travel places like travelocity

Travelocity Alternatives

About this travelocity alternatives grid, how we score and rank travelocity competitors, how to find more information on brands like travelocity.

• Office & Productivity
• Photos & Graphics
• OS & Utilities

Travelocity

Travelocity is your next destination for knowing about cheap hotels, cheap flights, best vacations, and travel deals across the world. From the official website of Travelocity, one can easily book affordable travel with discounted hotels, holidays, flights, cars, and many other services.

It is a great and best means for saving big on packages and getting the best price guaranteed only available at this platform. From flight to hotels and cars, this platform has covered the information regarding all services so that you can make your trip abroad simply remarkable and memorable.

In addition to services mentioned above, Travelocity offers several other kinds of information services as well as things to do in a specific destination, getting information on what to discover in any particular location, mobile connectivity services, vacation rentals services, and much more. All of the information to make your trip one of the best trips will be available in the palm of your hand.

Travelocity Alternatives

#1 priceline.

Priceline is one of the best for getting the best and perfect deals on flights, hotels, car rentals, and other travel abroad services. If you are looking for a platform offering you deep discounts on many services in other destinations, then you need to use the web-based services of the Priceline.

It is your one-stop solution to get exclusive savings. Priceline is also available to use on smartphones and tablet devices as well that make it better than others. From both of the platforms, the willing travelers can get the exclusive tonight-only hotel deals and access only flight, hotel, and rental car deals.

With the official application of the Priceline, they stay connected with the important trip details anytime and anywhere. Priceline is simply the best above all when it comes to saving more and more without losing the quality and services at all.

Hotwire is an online medium for finding cheap hotels, cars, airfare, and last-minute travel deals. This web-based platform allows its users to save the maximum money on flights, hotels, and car rental services. It is a complete holiday package at a minimum possible price. This web-based platform is simply assisting its users in finding a deal that meets their travel needs. This web-based platform basically works by selling off unsold travel inventory at discounted prices.

This platform shows the price details and the travel dates of all their products upfront. It also offers a set of open travel APIs that can be used in travel applications as well. Overall, this platform has many things to offer to its users included with multiple flight services.

#3 CheapOair

CheapOair is the best means for getting detailed information regarding cheap flights, hotels, and car rentals. The web-based services of this platform will let you save more on cheap and discounted flights. The specialty of this platform is that it offers information regarding cheap flight tickets, hotels, and car rentals at popular destinations of the world. Just move to the official website of CheapOair to get the detailed information, book now, and travel the world for less.

All of the fares information displayed on the official website are including services fees and taxes. That means you are not going to pay extra or hidden charges at all. Before booking the flight or purchasing the ticket directly from CheapOair, you must keep in mind that the ticket purchased or non-refundable. Also, provide the real name as name changes are also not permitted later on.

#4 CheapAir

CheapAir is one of the largest holidays and trip enjoying platforms where people across the globe come to search for cheap airline tickets. They book the discounted air tickets after getting detailed information about discount airfares. They also get information about the cheap last-minute fares and much more to make the better decision for their next trip to any location in the world. That helps them a lot to make the best decision and planning.

Two unique services of CheapAir are TravelDeals and FareTracker. The TravelDeals section offers you the complete package from tickets to accommodation and car rentals of a specific destination. The FareTracker is the other section to keep tracking the cheapest available flights all the time. The unique feature like the Price Drop Payback system launched by this platform makes it the only platform to offer credits when airfares drop after purchase.

Wotif is an amazing platform to get the best accommodation deals and save more with amazing rates on flights, car rentals, hotel booking, and much more. It is simply your one-stop destination where you can get detailed holiday packages at very cheap rates. The everyday deals section of this website allows people to find any time and every day deals for their next trip.

There is a dedicated section for locals to get information about the millions of hotels in any location by reading the reviews of the existing customers. Overall this platform has everything regarding travel like searching, planning, and booking flights, hotels, cars, packages, activities, and much more.

#6 SKYCHECK

SKYCHECK is a platform to get information regarding updated cheap flights. It allows its users to easily get flight services with all major airlines at very low prices. Before booking the ticket, users can surely perform the flight fare comparison to see who is offering the services at reasonable prices and the best flight services.

This web-based service is available to its users around the clock, free of charge, and offers price comparisons for the airplane tickets of their choice. To find the flight details and deals via this platform, the users only need a browser for accessing this website, and after that, they will be ready to get all available information on the go. The flights comparing the system of SKYCHECK make it easy to book tickets for cheap flights.

#7 TravelStart

Getting the information about flight services or ticket prices over the internet is not a big deal as today, almost every airline service has its official website showing all of the information regarding their services.

However, getting the information about which one is offering the best services and which one is offering deals or discounted services are the things that matter for those who want to save more and more.

Travelstart is one of the most important means of the internet for comparing and getting the lowest fares. Here they can easily compare the services and fares of all airlines and in the end, book cheap flights directly from its web-based platform.

Travelstart allows its users to search for cheap flights in all possible options like one way, return, and multi-city. The other great advantage of using the services of Travelstart is that it offers the online booking system as well.

Webjet is a platform over the internet where travelers compare the flight’s rates and services. They book flights, cars, hotels, travel insurance, and much more directly from this platform and make their trip remarkable. Here they also come to get the holiday package information if anyone is offering across the globe.

If you are also looking for the best means over the internet for finding cheap flights from multiple airlines across the globe, then Webjet is simply the best means for that because it has covered all the information. Start using its web-based services and make your next booking with this platform, and enjoy the unparalleled travel choice on a cheap domestic flight with the largest online travel agencies in the world.

Fly.com is a web-based means for finding the cheapest flights by first comparing the hundreds of airlines and travel sites in one search. After using its services, you will surely find the best offers after a little bargaining. It is not an independent source of information at all. It gets the information from five hundred websites to find the cheapest flights.

In addition to all of the mentioned services, Fly.com allows its users to get information regarding hotel packages. Its fare calendars allow the users to show the best prices over the next half years on thousands of routes. The other section is regarding nearby airport savings to get an alert in case of cheap flights from the nearby airport. Overall, it has a lot of services to offer to its users.

#10 Scott’s Cheap Flights

Scott’s Cheap Flights is the information provider of cheap international flights. This platform knows where information is and how it must be delivered to the intended user. This website also allows its visitors to get alerts for cheap international flights, as well.

This platform is working with hundreds and thousands of aficionados and allowing the visitors to save an average of five hundred dollars per ticket on the next international flight. If you want to get the best selection of cheap but high-quality tickets and discount flights to any destination around the world, then Scott’s Cheap Flights is an excellent means for that.

The working system of Scott’s Cheap Flights is straightforward. All you need to first search for cheap flights and Scott’s Cheap Flights will notify you whenever there will be a great sale or offer on that flights if it is not available at the moment. After that, you can buy tickets and go on vacation for way less than you ever expected to spend on flights.

#11 Cheapflights.com

Cheapflights.com is a website dedicated to getting information about airline tickets and airfares. From here, users can quickly get information about deals and flights. It is also the best means of saving more and more on airline tickets to every destination across the world.

If you do not know how to plan your trip correctly, then you need the services of Cheapflights.com, as this will make it possible for you to always get to your favorite destination at a minimum budget. It offers travel tips and advice as well, which are of great help for the new travelers.

Millions of people come to the official platform of Cheapflights and search and compare the millions of available flight deals for free. Here they can get information regarding cheap and best flights from more than three hundred airlines and travel agents instantly. Just tell the Cheapflights.com where you would like to go, and all the information will be on the screen.

#12 Momondo

Momondo is probably one of the most extensive and authentic means for getting information regarding cheap flights, searching for flights, and comparing the flight’s services being offered by most of the airline’s services. It lets its users compare the flight’s deals of international airlines as well.

Currently, Momondo is allowing its visitors to seamlessly find and compare the fares from one thousand travel sites and in that’s way giving instant access to willing travelers with best rates for airline tickets online.

Here the people can directly buy the tickets as well after they get satisfied with the service of any airline service available. Momondo works in collaboration with most of the travel sites and airline services, so when the visitor search for anything here, Momondo finds the best flight tickets and redirects the visitors to the official platform of those airlines to get the tickets.

#13 FareCompare

FareCompare is a travel information-based website that compares all products and services directly or indirectly linked to travel abroad or flights regarding services. Here you can easily find cheap flights, track price changes, and save much more on your next trip to any country and destination. In addition to comparing cheap flights, this platform also offers its users tips and advice regarding travel and gets them detailed information regarding the low prices things available at the destination of the travelers.

It is a great means for making confident decisions when purchasing flights. All you need is to move any specific section to get the information you are looking for. If you want to get the price or services comparison, then move to that section, and you will get complete information about deals; then that section is also open all the time.

#14 TravelSupermarket

TravelSupermarket is an amazing airline, hotel, and other tour-related services booking platform. The best about this platform is that it lets users compare the prices with other platforms and let them know how much exactly they are saving. Users need not visit the airline office to book their next flight because everything is done right here, and they receive tickets via mail.

In addition to airline tickets, this website also compares everything from simple flights to holidays, trips, and vacations. Users can get information about car hire, hotels, and much more. All these services are designed to get better travel insurance all the time. If you are willing to go to a specific city but you do not have a sufficient budget, do not worry because TravelSupermarket knows how to make it possible for you on a minimum budget.

#15 Expedia

Expedia that is also known as an Expedia Travel is one of the most excellent for planning vacations and getting detailed information about cheap flights, airline tickets, and airfares. With this service of this website, willing travelers can easily plan for their upcoming trips or business meetings.

From the official platform of Expedia to comparing the flights and other related services, they can also directly purchase the tickets of most of the airlines and reserve places in the hotel as well. Before doing all this, they can read the reviews of the other people as well.

This platform also lets its users find deals on vacations, rental cars, and even cruises as well. Expedia app for smartphone users is also available that is all in one travel companion. Start using the services of Expedia, and save big on hotels, find the perfect and cheapest flights, discover things to do, helpful tips, and much more.

#16 SkyScanner

SkyScanner is an informational and traveling website for those people who frequently need to travel from one country to another country. Here they can get all detail regarding flight timing, rates, available flight in any specific country, and even compare the cheap flights, hotels, and car rentals offer as well. So, the overall aim of this website is not to give information about flights and hotels only.

It lets its users get instant information about what is more reliable and what is cheapest in a specific country. The way of working on this website is straightforward. It compares the cheap flights, hotels, and car hire of most of these services providers and helping the people to get the information to their favorite travel destinations.

With this website, they can also book directly with no fees on this website at all. Moreover, the services of SkyScanner can be acquired via its official application for smartphones, as well.

BYOJet is your next destination for booking the cheap flights being offered by the leading airline services of the world. This platform allows people to get the best and perfect deals on international travel. When it comes to reliable ticket booking service, this is the platform that provides its convenient web-based booking system and access to the global airline providers to ensure the best services at the best prices.

All of the information will be in your hand before you make a booking. After moving to the official website of the BYOJet, you only need to provide the date on which you will like to fly, and it will show you all available deals from the most reliable and leading airline. With this, you can book tickets online as well, and it will make sure your booking experience is simple and easy.

• Destinations
• Mexico Travel News

16 Best TRAVEL Websites To Check Out In 2023 (for Flights, Hotels, Deals)

Beware! Traveling is highly addictive! Once you try out that gathering the most unforgettable memories of your life can cost very little, you will never want to stay comfy at home. We put together a list of the best travel websites that will help to take the first step and GO!

I promise, it’s feasible and verified by many adventurous travelers around the world. Just think how much of your comfort you are willing to sacrifice; where are your personal borders; and what is your inner, deep reason for this particular travel.

