains one of life’s most enjoyable, fulfilling and educational activities, and plenty of people are willing to put aside the time and funds for it. But there’s the rub: We want travel to change us for the better but not to change the world for the worse.

Mr. Shull is a books editor at the Journal.

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Travel blogger ‘totally stranded’ after learning egyptian hotel he booked actually didn’t exist.

A travel blogger was gutted to find out that the hotel he booked in Egypt turned out to be ancient history.

Mark Jeavons, 43, was excited for his four night stay at the Pyramids and Sphinx View Hotel in Giza, Egypt, which was quoted as £40-per-night ($52 US).

But when he arrived at the listed address at midnight, he was alarmed to discover there was no hotel – just an empty back alley.

It was nothing like the photos on the listing he had booked via Booking.com – which had dozens of positive reviews and featured a rooftop area from which you could see the Pyramids.

Mark, an English teacher, from Wolverhampton, said: “There was nothing at the address.

“It was a back alley with no sign of a hotel.

“The taxi driver was asking people on the street but no one had heard of it.

“I was totally stranded – it was not ideal.”

He had reserved a room from January 4 to 7 2024 for his “bucket list” solo adventure.

Mark was quoted around £40 ($52 US) a night to be paid in person at the non-existent hotel with the address of Gamal abd al nasser st nazlet elsemman, 12557, Egypt.

He reserved the room through Booking.com but was not made to pay any deposit and had made plans to pay in person at the hotel.

He was forced to roam the streets until he found emergency accommodation more than an hour later at The Sun and Sand Hotel.

He ended up shelling out more than £80 ($104) a night on his last-minute refuge.

Mark said: “You just assume it is going to be good if the reviews are all good.”

Mark said the hotel’s reviews were glowing and he didn’t think twice before booking.

But on his return, he set about unearthing the mystery of the invisible hotel.

He said: “I later found out on Google reviews that there were lots of people saying it was a scam and not to book it.”

After Mark complained to Booking.com, the hotel vanished from the site.

A record of the hotel still exists on hotel comparison site Trivago – with no photos or reviews but a location still visible on a map.

The Sphinx and Pyramids View hotel in Giza was uploaded to the Booking.com site on July 19, 2024 – and is listed on the same street as The Pyramids and Sphinx View hotel on Trivago.

The hotel has so far received 44 reviews to garner a 9.0 rating, with glowing recommendations drowning out a handful of reviewers calling the hotel a scam.

The hotel’s Booking.com photos depict luxurious bedrooms, scantily-clad women posing in bath tubs and women standing in front of the pyramids.

Despite the false start, Mark had a great time touring the pyramids, temples and taking to the skies in a hot air balloon over Luxor.

He said: “There is more freedom when you are solo travelling.

“It would have been worse if there were wife and kids.”

Mark has travelled to more than 40 countries, writing up his experience for his MJ Travel Guides blog – https://mjtravelguides.com

A spokesperson for Booking.com said: “We were sorry to hear about the experience of this customer with a property listed on our platform.

“While the hotel has successfully hosted a number of guests, we are investigating further and will be in contact with the customer directly to offer any further support.”

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What the New FTC Crackdown on Fake Reviews May Mean for Travel

Sean O'Neill , Skift

August 14th, 2024 at 4:51 PM EDT

Regulators aim to curb digital chicanery. Their target: fake AI reviews, paid praise, and biased endorsements from influencers. But policing the sprawling review ecosystem may become a headache for many.

Sean O'Neill

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission announced a rule Wednesday aiming to punish businesses for buying or selling fake reviews and endorsements – and there are plenty of implications for the travel industry.

It’s been a long-running problem in travel and an open secret for over a decade that many hoteliers post fake reviews, often by hiring third parties. The aim is either to make competitor properties look worse or improve their own online ratings. Fake reviews can be created and posted by businesses themselves or by hiring services for as little as a few dollars per review. AI tools promise to turbocharge the practice.

However, this new rule enables the FTC to seek civil penalties of up to $51,744 per violation, and the agency will start enforcing the rule within roughly two months.

The rule is targeted at a wide range of services – think restaurants – but the ruling will affect online review sites and travel agencies, hotel and short-term rental lodging providers, social media influencers, and other review generators.

Fake Reviews Create Legal Risk

The agency’s new rule prohibits the creation, purchase, or sale of fake reviews, including those generated by AI or individuals without genuine experience.

Travel agencies, travel booking platforms, travel price-comparison services, and blogs that fail to take reasonable steps to police fake reviews and endorsements could be held accountable.

