Fat Passport

Roundtrip One Way Multiple Cities From: Departing: Any time 1am 2am 3am 4am 5am 6am 7am 8am 9am 10am 11am 12n 1pm 2pm 3pm 4pm 5pm 6pm 7pm 8pm 9pm 10pm 11pm 12am       To: Returning: Any time 1am 2am 3am 4am 5am 6am 7am 8am 9am 10am 11am 12n 1pm 2pm 3pm 4pm 5pm 6pm 7pm 8pm 9pm 10pm 11pm 12am       Adults: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Children: (Age 2-11) 0 1 2 3 4 5 6        Class: Economy Business First   More Search Options

The Ten Most Useful Travel Websites

Having used, reviewed, or at least perused hundreds and hundreds of travel websites, I thought it would be useful to generate my "top ten" list of the most useful.

The first five are associated with the all-important task of booking flights or hotels, and the others span a variety of topics:

1. Orbitz is, to me, the best of the online travel agencies. I've used them for booking flights and hotels for both mainstream and out-of-the-way locales, and have always been pleased.
2. Cheap-O air (booking widget above) is an online consolidator, with rock-bottom prices for heavily restricted tickets on international flights. If you're willing to take the risk of not being able to change your flight, the prices are fantastic.
3. Kayak is a "meta-search engine," which simultaneously searches the websites of many online travel agents (including Orbitz), airlines, etc., and presents the best deals. Seems to be particularly good for flights to or from the US.
4. Mobissimo is another meta-search engine, which seems to have a stronger selection of flights between two international locations.
5. Airtreks provides the ability to construct complex, multi-stop international tickets, including multi-stop around-the-world tickets. I haven't yet bought any tickets through Airtreks, but looks great and reports seem to be positive.
6. TripAdvisor is a fantastic resource for getting up-to-date reviews of hotels, submitted by travelers like you and I.
7. Lonely Planet is a leading publisher of guidebooks, and though their website has only a tiny fraction of the information in their guidebooks, they do post useful info for each country such as when to go, etc. They also have a very active message board for raising or reviewing specific questions on particular locations.
8. RealTravel provides the ability to generate an online travel journal, which can be a great way for you to document and share your travel tales. As you can review others' journals, it's also a good way to see what other travelers think of destinations you may be considering.
9. PBase is a photo sharing site with many excellent travel photos. It's a great resource to get a look at photos of destinations you're considering.
10. Youtube is similarly a video sharing site, and though it's again not dedicated to travel, many enlightening travel videos are posted there. Do a search for videos of destinations you're considering.

There are many more useful travel websites, but above are the ones that I find particularly useful. Hope this helps, and best wishes for a Fat Passport!

Bob

Next: The Six Biggest Mistakes Travelers Make