Check out also: Best Travel Apps 2022

Here are the top travel websites that should land in the favorites bar of your web browser to help you with traveling:

SAFETY WING – Best Travel Insurance, monthly plans

• Monthly subscription $42/month
• Live chat support
• Covers Covid-related cancellations and expenses

“Better safe than sorry” – you can’t beat that statement!

Safety Wing recently came up with undoubtedly the best travel insurance plan, called Remote Health . It’s a long-term plan that covers you for pre-existing conditions, cancer, or even in your home country. Ideal for long-term travelers or digital nomads.

They also offer amazing monthly plans for short-term travel that come with very competitive prices, starting at $40.

Check the full comparison of digital nomad insurance plans!

Get Your Guide – One of The Best Travel Websites for Booking Trips and Tours

• Trusted tours in 1000+ cities
• Payment online
• Refund options

Skyscanner for flights

• best flights deals and options
• useful monthly calendar
• deals for accommodation with tickets

Let us be honest: amazingly cheap flight tickets are often the first and yet the most important reason we keep on moving our asses from country to country. Even though we promised our inner selves to settle down for a while.  

Don’t blame yourself. Put the blame on Skyscanner, their mobile app and their delightfully intruding newsletter.

Withlocals – Enjoy Your Trip with Locals

• easy booking platform
• discover cities with locals
• hikes, food tours, walks, historical tours, etc.

One of the fastest-growing travel projects of last year that connects travelers with a local community. You can book amazing trips with locals and visit the most authentic places and experience local life. Your guide will help you to get out of tourists traps and find the real spirit of the places you want to visit.

They have easy to use APP interface, a great review system, and their trips are way more affordable than traditional agency tours. No brainer!

FACEBOOK TRAVEL GROUPS

• Travel Community – general travel FB group
• GirlsLOVETravel   – female-only travel FB group
• Young Travelers Network   – for youngsters/post-millennials
• Families Who Love to Travel – family travel group
• Secret Flying – cheap flight deals
• check the full list of travel FB groups on packslight.com

Almost everybody is on Facebook and in a few FB groups but yet, they still forget to check them when they are looking for tips or answers.

Here is the list of the most active and helpful travel FB groups:

Hotel Tonight  – LAST MINUTE HOTEL DEALS

USE CODE “ VVINCEJ ” to get your 25USD discount (minimum spent 150USD)

REVOLUT – Best Conversion Rates (0% fees)

*TOP* APP for TRAVELERS 2020 & Fastest growing FinTech in Europe

If you are a regular traveler and you haven’t tried REVOLUT yet, then you are missing out a lot. REVOLUT is a fairly new Electronic Money Institution which provides you with some “revolutionary” services.

Having an account with Revolut is for FREE , you just need to pay for the shipping of your debit card. All you need to do is register in the app and order the card. Next step is to link your card with some of your other accounts and TOP up. Topping up is FREE and once your money is on Revolut, then you can take advantages of various features like:

• FREE atm withdrawals up to 400 euros
• Real-time spending tracking in the app
• Best conversion rates / no additional fees / middle conversion rate %

Another great advantage is security because you can top up anytime when you are connected to the internet. That means when you are traveling, you can keep you balance somewhere between 0-100euro and if somebody or some ATM scams you, you won’t lose much. You can also block the card anytime when you are connected to the internet.

RentalCars.com & Booking.com

RentalCars has been offering best car rental discounts for ages!  A few months ago they teamed up with Booking.com and became n.1. rental car search engine. Renting a car can get very expensive addition to your budget while traveling.

Especially when you travel solo or just as a couple. Therefore, RentalCars is your best bet in order to find the best discounts.

Hostelworld

If there is some budget for the accommodation and you wish to enjoy a certain level of being incognito and inner peace, definitely look for the best offers among hostels . Sometimes, they can be pretty expensive, too, but HostelWorld knows what people like us need. Definitely, best website for backpackers!

It can also be a way of securing the first night to skip a lovely sleep on the airport benches. Or, and that is even worse, to spend a night in front of the bus station that usually closes at midnight to 4 am.

In this case, book just the first night and then find some shelter at the locals or meet your potential couchsurfer host on-site.

Homeexchange

Swapping houses is a fabulous two-in-one option. You won’t spend a euro on accommodation, and in the meanwhile will get someone to feed your cat and water your roses while you’re off for traveling. Just make sure to get complete references of the swapper and talk together as much as possible in advance.

I confess it might be risky. But on the other hand, the whole active community of HomeExchange is built on trust . See your swappers` former reviews, where and when he or she stayed and what was written about that. Home insurance can also help to enjoy your days off in peace.

If not quite convinced, check the movie The Holiday for a better imagination to see how much fresh air this can bring into your life. Maybe there are huge positive moves ahead!

AirBnb – Apartments Rental

GET 20USD discount on your first trip

Haven’t you heard of AirBnb? Then you are missing out my friend. AirBnb is the perfect tool to find cheap accommodation that allows you to live in the place you are visiting like a local.

With AirBnb you can rent a room that is being offered by a local, and that sometimes means having a room in a family house where you interact with them on a daily basis. If that is just not your style then you can rent out a private house, flat or whatever you want. the possibilities are endless.

And if you travel as a couple, renting an Airbnb can be sometimes cheaper than staying in a shared dorm in a hostel. Apartments are becoming a popular alternative to hotels for budget travelers.

WORLD NOMADS – Best / Budget Travel Insurance

Nowadays, there is no need to highlight how important is to have insurance when traveling around the world! Not having one can lead to serious budget issues and you can end up “broke” and finish your trip very fast.

World Nomads has been offering their services for a long time and became N.1. global/international insurance for travelers.

Trusted by big brands like Lonely Planet, Inrepid, International Volunteers HQ etc. You should definitely have a look on their website before you go on your next adventure.

SE7EN – Volunteering

If you are willing to spend a portion of a day by teaching or decorating the walls of an art gallery for accommodation in return, this is something for you. SE7EN offers lists of the volunteer projects and allows you to contact hosts directly.

You will be requested to pay 15-euro membership at the beginning, but if there will be no project chosen from your side, they offer a  money return guarantee.

Couchsurfing

Be social, spend some time with your host and he will be glad to point out the best places to go in the area. You might experience the best party with his friends diving completely into the local culture.

Feel free to share something with your host. It doesn’t have to be anything valuable. I often show pictures of my current trip or bring something small and typical from my current hometown.

Being a good host is as demanding as to be a good guest. Tolerance is a must on both sides. But above all, it should be fun.

Couchsurfing has turned into the APP as well and you can also find plenty of events/meetups in almost every country. NEW “hang out” option allows you to create an event in your area very fast and catch up with a bunch of travelers for beers/dinner/walk and share some experience from inspiring travels .

Sleeping in Airports

Raise your hand if you have ever slept at the airport. Sometimes it’s about money but sometimes it’s just that your flight departs just so early in the morning that it doesn’t make sense to travel back and forth for more comfortable sleep.

Long sleepovers on the way, objective circumstances you just can’t affect may also leave you stuck at the airport for many hours. This website gathers reviews and experiences of travelers from airports around the world along with useful airport guides to help you survive a sleepover.

Find out where are the electricity plugs, comfortable chairs, quiet areas, free sofas in cafes, wifi passwords, etc.

Handy extra feature we liked is the list of cities where you can enjoy a tour and get to know a city you’re flying through.

Warning: it’s highly possible you will find yourself searching for long stopovers on purpose.

Similarly to Skyscanner, Kayak tool searches for the cheapest flying options from your current location. It beats Skyscanner in the field of multi-city trips and includes searches for nearby airports with cheaper fares.

So now do not hesitate a moment. You have all that you need for your budget travel!

Expedia.com

Expedia is similar to Booking.com, however, it is occasionally less expensive. Expedia Group, Inc. is an American online travel agency for personal and business travel.

Its websites, “which primarily travel fare aggregators and travel metasearch engines, include Expedia.com, Vrbo (formerly HomeAway), Hotels.com, Hotwire.com, Orbitz, Travelocity, trivago, and CarRentals.com.”

When you book through the app, you can save up to 25% on select hotels while earning double points. Their offers will save you even more money on your vacation, which means you can travel more.

The app has a database of over 500,000 hotels around the world.

— PIN IT 🙂 —

If you made it all the way down here, we would like to thank you for visiting and reading! We hope you’ve found some useful information and you enjoyed this list of best travel websites that we put together with a survey and fellow travel bloggers.

If you have any suggestions for a travel website that we should include in this list please, feel free to suggest in the comment section below.

Disclaimer: you might bump into some affiliate links in this article. Those links help us to earn some commission and support our efforts to run this online magazine. We appreciate your support.

I highly recommend these two couchsurfing communities for female travellers:

Host a Sister – Facebook group where women around the world can find accommodations. Travel Ladies – mobile app connecting women who want to travel with other women who want to host them

Very helpful. One point that I would like to add for future reviews is on the issue of customer service, primarily for travel aggregator sites like Expedia, Travelocity, etc. By and large, many of these sites get good reviews for functionality. But customer service for many of these sites, if something goes wrong or your booking is erroneously cancelled, is NONE EXISTENT. Meaning that if you have to travel on short notice for work or family issues, BEWARE.

Please consider checking & adding this one if you wish! Thanks http://www.YouBookTravelHire.com

Thanks. Will do.

Wow this is all great and so useful! Thank you for this amazing guide. I’m traveling soon and had no idea about 80% of these sites! Thank you!

Travel Huge ( https://www.travelhuge.com ) |

Best Travel Website for Flights & Hotel Bookings.

Its New, But Prices are far better than bookit, Kayak, Skyscanner, Hotwire, Priceline .

I had never used Travel Huge before, but an acquaintance told me about how easy and inexpensive last-minute flights and hotels could be using Travel Huge. I booked two round trips tickets for travel within 21 days of bookings.

Thanks for the tip, we will consider adding it 🙂

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

• TRAVEL BLOG
• TravelSites
• HOTEL BOOKING SITES

Travelocity

travelocity.com

Is travelocity legitimate.

When it comes to hotel booking sites – and, really, travel sites in general – few are better known or more popular than Travelocity. Seldom do you come across a site, in fact, of any type that manages to establish the level of brand awareness that Travelocity has? It is a household name. Go up to anybody on the street and ask them if they have heard of Travelocity and I bet they’ll be able to strike up a conversation about the company’s iconic gnome mascot – that is if they don’t break into a story about what a great cheap hotel they found on the site first.

Travelocity is one of the most beloved hotel booking sites not just because of the fact that they have cutesy and memorable marketing. They have also managed to become widely considered one of the best hotel booking sites on the web due to the fact that they were one of the first companies in the online travel agent space, they have a longstanding history of providing a quality product while finding an innovative way to do so.

Travelocity was one of the first companies to pioneer web-based disintermediation … which is just a fancy way of saying that this travel site, by offering hotel booking and flight booking services on the internet , cut out the middlemen (AKA travel agents, hotel receptionists, etc.). To put it plainly, the middlemen that Travelocity’s web-based model cut out were people.

Clearly, this disruption of the travel industry was a success. Today, Travelocity is the third-largest travel site owned by the Expedia Group , and it boasts 12.4 million unique visitors and 90+ million page views. Although best known for being one of the best hotel booking sites on the planet, Travelocity makes it easy for customers to book flights, cars, cruises, and vacation packages as well. In theory, you could take care of just about every booking for your big trip all with just Travelocity.

Just because millions of people swear by Travelocity, that doesn’t necessarily mean that it is the best hotel booking site for you. That, of course, is highly subjective. My favorite booking site might be terrible in your opinion. It all depends on your personal sensibilities, what you look for in a hotel booking site, and what kind of travel you prefer. For instance, if you want to immerse yourself in the local culture of a village in Nepal, Travelocity may not be the best hotel booking site for you.