“For far too long, the FTC hasn’t had the teeth it needed to crack down on individuals and groups authoring fake reviews, and the travel companies like hotels that may have been soliciting those fake reviews,” said Ben Beck, an assistant professor of marketing in the Marriott School of Business at Brigham Young University.

While most companies may embrace the goal of protecting consumers from sleight of hand, some will face a burden in trying to police reviews on their digital sites and apps. Rogue digital marketers constantly test new ways to game the system. And drawing the line between genuine and manufactured sentiment is tricky.

“It is unclear how far-reaching this responsibility (and resulting civil penalties for violation) will be – e.g., a fake review gets posted to a platform and then linked/posted at service providers website, etc.,” said Christopher Anderson, a professor at Cornell’s SC Johnson College of Business via email.

However, the Travel Tech Association, which represents online travel agencies and other intermediaries, said the agency had written the law to properly target bad actors. The penalties don’t single out tech platforms that carry content and make a good faith effort to vet it, the association said.

“Travel Tech welcomes the adoption of the commission’s proposed rules that appropriately target bad actors without significantly burdening honest businesses and provide benefits to consumers and honest competitors.”

Social Media Endorsements, Too

Social media influencers, bloggers, and others who are paid for endorsements may also be at legal risk if they don’t follow ethical practices.

The FTC has banned the practice of providing compensation or other incentives conditioned on posting reviews or endorsements, including via social media videos, with a desired sentiment.

“Fake reviews not only waste people’s time and money but also pollute the marketplace and divert business away from honest competitors,” said FTC chair Lina Khan in a statement.

Tough Problem to Fight

The problem is long-standing. Tripadvisor caught and removed 1.3 million reviews in 2022, mostly before the reviews were ever posted, it said. Google said it removed about 200 million pieces of fake content from its Maps app that year.

Tripadvisor said that it is “pleased to see that Tripadvisor’s approach to content integrity aligns with, and in some cases even goes beyond, the FTC’s new rule to ban fake reviews.”

Travel Tech Sector Stock Index Performance Year-to-Date

What am I looking at?  The performance of travel tech sector stocks within the  ST200 . The index includes companies publicly traded across global markets including online travel, booking, and travel tech companies.

The Skift Travel 200 (ST200)  combines the financial performance of nearly 200 travel companies worth more than a trillion dollars into a single number.  See more travel tech sector financial performance .

Read the full methodology behind the Skift Travel 200.

Have a confidential tip for Skift? Get in touch

Tags: dwell , ftc , online travel newsletter , reviews , short-term rentals

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A Pop-up Desk That I Bring to Coffee Shops

In my attempt to make working at a coffee shop resemble my home office setup, I’ve tried several mobile standing desks and a few portable keyboards  to make the essentials of my office more portable. But nothing has felt as useful or elegant a solution as the Logitech Casa.

The Casa — a case that comes with a wireless keyboard and track pad that stow inside — is about the size of a coffee-table book (and about as thick). It feels sort of like one of those binders you probably used in middle school, and has a thick rubber band that keeps the Casa’s cover in place when you’re not using it. Once you’ve removed the keyboard and track pad from the Casa, the front flap folds over to act as a stand for your laptop (it supports models with screens up to 17 inches), allowing you to keep the screen at eye level for a more ergonomic viewing angle. I rarely work on my laptop without an external monitor solely because I hate hunching over my screen, so the Casa’s lift is a welcome adjustment that makes even a cramped bistro table feel like an adequate desk for getting through an hour or two of writing. There’s also an additional compartment that’s just big enough to house a pen and stack of sticky notes in addition to the included charging cable, though not much more — it can’t hold your laptop, in case you were wondering.

The wireless keyboard, which you pair with your laptop over Bluetooth, is slightly wider than the keyboard on my 13-inch MacBook Pro, though the keys themselves are just a bit smaller. That’s because unlike my MacBook, which has a Touch Bar , the Casa’s keyboard has a full row of function keys for media playback, volume, and controlling which of three devices it’s paired to. The smaller size keys don’t impact the typing experience, though; they’re just as comfortable to type on as those on the MacBook. The track pad doesn’t respond quite as precisely as the MacBook’s, which is mainly noticeable for things like text selection, but it works well enough, and you can reposition this one to make it more comfortable than reaching for the one on the laptop itself.

The Casa, including its keyboard and track pad, weighs about 2.6 pounds. That’s about the same weight as a 13-inch MacBook Air and a bit heavier than a portable laptop stand combined with Apple’s Magic Keyboard and a wireless track pad. But even with its extra heft, I’d still choose the Casa, since its booklike design makes it easy to carry a full-blown mobile office in my bag without the components rattling around or me having to root around to find them.