If you are planning something of a more traditional vacation, though, whether international or domestic, Travelocity will do a great job at providing you with the best deals on hotels, airfare, and more. But let’s stop beating around the bush, shall we? Let’s take a closer look at Travelocity, where it came from, and what it has to offer. It’s about time we got to know the gnome, don’t you think?

Who owns Travelocity?

The origins of Travelocity, interestingly enough, can be traced back to American Airlines . In 1978, American Airlines began allowing travel agencies to access its electronic reservation system, known as Sabre. In the middle of the 1980s, the system was also accessible on CompuServe and GEnie under the clunky brand name, “eAAsySabre.” This was a popular feature of internet services such as Prodigy and AOL in the early ‘90s.

Travelocity was created in 1995. It was a joint venture between the World View Systems Corporation and Sabre. The idea for Travelocity first took root at World View in 1994 as an extension to the company’s already vast online travel database. For the next few years, Travelocity gradually amassed users, and their popularity reached a fever pitch in 1999 when they officially partnered with AOL.

Since I know you are only here to learn about the gnome, he didn’t come into the mix until 2004, when Travelocity first launched its “Where’s My Gnome” marketing campaign, wherein the iconic Travelocity gnome would be placed in random undisclosed locations around the world. The challenge was to see if you could find him on your travels. Honestly, in my opinion, this is one of the more inventive marketing campaigns of all time. But I digress.

Over the next decade or so, Travelocity exchanged hands and ownership many times. Meanwhile, it continued to grow and acquire smaller companies itself. By the time Expedia Group bought Travelocity in 2015, it came with a price tag of $280 million. Not too shabby. Since then, Travelocity has been firmly in Expedia’s ownership and given their online travel empire, I doubt they have any designs to give it up any time soon.

How useful and well-made is Travelocity?

Speaking of designs, Travelocity is one of the best hotel booking sites that I have ever seen, at least if we are talking about site design and user experience. The site is sleek, professional, modern, and easy to use. From the moment you land on this site, whether you have booked hotels online a hundred times or you’ve never seen a hotel booking site before, you will instantly know how to search and browse hotel bookings. It is that intuitive.

This is partly due, I think, to the fact that the first thing you see when you land on the site’s homepage is Travelocity’s simple and versatile search engine. At the top of this, you can quickly jump from one booking type to the next – be it hotels, flights, cars, vacation packages, things to do, or cruises – then you simply plug in your desired destination, check-in, and check-out dates, number of guests, and hit “search.” There are even options to add a flight and/or a car to your search, making the whole process as simple and pain-free as can be.

Or, if you are more of the browsing type, feel free to scroll down past this to be inspired by travel ideas, articles, and featured stays. Feeling spontaneous? Let Travelocity recommend a place for you to visit!

Let’s say that you already know where you want to go, though. Once you punch all of your relevant info into the search engine, you will be presented a list of hotels that meet your criteria. This is often where hotel booking sites lose points, design-wise. These pages have a tendency to be cluttered, jampacked, and chaotic. This is not the case here, though (phew!). In fact, you would be hard-pressed to find a more neatly organized and clearly structured hotel listings page on any of the best hotel booking sites on the web. Everything is in its place, clearly labeled, and easy to browse. Plus, there are plenty of filters and options available to make sure that you find the perfect hotel for you.

How does Travelocity work?

Travelocity allows its users to filter hotels by star rating, specific neighborhood, view options, amenities, budget range, guest rating, payment type, cancellation policy, property type, number of rooms, meal plan options, trip type, accessibility features, and more. In not so many words, Travelocity has a ton of options for filtering hotels and stays to meet your specific needs. Sorting options, too, make browsing cheap hotels on Travelocity a pleasure. You can sort hotel listings by recommended, price, price + “our picks,” deals, guest rating, distance from downtown, star rating, or vacation rentals. Travelocity is, by far, one of the most customizable hotel booking sites out there.

Each hotel featured on Travelocity also comes complete with plenty of pictures (in some cases, hundreds), all necessary info, insight into the neighborhood, and plenty of user reviews. Honestly, Travelocity has thought of everything. Literally, anything that I could think of wanting in a hotel booking site, Travelocity’s already got it.

One of the things that really stands out about Travelocity is the fact that it offers a very flexible cancellation policy. Unfortunately, not ever hotel booking site can say the same. That is one of Travelocity’s calling cards, though: free cancellation on most hotels. This policy has been a lifesaver for me (on more than one occasion!).

The only thing that is notably missing from this hotel booking site is some kind of rewards scheme. You know, a loyalty or a points program, something like that. I have spent a great deal of money booking hotels via Travelocity, this would be the best hotel booking site, no questions asked, if it offered a loyalty or rewards program. But, alas, Travelocity has me booking hotels at full price every time, year after year. I still book hotels on this site, though, because, well, Travelocity truly is just that good.

Does Travelocity have an App?

Travelocity’s mobile app, which is available for both Android and iOS devices, may even be more beautifully designed than its desktop site. The app is smooth, dynamic, user-friendly, and dependable. I’m not alone in loving the Travelocity app either. Of 233,000 ratings, the Travelocity app has an average user rating of 4.8 (out of 5) on the Apple App Store.

What I Like about Travelocity

-Incredible site and app design, user-friendly experience

-Free cancellations on most hotels

-Coupon codes for 10-15% off at checkout

What I Dislike about Travelocity

-No rewards or loyalty programs offered

I am a professional travel writer and travel enthusiast who traveled the world twice, so I am sharing my firsthand knowledge about everything related to travel and spending time abroad.

• The incredible site and app design, user-friendly experience
• Displays results for hostels as well as hotels
• Coupon codes for 10-15% off at checkout
• Compares prices across different websites
• Free cancellations on most hotels
• No rewards or loyalty programs offered

29+ Alternative Sites to Travelocity

Advertiser Disclosure

Many of the credit card offers that appear on this site are from credit card companies from which we receive financial compensation. This compensation may impact how and where products appear on this site (including, for example, the order in which they appear). However, the credit card information that we publish has been written and evaluated by experts who know these products inside out. We only recommend products we either use ourselves or endorse. This site does not include all credit card companies or all available credit card offers that are on the market. See our advertising policy here where we list advertisers that we work with, and how we make money. You can also review our credit card rating methodology .

The 12 Best Websites for Booking Flights at the Cheapest Prices [April 2024]

Katie Seemann

Senior Content Contributor and News Editor

343 Published Articles 50 Edited Articles

Countries Visited: 28 U.S. States Visited: 29

Stella Shon

News Managing Editor

87 Published Articles 627 Edited Articles

Countries Visited: 25 U.S. States Visited: 22

Senior Editor & Content Contributor

90 Published Articles 660 Edited Articles

Countries Visited: 41 U.S. States Visited: 28

Book Direct Through the Airline’s Website

4. priceline, 8. skyscanner, 9. travelocity, 10. google flights, 11. cheapoair, price comparisons, final thoughts.

We may be compensated when you click on product links, such as credit cards, from one or more of our advertising partners. Terms apply to the offers below. See our Advertising Policy for more about our partners, how we make money, and our rating methodology. Opinions and recommendations are ours alone.

Searching for a flight can be a bit overwhelming. There are so many factors: dates, times, price, fare class, airline, and more. Even when you know exactly when and where you want to fly, where should you look for the absolute best price?

Unfortunately, no website consistently has the lowest prices. Most of the popular OTAs (Online Travel Agencies) are usually in the same ballpark for the price, but not all offer the same benefits or search functionality.

We’ve combed through many popular OTAs to compare prices and show you the benefits and drawbacks of each site.

More often than not, booking directly through the airline’s website will give you the best price, or will at least be the same as the OTAs.

Some airlines, like Southwest, won’t even show up on sites like Expedia or Orbitz, so you have to book direct. It can also be the most simple way to book. If a problem arises, you don’t have to deal with a third party to get it resolved.

Another reason to book directly through an airline’s website is to use those frequent flyer miles — hooray for award flights!

Of course, to book through the airline’s website, you first need to know which airline has the best prices. There are lots of travel search engines and OTAs that can help you find the best deals so you know which airline’s website to visit. Some OTAs even offer perks that might make it worth booking someplace other than the airline’s site.

Hot Tip: A card such as The Platinum Card ® from American Express earns an impressive 5x Membership Rewards points per $1 spent on flights booked directly with airlines or with  AmexTravel.com on up to $500,000 on these purchases per calendar year.

Momondo is a travel metasearch engine similar to Kayak. The home page displays a simple search box where you can plug in your travel details.

One of the things we love about this site is the visual way it shows you the price trends for your flight. At first glance, you can tell if you could save some money by shifting around your travel dates a bit. It also offers a price tracker and lots of filtering options on the left-hand side of the screen.

Pros and Cons of Momondo

• Great price tracking tools
• Mix & Match fares require you to make 2 separate reservations; this is usually handled “behind the scenes” on other websites

Hot Tip: We cover the ins and outs of finding cheap airfare with this website in our guide to using Momondo .

Kayak is not an OTA. Rather, it’s a travel search engine — making it a great place to start your flight search.

The site compares prices from many websites in a single spot, so you can easily see the cheapest options . Most of the time, you’ll click through to a different site to complete your booking.

Kayak offers the ability to combine 2 one-way tickets (usually on different airlines) in 1 itinerary, which is a great way to save money on your flight. These itineraries can be pretty good deals and something that doesn’t always appear in search results of other websites.

A couple of new features were introduced in early 2024 — Kayak PriceCheck and Ask Kayak. Kayak PriceCheck allows you to upload a screenshot of an itinerary in the Kayak app, and Kayak will compare it to prices on hundreds of other sites to ensure you’re getting the best deal. Ask Kayak is an AI tool that helps you personalize your travel planning.

Pros and Cons of Kayak

• Ability to combine 2 one-way flights on a single itinerary
• Price Alerts to keep an eye on flight prices
• Kayak PriceCheck
• Kayak offers the most benefit when your travel plans are very flexible; many of its most valuable tools help you search for deals, so this site might be less appealing when you have a specific flight in mind

Bottom Line: For more information about Kayak’s travel search tools, check out the complete guide to booking travel with Kayak .

Daily Deals Special: Click here for up to 40% off at Expedia

Expedia is another tried-and-true OTA that people have been using since the 1990s. Back then, Expedia was a go-to source for searching and booking flights. But how does it stack up now?

You aren’t necessarily getting a better deal booking through Expedia, but you aren’t paying any more than you might on the airline’s website.

A nice perk of using Expedia is that it offers a rewards program called One Key. This program offers member pricing plus the ability to earn points for flights, hotels, car rentals, cruises, activities, and more.

The One Key loyalty program is also used by Hotels.com and Vrbo.

If you’re a member of an airline’s frequent flyer program, you’ll be happy to know that you can still earn airline miles on a flight booked through Expedia . However, you often won’t be able to earn miles/points toward status or be eligible for seat upgrades.

Pros and Cons of Expedia

• Earn and redeem points through the One Key program
• Booking through Expedia may limit your mileage earned toward elite status
• Your ability to be eligible for upgrades can be limited when you book through Expedia

Hot Tip:  For more information, check out our post about how to use Expedia to find great deals on flights, hotels, vacation packages (and more).

Priceline is a popular OTA that introduced the Name Your Own Price tool and opaque bookings. These types of bookings can offer discounts, but many of the details are hidden until after the booking. The Name Your Own Price tool was discontinued for flights in 2016, so now Priceline operates like most other OTAs .

One of the nice things about searching for flights on Priceline is that it has a nice color-coded calendar, so you can easily see which days offer the lowest prices.

The search results on Priceline are clear and easy to navigate. As you scroll through your search results, you can easily see the cheapest nonstop options and things like flights with no change fees or early bird flights.

Another way to save money is by looking at Priceline’s Express Deals . These opaque bookings are ones where select details of the flight (like the departure, arrival times, or even the airline) are hidden until the booking is complete.

Pros and Cons of Priceline

• Express Deal flights can offer a good discount if you have some flexibility; many of the details of the flight, including airline and arrival and departure times, are hidden until the booking is complete
• Color-coded calendar and easy-to-read search results
• Price Match Guarantee
• Free online cancellation within 24 hours of booking (except for Express Deal flights)
• No rewards program
• Express Deal flights can be good deals, but they can sometimes be even more expensive than a standard booking

Bottom Line: For more information, check out the complete guide to booking travel with Priceline .

Daily Deals Special: Check out Orbitz’s Daily Deals

Orbitz is another reliable OTA that has been around since 2001. One thing that makes this site a little different is that it offers its own rewards program called Orbitz Rewards . You can earn Orbucks when you book hotels, flights, and vacation packages through Orbitz. However, you can only redeem Orbucks for hotels.

When booking a flight through Orbitz, you’ll earn 1% of your purchase price back as Orbucks (or 2% if you use the Orbitz mobile app). If you book a $500 flight, you will earn 5 Orbucks, which is worth $5 toward a hotel booking. Joining the Orbitz Rewards program is free.

Unfortunately, Orbitz sometimes charges a 1% booking fee . Keep an eye out for these on your trip summary page before finalizing your purchase, and factor them into your calculations to see if you’re getting a good deal or not. While earning Orbucks is great, paying a booking fee could wipe out all of the benefits.

Pros and Cons of Orbitz

• Orbitz Rewards lets you earn Orbucks that can be applied to hotel bookings
• 24-hour cancellation policy
• Low Price Guarantee: if you find a lower price for your flight on another website within 24 hours, Orbitz will refund the difference
• Flight booking fees

Bottom Line: For more information, check out our guide to booking travel with Orbitz .

Agoda is an OTA owned by Priceline. This website doesn’t offer much more than a simple search with limited filter options when looking for flights. If you’re looking for unique accommodations such as an apartment or private villa, Agoda is worth checking out, but it doesn’t offer much when searching for flights.

One cool thing about Agoda is that the site is multilingual. You can select your language by clicking on the flag in the top menu bar.

Pros and Cons of Agoda

• Simple search functionality
• Multilingual option
• Limited filtering options for flights

Hot Tip: Agoda has a loyalty program called VIP, but it only applies to hotel stays. For more information, check out our guide to booking travel through Agoda .

Special: See these Hotwire Flight Deals

Hotwire is a popular OTA that has been around for almost 20 years.

The simple home page offers the main search box to input your departure and arrival cities as well as your desired dates of travel.

Hotwire can offer a great deal when booking a hotel along with your flight . Many times during the booking process, you’ll see pop-ups or prompts advertising great savings when booking a hotel at the same time. We tested it, and every time we priced out a Hotwire vacation package deal against purchasing a flight and hotel separately, the package deal was cheaper.

Bottom Line: If you need a hotel in addition to your flight, booking both together through Hotwire can save you money.

Another thing to remember when using Hotwire to find great flight deals is that sometimes a booking fee will be charged.

Pros and Cons of Hotwire

• Package deals that include a hotel stay can save money
• Low Price Guarantee
• Hotwire can sometimes charge a booking fee

Bottom Line: For more details about finding great deals, check out our complete guide to booking travel through Hotwire .

Skyscanner is another travel search engine that does not sell flights directly. It shows you a list of flights and links to the airline’s website or OTA to complete the purchase.

This site excels for travelers with flexibility . In the search box, you can select Explore everywhere  to search for the cheapest destinations on your chosen dates.

If you have a set destination with specific dates, Skyscanner operates like most other travel search sites.

Pros and Cons of Skyscanner

• Flexible searches, including Explore everywhere  and Multi-city search
• Easy to change language and currency
• Price alerts

Hot Tip:  For more information, check out our in-depth piece on Skyscanner . 

Travelocity is yet another OTA that has been around for a while and is very similar to the other websites we’ve been looking at.

On the plus side, there are some nice filtering options to help you find the best flight for your needs. On the downside, prices can change between selection and booking. We did a dummy booking, and by the time we got to the payment section, the flight price had gone up from $157 to $338!

Much like other online travel agencies, Travelocity can also charge booking fees, so keep an eye out for those in the payment section of the booking process.

Pros and Cons of Travelocity

• Price Guarantee: If you find a lower price on an identical itinerary within 24 hours, Travelocity will refund the difference in price
• Free cancellation on flights within 24 hours of booking (on most airlines)
• Travelocity sometimes charges a booking fee
• Prices can change between flight selection and payment

Bottom Line: For more information, check out our guide to booking travel with Travelocity .

Google Flights is not an OTA. Rather, it’s a metasearch engine similar to Kayak. Once you find a flight, Google Flights will link you to the airline’s direct website or an OTA to complete the purchase. It is a powerful search engine built on the ITA Matrix , which was originally developed for travel agents.

This site shows you price trends and how your travel dates could affect the cost of your ticket. Plus, it allows you to track the prices of a route , so you can jump on low prices when they pop up. These features make Google Flights a great tool to help you feel confident that the price you’re getting is a good deal.

Google Flights recently rolled out a price guarantee feature on select flights departing from the U.S. If you book a flight with the price guarantee badge and the price drops, you’ll get a refund of the difference (with a maximum of $500 per calendar year) from Google Flights via Google Pay. However, you can only receive up to 3 price guaranteed refunds at any one time.

Pros and Cons of Google Flights

• Price graph shows you the pricing trends for your route and allows you to see what days might be cheaper to fly
• Price tracking will send you an email when your flight’s price increases or decreases
• Automatic price guarantee on select flights
• Since this search engine is so powerful with lots of options, it could get complicated for a novice traveler

Hot Tip: You can earn frequent flyer miles on flights booked through an OTA, but you might not earn miles toward elite status.

CheapOair is an OTA that offers its own credit card. Before applying for the card, we recommend considering a better travel rewards credit card  for more lucrative and flexible travel rewards.

This site might not be as cheap as you would think. That’s because it can charge expensive “agency fees.” For most flights, the fees can be up to $35; however, once you read the fine print, you’ll see they can actually be as high as $200 per ticket!

In addition, CheapOair charges a fee to change or cancel any ticket, including within 24 hours, which is free on many other sites.

Pros and Cons of CheapOair

• Price Match Promise: CheapOair will refund the difference in price if you find a lower price on the same itinerary on a major OTA within 24 hours of booking
• CheapOair charges hefty booking fees in addition to fees to cancel or change your flight
• Price Match Promise is very limited; the guarantee is only good for identical flights on Expedia, Orbitz, Priceline, and Travelocity

Bottom Line: CheapOair might not be cheap after all. It advertises low base fares, but it charges booking fees, which usually result in a higher price than the airline’s website. For more information, check out our guide to CheapOair .

Hopper is an app that tries to predict the right time to buy a flight. It claims that using its app can save you up to 40% on flights. The simple interface and color-coded map show you the cheapest and most expensive times to fly to your chosen destination.

You can also set up alerts to watch the prices for your specific dates or watch a whole month if you have flexible travel plans.

Pros and Cons of Hopper

• Easy to use
• Choose to watch prices for a specific trip or choose to watch prices over a whole month
• No ability to search on a desktop
• Few filtering options

Hot Tip: There are many credit cards with travel insurance and extra protections like trip interruption and cancellation protection and baggage delay coverage . We suggest looking at Chase credit cards or Amex credit cards for great insurance coverage.

We searched for a flight from Los Angeles (LAX) to New York City (JFK) across different travel booking websites to compare pricing head-to-head. Below is the cheapest ticket each website offered.

In this search, we weren’t taking anything other than price into consideration. When you are actually booking a flight, there will most likely be more factors that go into your decision of which flight to book.

In this example, Google Flights, Hopper, and Priceline tied for the cheapest flight cost with Expedia, Hotwire, Orbitz, and Travelocity coming in just $3 more expensive. CheapOair was by far the most expensive option.

There is no one-stop shop to find the lowest prices on a flight every time. Most OTAs are in the same ballpark when it comes to price.

If you’ve got some flexibility, many of these sites can help you find the lowest-priced travel dates and destinations.

If you prefer a more traditional booking, start out with a travel search engine like Kayak or Google Flights to search all of the other sites. That will give you a good idea of the best website to use to save the most money on your next flight.

Are you a student? Don’t miss our guide to the best websites for cheap, discount student flights .

Like this post? Pin it on Pinterest!

For rates and fees of The Platinum Card ® from American Express, click here .

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the best website to use to book the cheapest flights.

There is no single website that has the cheapest flights all of the time. Most of the travel search engines and online travel agencies all have similar pricing, however you can find some really nice deals when looking at opaque (hidden) bookings or vacation packages.

What is an opaque booking?

An opaque booking hides many of the flight details, including arrival and departure times and the operating airline, until your booking is complete. Many sites including Hotwire, Orbitz, and Travelocity offer these types of bookings.

Will I earn frequent flyer miles when I book through an online travel agency?

Generally, yes, you will still be able to earn frequent flyer miles on flights booked through an online travel agency. However, miles earned to qualify for elite status may be not be awarded unless you book directly through the airline’s website.

What are the best websites to buy cheap flights to Europe?

Your best bet would be to start with a travel search engine like Kayak or Google Flights. You will be able to see prices from many different websites in one place and you can track flight prices to help determine the best time to purchase tickets. Be sure to check out our guide to the best websites to book European vacation packages if you want to bundle your flight with a hotel and/or rental car.

Is it cheaper to book directly on the airline's website?

Often, an airline will offer the lowest prices through its own website. However, you can often save money booking through an online travel agency (OTA) that has the ability to combine flights from more than 1 airline into a single itinerary.

Was this page helpful?

About Katie Seemann

Katie has been in the points and miles game since 2015 and started her own blog in 2016. She’s been freelance writing since then and her work has been featured in publications like Travel + Leisure, Forbes Advisor, and Fortune Recommends.

INSIDERS ONLY: UP PULSE ™

Get the latest travel tips, crucial news, flight & hotel deal alerts...

Plus — expert strategies to maximize your points & miles by joining our (free) newsletter.

We respect your privacy . This site is protected by reCAPTCHA. Google's privacy policy and terms of service apply.

Related Posts

UP's Bonus Valuation

This bonus value is an estimated valuation calculated by UP after analyzing redemption options, transfer partners, award availability and how much UP would pay to buy these points.

You are using an outdated browser not supported by this software. Please upgrade your browser .

• Housing & Real Estate
• Living on a Budget
• Personal Finance
• Camping & Outdoors
• Destinations
• Vacation Rentals & Hotels
• All Cars & RVs
• Maintenance
• Makes & Models
• All Shopping
• Beauty & Fashion
• Home & Garden
• Kitchen & Groceries
• All Reviews
• All Food & Drink
• Beer, Wine, & Spirits
• Food Trends & Trivia
• Restaurants & Dining
• Taste Tests
• All Lifestyle
• Entertainment
• Health & Wellness
• Life After 50
• All Gift Ideas
• Gifts by Interest
• Gifts by Price
• Gifts for All
• Gifts for Her
• Gifts for Him
• Gifts for Kids
• In The News
• Privacy Policy
• Terms & Conditions

Copyright ® 2024 Cheapism

Best Sites for Cheap Travel and Vacation Planning

Damir Khabirov/istockphoto

Where to Book Cheap Travel

There are so many websites dedicated to booking cheap travel these days that it can often be difficult to know which one to use. Travelers have endless options for booking cheap flights, hotel rooms, train tickets, rental cars, vacation homes , vacation packages, and even recreational vehicles and campsites. For better or worse, the days of a handful of flight and hotel aggregators dominating the market are long gone. Here are some of the best travel sites for booking trips of nearly every form.