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Marcella Hazan’s Five-Star, 12,000-Review Tomato Sauce

Its luscious simplicity is the draw: All you need are canned tomatoes, an onion cut in half, butter, salt and time.

By Kim Severson

Hi. Sam’s summering somewhere on an island in the Atlantic. I’m summering here at my desk, where the food news never stops.

About five years before the Italian cook Marcella Hazan died, I had the good fortune to spend an afternoon interviewing her at her condo in the Florida Keys. She was in her mid-80s, still enjoying her Marlboro Lights and a shot of Gentleman Jack whiskey in the afternoons.

And she was still complaining about American supermarkets. Her critique of her local Publix remains one of the highlights of my food reporting career. Which was worse — that a food market offered inflatable alligator beach toys or that it sold giant globe artichokes?

“I never saw artichokes in my life like this,” she told me. “It’s better because it’s bigger? What am I supposed to do with this?”

Still, we turned them and some other food from the grocery store into a simple baked pasta dish with some Gulf shrimp.

Even if you don’t know who Marcella Hazan is, you probably know her most famous recipe. It’s a dead-simple sauce of tomatoes, onions and butter that she first published in “The Classic Italian Cook Book” in 1973. She titled it Tomato Sauce III.

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Marcella Hazan’s Tomato Sauce

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Of course, this time of year you could sub in some fresh tomatoes. I bought a box of seconds at the farmers’ market and roasted them whole with olive oil, then used those for the sauce. It was delicious, but I’m sure Marcella would not have approved. She held doctorates in the natural sciences and biology. Her recipes were precise and intentional.

“Marcella,” her husband, Victor, told me that afternoon, “is very tightly focused.” But I’m not, and I’m OK with that. You should be, too. After all, it’s your kitchen.

Now, on to the rest of the week …

Summer floats across the country in a wave. Here in the American South, kids are back in school and peach season has peaked. In the Northeast — sorry, your peaches will never be as good as ours — August is prime peach season. Hetty Lui McKinnon has found a way to unite us all with her bold marriage of fresh, bright peaches and the spicy, savory funk of gochujang in this easy-to-assemble salad . (Bonus: It uses cucumber, the latest vegetable to go viral online .)

Shrimp scampi is one of those meals that feels much fancier than the amount of work it takes. We have a ton of fresh Gulf shrimp at my local markets, but there are plenty of good, sustainable frozen shrimp options at grocery stores all across this great nation. Put them to use in this scampi dish with toasted orzo from Ali Slagle, a member of the New York Times Cooking crew whom I trust like a sister. Her recipe has five stars and over 1,500 comments, including one that recommends subbing tofu for the shrimp.

I forget how terrific fresh baba ghanouj can be. The big Italian eggplant I picked up the other day reminded me. Martha Rose Shulman, who is so respected that M.F.K. Fisher blurbed one of her cookbooks, has a version that uses a lot of tahini. It gives the dip enough heft to build an easy meal around. But heed Greg Pyke, a reader who left this comment: “Piercing eggplant first is no joke. I ignored this and mine exploded, luckily on a gas grill with the lid down and not in my oven. Sixty years cooking and still learning from mistakes!”

A recipe that relies on cans and a boxed mix might not be your first choice when there is so much fresh produce around, but what did they expect when they let me write the newsletter? I’m such a fan of this elotes-flavored corn pudding that Brett Anderson and Genevieve Ko picked up from Ernest Servantes of the beloved Burnt Bean Co. in south central Texas. Servantes uses two types of canned corn and a box of cornbread mix to create the perfect side dish for brisket or really anything you might be putting on the grill. “It’s like Mexican street corn and cornbread had a baby,” he said.

Want to make the weekend extra? Bake a cake that you can offer to surprise guests or snack on every time you pass through the kitchen. Personally, I like a good poundcake. So does this newsletter’s editor, Mia Leimkuhler: “You’ve got to respect a cake that crams as much butter, flour and sugar as it can into its volume.” This bold, lemony Bundt from Yossy Arefi puts four lemons to work and is at its best the day after it’s baked.

Now the pitch. Thousands and thousands more recipes to cook this week are waiting for you on New York Times Cooking . You need a subscription to read them. (Do you think well-tested recipes just fall out of a coconut tree? No! They cost money.) Consider subscribing today . We thank you.

And if our technology is vexing you or acting buggy, don’t ask me for help! You’ll have much better luck getting in contact with [email protected] . If someone doesn’t get back to you, then come to me and I will fight for you: [email protected] .

I’ll be back again on Friday.

Kim Severson is an Atlanta-based reporter who covers the nation’s food culture and contributes to NYT Cooking . More about Kim Severson

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