Best for Cheap Flights

Momondo  receives rave reviews for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is that it often finds the lowest prices for flights.

Pro:  The site offers a variety of incredibly useful ways to sort searches including by cheapest flight, quickest flight, and best overall flight. Momondo also has a handy airfare calendar that shows the costs of flights for one week before your departure date and two weeks after, allowing users to easily see if another flight date might be less expensive.

Con:  Flights are not booked directly on Momondo. It directs you to the site offering the identified airfare.

Best One-Stop Shop

Bookit  is one-stop shopping for booking all aspects of your vacation — from hotels to flights to activities. It regularly offers significant discounts on all-inclusive resorts, and it allows you to bundle hotels and flights to create the best deals.

Pro:  The site has a unique "price calendar," which displays an entire month's worth of prices for the tour or activity you want to participate in, allowing you to identify the cheapest day in a 30-day window to purchase tickets.

Con:  You need to read the fine print. The cost to cancel a hotel booked through the site can vary and depends on the terms and conditions of your specific booking.

Costco Travel

Best for Car Rentals

Most people are familiar with Costco  selling bulk groceries and gas. But the company also sells vacation packages, hotel stays, and cruises on Costco Travel , and its sweet spot is rental cars, says industry insider Clem Bason, who used to run Hotwire and now heads goSeek. In some cases, it saves travelers as much as 30 percent to 50 percent by shopping all available coupons and discounts.

Pro:  You can search the Costco site for car rentals even without a membership. Many times, the deals are significant enough  that it's worth it to buy the $60 membership.

Con:  The aforementioned membership fee.

Best for Vacation Rentals

No list like this one would be complete without mentioning Airbnb , the alpha dog in the home-sharing space.

Pro:  Between its constantly growing number of listings and an ever-expanding variety of homes ( treehouses , igloos, celebrity's homes, yurts, and more), Airbnb is remains the site to beat in this space. It also continues to offer an amazing variety of price points for all budgets. In addition, Airbnb has recently rolled out a flexible payment option, doing away with the requirement that 100 percent of the accommodation costs be paid up front. In many cases, the initial deposit is now just 50 percent.

Con:  Airbnb accommodations often lack the frills of hotel rooms and the properties don't always live up to your expectations.

CruiseDirect.com

Best for Cruises

While cruise prices can often be largely the same no matter which site you use to book, there's typically a big difference site to site on the incentives offered. Incentives are such things as onboard spending credits, discounts on shore excursions, and cabin upgrades. When considering cruise prices price and incentives, CruiseDirect.com  is one of the best choices.

Pro:  The site offers a best price guarantee. The site works with the industry's top suppliers to secure the best rates available. But if you find a lower advertised fare, CruiseDirect.com will match it.

Con:  The best price guarantee applies to lower rates found within 24 hours of booking.

GetYourGuide.com

Best for Discounted Attractions and Activities

Want to skip the ticket line at iconic sights like the Eiffel Tower and  score a bargain, too? Or go shark diving in Cape Town on a budget? GetYourGuide.com  offers bookings for more than 31,000 tours, activities, and attractions in more than 7,300 destinations across the globe and guarantees that by buying tickets through them, you will pay the lowest price.

Pro:  Every activity on the site comes with a best-price guarantee. In other words, if you can find the same ticket elsewhere for less, the site will refund the difference, no questions asked. There are also helpful user reviews for each tour or activity listed on the site.

Con:  The site offers a dizzying amount of information. In Rome, for instance, there are 1,100 tours and activities listed, which can be a good thing or a bad thing depending on how you look at it.

Alpha Flight Guru

Best for Cheap Business- and First-Class Flights

Want to fly first class without paying first-class prices? GoSeek's Clem Bason says Alpha Flight Guru  is the site to bookmark. The site's gurus work with travelers to find unpublished discount airfares, accessing inventory that average travelers can't see using typical flight and search engines.

Pro:  The site can save travelers 30 percent to 75 percent on business and first-class tickets. It will also get you access to business and first-class lounges, lie-flat beds, priority boarding, priority check-in, and more.

Con:  Travelers cannot instantly book tickets online using this site. The process requires submitting a travel request through the site, and then a personal flight consultant contacts you with the cheapest fares. If you need to make a change to a ticket after booking, the change fee is around $250.

HotelPlanner

Best for Cheap Group Travel

HotelPlanner has become the go-to site for booking group hotel stays, says Clem Bason of goSeek. Even major online travel sites like Expedia, Kayak, and Travelocity use HotelPlanner  to power their group hotel bookings. Simply enter your travel information and the site returns travel bids from its pool of tens of thousands of hotel partners.

Pro:  Whether you're booking rooms for a sports team, a reunion, a wedding or any other type of group travel, HotelPlanner can save more than 70 percent on group reservations. It works with major hotel chains, such as Starwood, Hilton, and Best Western. An added bonus, the site will meet or beat any price on your group's hotel booking. And finally it allows for booking as a group, but paying for rooms separately.

Con:  Price quotes are emailed to you, it's not possible to simply peruse offers and hotels on the site itself once entering your travel information.

Tripping.com

Best for Comparing Vacation Rentals

Tired of having to review multiple sites in order to find the best price on a vacation home rental? Tripping.com  is a metasearch site for home rentals. As the world's largest site for searching home rentals, it aggregates listings from VRBO, HomeAway, and many others. The site currently has about 10 million listings in 150,000 destinations.

Pro:  Tripping.com saves travelers time and money by making it easy to search and compare millions of rentals side-by-side on a single site. You can also sign up to have vacation rental deals sent to your inbox.

Con:  Searches return thousands of results, so be prepared to spend some time and dig in to search through your options.

Best for Cheap Travel Insurance

Travel insurance covers everything from trip cancellations to interruptions, delays, accidents, and sickness. Finder.com  provides unbiased comparisons of the various policy options and allows users to conduct searches based on specific needs such as cheapest plans available, or plans tailored to families, senior citizens, students, and others.

Pro:  Finder.com provides a range of helpful information, including the difference between budget and comprehensive coverage, how to spend less without compromising coverage, and common cheap coverage traps to avoid.

Con:  The site provides side-by-side comparisons of policy offerings from various insurers but does not provide prices. In order to get a price quote, you're redirected to the travel insurance provider's site.

Best for Bus and Train Travel

Wanderu  is a website and app that helps travelers find and compare bus and train travel options in North America and Europe. It is an aggregator site that promises to help find transportation deals to more than 10,000 destinations in North America and Europe, partnering with such providers as Amtrak, Greyhound, Megabus, Peter Pan, and others.

Pro:  The site's unique routing technology automatically groups trips from different carriers together to get you where you need to go when there's no direct trip serving the route you're searching. The site also allows for sorting searches by cheapest trip, shortest trip, and more. Feeling adventurous? Wanderu's Explore tool helps travelers find cool places to visit based on budget, city of origin, and travel dates.

Con:  It can be difficult to do long-range planning with this site, as some bus carriers only release schedules six to eight weeks in advance.

Last Minute Travel

Best for Last-Minute Travel

As its name implies, Last Minute Travel  specializes in last minute deals on trips booked with little advance notice — offering as much as 65 percent off. The site covers flights, cruises, hotels, car rentals, and more.

Pro:  The site partners directly with travel providers all over the world, allowing Last Minute Travel users to access bulk-rate, travel agent-level prices without markups, either for day-of travel or travel booked in advance. The Last Minute Travel app features a dynamic homepage that intelligently displays nearby day-of hotel rooms that are available, saving on-the-go consumers time and money.

Con:  This is a membership site and membership costs $50 per year. But if you don't save what you spent on membership, the site provides a promo code worth the difference.

Get Me to Europe

Best for Cheap Travel to Europe

The team of travel experts at Get Me to Europe  searches for the best deals online to build the cheapest possible trips to Europe.

Pro:  Users have saved hundreds of dollars thanks to Get Me to Europe, some have saved thousands. The average savings is about $500.

Con:  This is a subscription service, meaning you must sign up to have flight deals emailed to you. Those who don't like filling their inboxes with yet another email subscription may not be fans. In addition, the site's team does the research to identify the bargain flights, but then you must do the actual booking.

CheapAirportParking.org

Best for Cheap Airport Parking

There are sites aggregating nearly everything related to travel these days, including airport parking. CheapAirportParking.org  is an airport parking aggregator site designed to help travelers find deals on parking near major U.S. airports. It works with more than 200 off-site airport parking lots at least 25 major airports.

Pro:  Travelers can search by departure airport and compare parking-lot options based on rating, type of lot (valet, covered lot, etc.), shuttle times, and distance to the airport. In addition, the site offers daily promo codes for an instant savings of $5 off the total parking reservation cost.

Con:  Some lots require a prepaid deposit, usually in the amount of a day's rate or 15 percent of the quoted price in order to reserve a parking space. Cancellations made within 24 hours of a reservation start time are refunded the total amount less one day's parking rate.

Best for Budget RV Rentals

Campanda  is the Airbnb of RV rentals . It is a peer-to-peer RV rental marketplace where travelers can rent camper vans, luxury motorhomes, and trendy Airstream trailers.

Pro:  Much like Airbnb, because many of these RVs are listed by individual owners, the nightly prices are much lower than those offered by large commercial rental companies. A 32-foot RV that sleeps five people, for instance, can be found for $177 per night.

Con:  To rent an RV through the site, you must be at least 25 years old.

Best for Cheap Camping

For those who'd like to camp the old-fashioned way, in a tent, there's also a site dedicated to finding the most affordable (and unique) options. Hipcamp  allows for searching and booking more than 285,000 campsites — including sites on ranches, vineyards, farms, tree houses, yurts, and more.

Pro:  Hipcamp empowers people to share their land with campers, providing travelers with new places to camp while offering landowners a new stream of revenue.

Con:  In order to modify a reservation once it's made, you must contact the host directly, rather than make any adjustments via the website. Some campgrounds are not directly bookable from the site, such as public campgrounds on land owned by the federal government.

Hostelworld

Best for Booking a Hostel

Hostels are a favorite accommodation choice for the budget traveler, and Hostelworld  has some 35,000 options in 170 countries. The site also has 9 million verified guest reviews and customer service 24-hours a day, seven days a week.

Pro:  In addition to providing an exhaustive database of cheap hostels, the site also produces an annual HOSCAR awards recognizing the top hostels around the world based on 1 million reviews. The awards include categories for such things as best small hostel, best medium hostel, best hostel by continent and by country.

Con:  Booking through the site requires paying a deposit. In many cases the deposit is non-refundable unless you choose either the "Standard Flexible Booking" option or the "Free Cancellation Booking" option at checkout, each of which have certain terms and conditions.

Best for Cheap Walking Tours

GuruWalk  allows travelers to book tours around the world. The site offers tours from local guides and experts, and the amount paid for the experience is up to you. Travelers pay whatever amount they want in the form of a tip.

Pro:  You're helping to support locals and local businesses. The site is focused on promoting tour guides in developing countries, where people can't necessarily afford their own website or marketing to attract customers. Some of the places where tours are offered include Havana, Cuba, and Marrakech, Morocco.

Con:  There are many places where this site still does not offer tours. In addition, anyone who wants to can join the site, publish a tour and become a guide on GuruWalk, so you may not necessarily get a polished guide. But that too can be part of the adventure.

HotelsByDay

Best for Short-Term Hotel Rentals

For travelers who need a place to stay for just a few hours, perhaps during a layover or to freshen up during a long day exploring a destination, HotelsByDay  offers rooms between early checkout and late check-in.

Pro:  The site allows for experiencing a great hotel by day without paying the cost of staying the night. Hotel day rates are as much as 60 percent cheaper that night rates.

Con:  The site only allows customers to book as far as 90 days in advance. For those who need to make a reservation further out then three months, HotelsByDay is not the best option.

Glamping Hub

Best for Budget Glamping

Glamping has been a trendy thing do for several years now. So it's only natural there's now a site devoted to this activity. Enter Glamping Hub , which lists more than 22,000 offerings from around the globe.

Pro:  The site lists glamping on nearly every continent and there are truly budget options — from eco-friendly tents in Tulum, Mexico, starting at $43 per night to tree houses in Washington state for $159.

Con:  The site charges a 6 percent to 12 percent non-refundable service fee for bookings.

Lonely Planet

Best for Adventure Travel

Given Lonely Planet's long-standing reputation as a travel authority, it should be no surprise that the company runs one of the top budget adventure travel websites.

Pro: Lonely Planet  allows you to sort by price range (from as little as $10), duration, country, and more. And, importantly for an adventure travel booking platform, the site allows for further sorting of results based on type of adventure — such as "18-to-30-somethings," "family," "active," and more.

Con:  Unlike many other sites, Lonely Planet does not include user reviews.

Best for Eco-Travel

GoEco  is one of the leading eco-tourism sites, offering more than 150 community, wildlife, and environmental volunteer travel opportunities around the world. It was named one of the top volunteer organizations by GoAbroad, a leading authority in rating meaningful travel programs.

Pro:  The site allows users to search by country of interest, eco opportunity of interest (such as agriculture, conservation, wildlife), and by the amount they want to spend (ranging from $350 to as much as $4,200).

Con:  Participants are required to pay for the opportunity to volunteer — as taking on volunteers incurs a variety of expenses for the local organizations. The cost of airfare is not included in the pricing.

Home Exchange

Best for Home Swaps

Home swapping is one of the best ways to travel on the cheap, and few sites make that process easier than Home Exchange . It is the world's largest network of home swappers, listing 65,000 properties in 150 countries.

Pro:  By listing your home, you gain access to thousands of unique properties around the world. Swapping can be done on your terms, and your schedule.

Con:  There is a $150 membership fee. But once you pay that price, members are able to begin staying in properties around the globe.

Best for Booking on Your Phone

Hopper  is one of the easiest platforms for booking cheap travel on your phone. This app is known for saving users as much as 40 percent on flights. It combines trillions of data points and powerful machine learning to save users time and money.

Pro:  Hopper allows for monitoring flights and provides notifications as soon as the price drops to its lowest point, ensuring you don't miss a deal. The app also predicts future prices for flights and accommodations with 95 percent recommendation accuracy.

Con:  There is no actual Hopper website, only an app. For those who like to be able to go back and forth between an app and a website when researching travel, Hopper does not provide that option.

Best for Social-Impact Travel

Visit.org  is one of the world's leading platforms for finding affordable social-impact travel experiences. The site offers immersive day activities for as little as $18 and allows travelers to book tours and activities that benefit important causes — ranging from women's empowerment to economic empowerment and human rights.

Pro:  By participating in the activities offered through the site, such as cooking workshops or weaving classes, visitors provide support and income for local organizations around the world.

Con:  These activities typically only last a few hours, which for some travelers may not be a long enough experience.

Best for Business Travel

Upside  gets consistently high marks from business travelers. The site promises users the lowest prices available online and even more savings when bundling (that is, booking all portions of your travel through Upside).

Pro:  Upside allows for booking flights, hotels, and rental cars (or Uber), combining all of these items into one low-cost package that's discounted 5 percent to 10 percent off of regular rates. What's more, every time users book flights, hotels, or rides together through Upside, the site provides a gift card from any one of 50 top retailers.

Con:  Upside is unable to book multi-city flights, but promises that service is coming in early 2018. In addition, the site is only for business travelers, so average vacationers are not able to use Upside and earn a retailer gift card.

• Credit cards
• View all credit cards
• Banking guide
• Loans guide
• Insurance guide
• Personal finance
• View all personal finance
• Small business
• Small business guide
• View all taxes

You’re our first priority. Every time.

We believe everyone should be able to make financial decisions with confidence. And while our site doesn’t feature every company or financial product available on the market, we’re proud that the guidance we offer, the information we provide and the tools we create are objective, independent, straightforward — and free.

So how do we make money? Our partners compensate us. This may influence which products we review and write about (and where those products appear on the site), but it in no way affects our recommendations or advice, which are grounded in thousands of hours of research. Our partners cannot pay us to guarantee favorable reviews of their products or services. Here is a list of our partners .

Plan My Trip: Top Websites for Travel Deals

Many or all of the products featured here are from our partners who compensate us. This influences which products we write about and where and how the product appears on a page. However, this does not influence our evaluations. Our opinions are our own. Here is a list of our partners and here's how we make money .

Every travel website claims it can get you the best deal. They claim to search hundreds, nay thousands of other websites. Each one claims to be different.

That’s what makes them so alike.

But there are differences. Here are some of the top travel sites for coupon deals, negotiated-rate hotels, last-minute offers and other circumstances that might arise for your future travels.

For hidden coupon and mobile deals on hotels

For comparing airfares

For negotiated-rate hotels

United vacations.

For risk-takers

For Vegas, baby

Smartervegas.

For flight deals you might otherwise miss

Southwest airlines.

For customized fare-drop notifications

Airfarewatchdog.

For rental cars

Discount usa car rental.

For last-minute ideas

For vacation rentals

How to maximize your rewards

You want a travel credit card that prioritizes what’s important to you. Here are our picks for the best travel credit cards of 2024 , including those best for:

Flexibility, point transfers and a large bonus: Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card

No annual fee: Bank of America® Travel Rewards credit card

Flat-rate travel rewards: Capital One Venture Rewards Credit Card

Bonus travel rewards and high-end perks: Chase Sapphire Reserve®

Luxury perks: The Platinum Card® from American Express

Business travelers: Ink Business Preferred® Credit Card

Planning a trip? Check out these articles for more inspiration and advice: 8 pro tips for smart and cheap family travel What every airline reservationist knows that you should, too How to uncover the identity of Priceline and Hotwire mystery hotels before purchasing

on Chase's website

1x-5x 5x on travel purchased through Chase Travel℠, 3x on dining, select streaming services and online groceries, 2x on all other travel purchases, 1x on all other purchases.

60,000 Earn 60,000 bonus points after you spend $4,000 on purchases in the first 3 months from account opening. That's $750 when you redeem through Chase Travel℠.

1.5%-6.5% Enjoy 6.5% cash back on travel purchased through Chase Travel; 4.5% cash back on drugstore purchases and dining at restaurants, including takeout and eligible delivery service, and 3% on all other purchases (on up to $20,000 spent in the first year). After your first year or $20,000 spent, enjoy 5% cash back on travel purchased through Chase Travel, 3% cash back on drugstore purchases and dining at restaurants, including takeout and eligible delivery service, and unlimited 1.5% cash back on all other purchases.

$300 Earn an additional 1.5% cash back on everything you buy (on up to $20,000 spent in the first year) - worth up to $300 cash back!

on Capital One's website

2x-5x Earn unlimited 2X miles on every purchase, every day. Earn 5X miles on hotels and rental cars booked through Capital One Travel, where you'll get Capital One's best prices on thousands of trip options.

75,000 Enjoy a one-time bonus of 75,000 miles once you spend $4,000 on purchases within 3 months from account opening, equal to $750 in travel.

Travelocity Vs. KAYAK: A Detailed Comparison Of The Top Travel Sites

Travel planning can be stressful. With so many sites to choose from, how do you know where to book? Travelocity and KAYAK are two of the most popular online travel agencies. But which one is better for booking flights, hotels, rental cars, and vacation packages?

In this comprehensive guide, we’ll compare and contrast Travelocity and KAYAK to help you decide which site best fits your travel needs.

A Brief Comparison Table

Overview of travelocity.

Travelocity is one of the largest online travel agencies. It was founded in 1996 and acquired by Expedia Group in 2015. Travelocity offers the following services:

• Flights: Search and compare airfares across hundreds of airlines. Flights can be booked directly on Travelocity.
• Hotels: Browse hotel listings and reviews. Rooms can be booked directly on Travelocity.
• Vacation Packages: Bundle flight + hotel + car rentals to save money. Packages are customizable.
• Cars: Reserve rental cars from major providers like Avis, Budget, Hertz.
• Cruises: Search itineraries and cabins from top cruise lines. Cruises can be booked directly.
• Activities: Book skip-the-line tickets for theme parks, attractions, tours.
• Deals: Search for sales on flights, hotels, packages, and more.

Travelocity’s website and mobile app make it easy to search, compare, and book all your travel. User accounts store booking information for faster checkout.

Overview of KAYAK

KAYAK is a metasearch engine launched in 2004. It searches other travel sites to find the best deals. KAYAK offers:

• Flights: Compare airfares across travel providers like Expedia and Priceline. Flights book directly on airline/agency sites.
• Hotels: Hotel listings aggregated from major booking sites. Rooms book on hotel or agency sites.
• Cars: Find rental car deals and book on rental car company sites.
• Vacation Packages: Bundle flight + hotel + car. Packages book on various airline/hotel/agency sites.
• Explore: Flexible date search to find cheapest travel dates.
• Trips: Organize all bookings for upcoming trips in one place.

Also Read: Comparison Between Klook and KKday

Key Differences Between Travelocity and KAYAK

The key difference is KAYAK is a search engine. It doesn’t sell travel directly. You book flights, hotels, cars, etc. through external sites.

1. Pros of Travelocity

Direct booking

Travelocity allows you to book flights, hotels, cars, and vacation packages directly on their website or app in a few clicks. There’s no need to visit multiple external sites.

Cancellation and change policies

Travelocity has its own cancellation and change policies for bookings. You don’t have to navigate different policies across various airlines and hotels.

Customer service

Get support from Travelocity’s customer service team for any booking issues, trip changes, or cancellations. They can advocate on your behalf with travel suppliers.

Price match guarantee

If you find a cheaper public price on an exact hotel, flight, or package booking within 24 hours, Travelocity will refund the difference.

Vacation package deals

Bundling flights, hotels, and cars into a package can save money compared to booking individually. Travelocity makes it easy.

Loyalty program

Earn points with each booking and redeem towards future travel. Elite status levels provide additional perks.

Cons of Travelocity

• Prices may be higher than competitor sites for the exact same flight or hotel.
• Packages don’t offer much customization or flexibility. You get what you book.
• Extra fees occur for changes, cancellations, seat assignments, baggage, etc.
• Limited filters and advanced search options compared to meta search sites.
• Dated user interface and website design.

Also Read: Comparison Between Travelex And Travel Guard

2. Pros of KAYAK

Price comparison

KAYAK searches hundreds of travel sites to find the cheapest flights, hotels, cars, and package deals. The odds of finding the lowest price are very high.

Advanced filters

Narrow your travel search with filters for price range, number of stops, departure times, airline, hotel star ratings, and more. Find exactly what you want.

Flexible dates

See price graphs when the cheapest and most expensive dates to travel are. Pick dates based on your budget.

Informative results

Flight results show duration, stops, and which airlines operate each route. Hotel results show reviews, amenities, location details.

Independent service

KAYAK earns money through affiliate commissions and ads. It tracks user behavior but doesn’t share personal data with airlines and hotels.

Cons of KAYAK

• No booking on KAYAK. You must book flights, hotels, cars, etc. on external sites.
• Research is required to find the best site for actually booking each segment of your trip.
• Pricing and availability can change from when you search on KAYAK to when you complete the booking.
• Complex itineraries like multi-city flights and vacation packages may require bookings across many sites.
• No customer service. You must contact individual airlines, hotels, etc. for support.
• No points, status, or loyalty incentives.

Also Read: Comparison Between KAYAK And Hopper

KAYAK vs. Travelocity Feature Comparison

Both sites offer flight, hotel, car, and vacation package search. But the booking process, policies, and service differ significantly.

Also Watch This Review Video:

When to Use Travelocity

Travelocity is best for travelers who:

• Want to easily book flights, hotels, cars, and vacations in one place
• Like package deals and don’t need much customization or flexibility
• Prefer easy change and cancellation policies through Travelocity
• Want access to customer support for travel issues
• Appreciate loyalty perks and status

Key scenarios where Travelocity shines:

• Booking simple roundtrip flights
• All-inclusive resort packages
• Package vacations like flight + hotel + car
• Last-minute getaways and deals

When to Use KAYAK

KAYAK is ideal for savvy travelers who:

• Have the time and patience to search across sites for the lowest fares
• Are flexible with dates and want tools to find the cheapest travel times
• Need advanced filters to find flights with ideal routes, layovers, etc.
• Prefer an unbiased search without pressure to book on any specific site
• Are organized and capable of booking complex trips across multiple sites

Great times to use KAYAK include:

• International or multi-city flights
• Comparing fares across specific airline sites
• Finding hotel deals like boutiques, B&Bs, and home rentals
• Early research and price comparison before booking
• Identifying best websites to book each leg of a complex trip

Also Read: Comparison Between Viator And Klook

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Travelocity and Expedia offer very similar services for booking flights, hotels, rental cars, activities, and vacation packages. They have essentially the same inventory and pricing. The main differences are: Branding and user experience:  Travelocity has a friendlier, more playful brand image. Expedia has a more business travel focus. Their sites and apps have minor design differences. Rewards programs:  Travelocity has its own loyalty program. Expedia is part of the Expedia Rewards program. Support:  Expedia tends to score higher for customer service quality and response time. Overall Expedia and Travelocity are on par in terms of site functionality. Choosing one over the other comes down to personal preferences around branding, user experience, and rewards programs.

No, KAYAK is not the same as Expedia. The key difference is KAYAK is a metasearch engine while Expedia is an online travel agency. KAYAK allows you to compare travel prices across airline, hotel, car rental, and other booking sites. But KAYAK itself does not sell or book travel. Expedia owns its travel inventory and allows booking directly on their website. So KAYAK helps find the best deals but you need to book elsewhere. Expedia consolidates search and booking in one place but may not have the lowest prices on every flight or hotel. KAYAK partners with Expedia and other major booking sites. You may end up purchasing travel through Expedia after searching on KAYAK. But the two sites are fundamentally different.

Travelocity and Expedia are very similar in terms of function. However, they are owned and operated by different companies. Expedia Inc. owns Expedia, Hotels.com, Orbitz, and other major online travel brands. Expedia Inc. purchased Travelocity from Sabre Corp in January 2015. So while Travelocity and Expedia offer basically identical services today, they are separate companies under the same parent company. Travelocity maintains its own brand image, site design, rewards program, and customer service team. The choice between Expedia vs. Travelocity is largely a matter of personal preference around branding, user experience, and loyalty programs. Underneath, they use the same flight and hotel inventory systems.

There are several key reasons why Travelocity is one of the most popular online travel agencies: Simple booking experience:  Travelocity consolidates flight, hotel, car, package booking on one platform. No need to visit multiple websites. Excellent deals:  Packaged vacations, last-minute deals, and flash sales offer real savings for travelers. Loyalty program : Frequent users can earn points, status, and perks for future bookings. Advertising:  Travelocity’s Roaming Gnome mascot and “Where to next?” campaigns build strong brand awareness. Supplier relationships:  Contracts with major airlines and hotels provide competitive pricing and inventory. Customer support:  Agents assist with changes, cancellations, and trip issues. For travelers who value convenience and simplicity when booking travel, Travelocity makes the process smooth and rewarding through great deals, service, and incentives.

Also Read: Comparison Between Travelocity And Priceline

The Bottom Line

Travelocity and KAYAK both offer powerful search tools for travel on a budget. Choosing between them depends on your specific needs and preferences as a traveler.

KAYAK is ideal for flexible travelers who have the time to find the absolute lowest fares by comparing options. Travelocity provides a streamlined booking experience for those who value convenience and customer service.

Aim to use both sites during your travel planning process. Search prices and flexible dates on KAYAK, then book seamlessly through Travelocity once you’ve found the ideal deal. This two-step approach can help maximize savings while minimizing headaches.

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed .

Get Daily Travel Tips & Deals!

By proceeding, you agree to our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use .

The 8 Best Travel Package Sites for Booking a Cheap Vacation

Sarah Schlichter

Deputy Executive Editor Sarah Schlichter's idea of a perfect trip includes spotting exotic animals, hiking through pristine landscapes, exploring new neighborhoods on foot, and soaking up as much art as she can. She often attempts to recreate recipes from her international travels after she gets home (which has twice resulted in accidental kitchen fires—no humans or animals were harmed).

Sarah joined the SmarterTravel team in 2017 after more than a decade at the helm of IndependentTraveler.com. Sarah's practical travel advice has been featured in dozens of news outlets including the New York Times, the Chicago Tribune, USA Today, Budget Travel, and Peter Greenberg Worldwide Radio. Follow her on Twitter @TravelEditor .

The Handy Item I Always Pack: "A journal. Even years later, reading my notes from a trip can bring back incredibly vivid memories."

Ultimate Bucket List Experience: "Road tripping and hiking through the rugged mountains of Patagonia."

Travel Motto: "'To awaken quite alone in a strange town is one of the pleasantest sensations in the world.'—Freya Stark"

Aisle, Window, or Middle Seat: "Aisle. I get restless on long flights and like to be able to move around without disturbing anyone else."

Email Sarah at [email protected] .

Travel Smarter! Sign up for our free newsletter.

Booking a flight, hotel, and rental car together doesn’t just save you time—it can often save you money, too. But before you make such a significant purchase, it’s important to find the best travel package sites for booking your vacation.

I tested more than a dozen vacation package sites to see which ones had the lowest prices and best user experience. I discovered that many of the best vacation package websites allow you to book any combination of flight, hotel, and rental car, while others are more limited (flight + hotel is often the default). Fortunately, some sites will let you add a car onto a hotel+flight package, even if a car isn’t listed on the initial booking page.

It’s also important to compare the price of a vacation booked as a bundle to that same trip booked a la carte as separate components. Booking a package isn’t always cheaper, and sometimes you’ll get  better flight options to choose from if you search for your airfare separately. In some searches, I discovered that the flight options included by default with my vacation package had ridiculously long layovers or undesirable departure times (4:30 a.m., anyone?).

The Best Car Rental Booking Sites

Keep a sharp eye out for resort fees; many of the best vacation booking sites don’t count them in their initial per-person price estimate because they’re collected separately by the hotel, but they can drive up the final cost of your trip. Similarly, optional airline baggage fees can also increase your total bill, especially if you book a flight in basic economy, and some vacation package sites don’t disclose these fees as clearly as others.

Finally, it’s important to know that many of the best sites for vacation packages are owned by the same parent company, so you’ll often find similar inventory and prices from one to the next. Knowing which sites are mostly interchangeable can save you some research time.

The Best Travel Package Sites

We put them to the test to compare prices, inclusions, and more. The following are the best websites to book vacations, listed in no particular order. Scroll down for more in-depth analysis of each one.

• Expedia’s sister sites: Travelocity , Orbitz , and CheapTickets

CheapCaribbean.com

Funjet vacations.

This well-known site is one of the best travel package sites for a reason. Expedia offers a full complement of bundle options (flight/hotel, flight/car, hotel/car, and flight/hotel/car) as well as trips to just about every corner of the globe. It’s reliable when it comes to pricing, too: Expedia offered the lowest price in two of my five tests, and was cheaper than average in all but one test booking.

That said, the amount the site said I was saving on a given package didn’t always match up to the actual price difference when I added up the cost of the trip’s individual elements. In one of my test cases, it was actually cheaper to book my flight, hotel, and car separately. So take those supposed savings with a grain of salt (or even better, price out the components separately on your own to be sure you’re getting the best deal).

Expedia has plenty of useful filters to help you find what you need. You can sort hotels by price, distance from a city’s downtown, guest rating, package discount, and property class, while flight options can be filtered by general departure and arrival times (for example, morning vs. evening), airline, whether carry-on bags are included, and more. You can also sort flight options by duration (longest or shortest), price (highest or lowest), departure time (earliest or latest), and arrival time (earliest or latest). There’s also a map view so you can check out the location of each hotel.

Best Feature: The breadth of choice and consistency of pricing make Expedia perhaps the best site for vacation packages. You may not always get the absolute lowest price here, but chances are you’ll pay a fair rate and have plenty of options to choose from.

Check out Expedia

How Far in Advance Should You Book a Vacation Home?

Expedia’s Sister Sites: Travelocity, Orbitz, and CheapTickets

Many travelers don’t realize that Travelocity , Orbitz , and CheapTickets are all owned by Expedia Group, and typically have very similar inventory and pricing to Expedia. Each of these sites has similar layouts and filter options, too. Like Expedia, these three sites offer every possible vacation package combination involving a flight, hotel, and/or rental car.

It was rare for any of these sites to beat out Expedia’s prices in my tests; in general, the rates were identical (especially on Travelocity, where I didn’t find any deviations from Expedia) or a little bit higher. However, Orbitz and CheapTickets did offer slightly cheaper packages on one flight/car itinerary.

Because the pricing is so similar, it’s probably not worth searching all three of these sites in addition to Expedia unless a difference of a few dollars will make or break your travel budget.

Best Feature: Travelocity, Orbitz, and CheapTickets offer a checkbox on their main booking page to specify “I only need accommodations for part of my trip”—a feature that allows user to select a subset of their trip dates and search for travel packages only within that period. This feature is also reflected on Expedia’s search page.

Note: Expedia Group also owns Hotwire , which I didn’t find quite as reliable as the other three in my tests. For one itinerary, a nonstop flight that the other sites offered was not available when booking a Hotwire package (though it was available when booking a separate flight on Hotwire), and the pricing on some searches was a little higher than on the other sites.

Check out Expedia’s sister sites below:

Like Expedia and its partners, Priceline also offers every possible combination of flight, hotel, and rental car. Its search results pages are easy to navigate, with plenty of filter and sort options, plus a map view for hotels. Priceline offers numerous hotel options in popular vacation destinations at every price point.

One quirk to prepare for: Priceline’s flight result page lists departure and return flights together as a pair rather than letting you choose each one separately. This cuts down on the number of screens you have to click through but could mean extra scrolling while you try to find the exact two flights you want. Not all flights that are available when booking airfare separately on Priceline seem to be accessible to those booking a package—so it’s worth checking both.

Priceline was in the middle of the pack as far as pricing was concerned. It won one of my tests but was the most expensive option in two others; overall, it offered cheaper-than-average prices 60 percent of the time. To help you save money, the site offers “Express Deals” for rental cars, an opaque option in which you don’t know which rental car brand you’ll get until after you’ve booked. If you’d rather choose which company you’re renting from, standard car rentals are also available.

Best feature: Once you’ve selected your flight and rental car preferences, the site will keep them the same as you click through alternate hotel possibilities—saving you the hassle of having to select them over and over again.

Check out Priceline

What Happens If You Don’t Turn Your Phone to Airplane Mode?

As its name suggests, CheapCaribbean.com has a more limited scope than other sites on this list, but it’s worth checking if you’re planning a trip to the Caribbean, where package trips such as honeymoons are particularly popular. The site turned up cheaper-than-average prices for both of my Caribbean tests.

CheapCaribbean.com is one of the best vacation websites for all-inclusive packages. Once you’ve entered your trip information, you can also filter your results by “adults only,” “children’s amenities,” and “luxury.” Each hotel-specific page includes a list of active promotions, on-site activities, and the property’s Tripadvisor Traveler Rating.

In some ways CheapCaribbean.com isn’t quite as sophisticated as other travel package sites. There’s no map available to compare locations of the listed hotel options. Also annoying: not being able to group Houston’s two airports into a single search, though you can select “all airports” for New York City and Washington, D.C. But the affordable deals are worth a few snags, as long as you’re only looking for a flight/hotel package—there’s no option to add a car or create any other package combinations, though you can add travel insurance and transfers, at least for the destinations I checked.

Best Feature: The “ Deals of Fortune ,” or bookings where you know the destination but not the exact resort until about a week before the trip. This is a fun feature for value-conscious travelers who aren’t set on a particular island or property.

Check out Cheapcaribbean.com

A popular meta-search site, Kayak saves travelers time by searching many of the best travel package sites with a single click. Unfortunately, you can’t specify which elements of your trip you’d like to bundle; it searches flight + hotel by default. You can add a car later on some of its partner sites, but if you’re looking for a flight/car package, you’ll have to go elsewhere.

Results list the cheapest available packages from sites such as Priceline (Kayak’s sister company), Expedia, and CheapCaribbean.com. There’s a map view available, and the results page shows both air- and hotel-related filters to make it easy to find nonstop flights, free breakfast, or a specific hotel.

I found that the prices listed on Kayak didn’t always match the price on the source site when I clicked over to find the deal—a fairly common problem with meta-search sites. But I also occasionally discovered that I got a different price after clicking from Kayak than I did when searching the same itinerary from the booking site’s home page. For example, a Las Vegas package was $819 per person on Priceline when I clicked over from Kayak, but just $783 when I booked the same package from the Priceline home page. Another test offered the opposite result, with the price being cheaper after clicking from Kayak than it was when booking directly on Priceline. The lesson: Test both options when using a meta-search site.

Best Feature: Being able to search some of the best vacation booking sites in a single place is a major time saver. Though Kayak doesn’t always find you the lowest possible price, it’s a good place to start your search and get an idea of what’s out there.

Check out Kayak

The Essential Caribbean Packing List

The Funjet home page gives you a single package option: flight/hotel. However, you can work around this by adding a rental car on at the end of a flight/hotel or individual flight booking. There are plenty of sort options for your results, including price, hotel name, rating, points of interest, and location.

One annoyance: Similarly to CheapCarribbean.com, there is no option to select “all airports” for certain cities like Houston or Chicago. And Funjet’s prices aren’t the most consistent, ranking as the cheapest in one test and the most expensive in another. Still, the site is worth comparing to others when booking your vacation.

Best Feature: Rather than making you scour the web for coupons, Funjet automatically applies any relevant promo codes to your search.

Note: If you’re headed to the Caribbean, Central or South America, Hawaii, or Mexico, try your search on Funjet’s sister site, Apple Vacations . The destinations it covers are more limited than Funjet’s, but I found that the prices were often a little better. CheapCaribbean.com is also owned by the same parent company, Apple Leisure Group.

Check out Funjet

Book Your Stay With SmarterTravel Hotels

If you’re ready to book your next adventure but don’t want to commit to a prepackaged bundle, you can still save big by booking your hotel stay with SmarterTravel Hotels.

All of the products featured in this story were hand-selected by our travel editors. Some of the links featured in this story are affiliate links, and SmarterTravel may collect a commission (at no cost to you) if you shop through them. As an Amazon Associate, we earn from qualifying purchases.

Follow Sarah Schlichter on Twitter @TravelEditor for more travel tips and inspiration.

You Might Also Like:

We hand-pick everything we recommend and select items through testing and reviews. Some products are sent to us free of charge with no incentive to offer a favorable review. We offer our unbiased opinions and do not accept compensation to review products. All items are in stock and prices are accurate at the time of publication. If you buy something through our links, we may earn a commission.

Top Fares From

Don't see a fare you like? View all flight deals from your city.

Today's top travel deals.

Brought to you by ShermansTravel

Australia: 12-Night Sydney, Cairns & the...

Down Under Answers

Greenland: Luxe, All-Incl. 11-Nt Exploration Small-Ship...

Swan Hellenic

Ohio: Daily Car Rentals from Cincinnati

Trending on SmarterTravel

travelocity.com

Global Rank

Country Rank

Category Rank

Showing Similarweb estimated data. Publicly validate your site’s metrics by connecting your GA4

Reflect your success

Verify your website's traffic and engagement metrics by connecting to Google Analytics

Total Visits

Bounce Rate

Pages per Visit

Avg Visit Duration

Ready to dive deeper?

Access behind-the-scenes analytics for every website with the free Similarweb extension

Top 10 travelocity.com Competitors

The top 10 sites like travelocity.com in march 2024 are ranked by their affinity to travelocity.com in terms of keyword traffic, audience targeting, and market overlap.

kayak searches hundreds of other travel sites at once to find the information you need to make the right decisions on flights, hotels & rental cars.

Similarity Score

earn free travel rewards with orbitz. fast booking & free cancellations. reserve now, pay later!

cheapflights searches hundreds of other travel sites at once to find the information you need to make the right decisions on flights, hotels & rental cars.

deep discounts on hotels, flights and rental cars. get exclusive savings with priceline.com.

find the best deals on the cheapest hotels, cars & flights with hotwire. save up to 60% on hotels and rent cars from $8.99 / day in your favorite destinations.

your one-stop travel site for your dream vacation. bundle your stay with a car rental or flight and you can save more. search our flexible options to match your needs.

search thousands of cheap airline tickets and get affordable plane tickets to your favorite destinations around the world. find cheap flights, hotel deals, cheap car rentals and vacations on onetravel.

travel cheap with cheaptickets. earn cheapcash on select flights and save up to 50% off select secret bargain hotels. why delay? search & book today!

find the cheapest flights with momondo. we find and compare fares from more than 1,000 airlines and travel sites, giving you the best rates

plan your next trip, read reviews and get travel advice from our community on where to stay and what to do. find savings on hotels, book the perfect tour or attraction, and reserve a table at the best restaurants.

travelocity.com's top 5 competitors in March 2024 are: kayak.com, orbitz.com, cheapflights.com, priceline.com, and more.

According to Similarweb data of monthly visits, travelocity.com’s top competitor in March 2024 is kayak.com with 42.3M visits. travelocity.com 2nd most similar site is orbitz.com, with 5.4M visits in March 2024, and closing off the top 3 is cheapflights.com with 7.5M. priceline.com ranks as the 4th most similar website to travelocity.com and hotwire.com ranks fifth. priceline.com and hotwire.com received 38M visits and 2.4M visits in March 2024, respectively. The other five competitors in the top 10 list are expedia.com (90.2M visits in March 2024), onetravel.com (1.3M visits in March 2024), cheaptickets.com (1.1M visits in March 2024), momondo.com (3.4M visits in March 2024), and tripadvisor.com (175.6M visits in March 2024).

Top Expedia Alternatives for Travel

• Latest Posts

• Kayak vs Orbitz Compared - August 1, 2022
• Spirit vs Frontier - August 1, 2022
• Travelocity vs Expedia Compared - August 1, 2022

If you’re like me, you like finding the best possible deal for travel vacations. In today’s online world, even a few button clicks could save hundreds or thousands of dollars on a trip. That’s why I’m always scouting as many sites as possible before finalizing my trip.

In this article, I will be breaking down the top Expedia alternatives for travel. That way, if you don’t like the deals you’re getting on Expedia, you can look at other websites to see if there is anything better going on.

Let’s begin!

What is Expedia?

Oddly enough, Expedia started as a division of Microsoft back in 1996. Three years later, it spun off and became its own company. The word “Expedia” was intended to be a blend of “exploring” and “speed,” as the purpose of the company was to help customers find travel deals as quickly as possible.

The company first blew up after listing an ad in the Wall Street Journal that claimed customers could book travel the “same way travel agents did.” The website’s main purpose was to book air, hotel, and car reservations online- a revolutionary idea when travel agents dominated the industry. 

Today the company does over $8 billion annually in revenue and has over 14,000 employees worldwide.

They are currently headquartered in Seattle, Washington, and own several other popular travel websites, namely Orbitz, Travelocity, and Travelscape. You could probably recognize them from their catchy ad campaigns during Superbowls.

What to Look for in a Travel Shopping Website

Before we start listing alternatives to Expedia, let’s glance at my criteria for a solid travel shopping website. 

Ease of Use

The first thing I always look for is ease of use. Many travel websites, with pop-ups, multiple tabs, and competing prices, tend to get overly complicated. I always favor websites that are simple and to the point.

A good test is opening the homepage and entering your trip details. If the proceeding page is so overwhelming you’re not sure where to begin, it might mean you need to look at another website.

High-Quality Photography

As a photographer, I’m a sucker for a website with gorgeous photos. It’s truly mind-blowing how beautiful a well-crafted photo can make a destination look instead of a crappy iPhone photo with a magenta filter.

Therefore if I see good photography, I can be assured the company is passionate about travel and giving the customer the best experience possible. Plus, I’m more likely to book a hotel that looks better on paper.

Detailed Information

The more details that can be listed up front, the better. Now, I realize that this contradicts my statement above about ease of use. If there’s too much going on, it can be a real turn-off.

However, there are ways to organize a website that can make it much easier to intake data. For example, giving space for the user to scroll can make a big difference. Not everything has to be displayed on the first page you see. 

See also: Getting There – Everything You Need to Know About How to Travel

Customer Service

As a fairly tech-savvy person, customer service isn’t too much of an issue for me. I can usually figure out how to do everything on my own.

However, if someone goes wrong, it is nice to know that the travel website’s customer service team will be there to back me up. This is especially important when the website is making reservations on my behalf.

Sometimes problems can arise where the hotel wants me to pay extra fees on the spot that I thought was covered by the website. A solid customer service team can help make these issues significantly easier, especially when you’re supposed to be on vacation.

Rewards Programs

If you’re a person who travels frequently, a rewards program may be of benefit to you when sticking to a travel site. Many of these programs are similar to travel miles programs on airplanes, where you’ll build up points to spend later.

If you show loyalty to a particular company, you’ll inevitably build up some free flights or hotels.

A great example is Hotels.com’s program, where you’ll get a free “reward night” for every 10 nights you stay somewhere. With today’s prices, this could potentially save you hundreds of dollars down the road.

Although Expedia is a solid travel website, many comparable alternatives might fit your style more. And who knows… You might even find a better deal!

TripAdvisor

TripAdvisor actually started purely as a social media review website for attractions, hotels, and restaurants. Over the years, it built up over a billion reviews and became one of the most reliable websites online for travel information.

Today, you can use the website to book hotels, vacation rentals, activities, airlines, cruises, rental cars, and more. It really is an all-in-one destination for travel.

One thing I like to do is look for the TripAdvisor Certificate of Excellence Award before booking a certain destination. This allows me to ensure the trip will be worth it.

• Backed by over 1 billion user-created reviews
• The certification program is a reliable guide
• Famous “attractions” are often simply hotels/restaurants. It’d be nice if they included more natural destinations

Expedia owns Orbitz, but it’s still its website and brand, so that I will list it as a valid alternative. I would argue that its greatest strength is that a group of airline companies initially organized it, so it’s very effective at finding good-priced flights. In addition to that, Orbitz also can help with car rentals, packages, and cruises.

However, you’ll find that, for the most part, Orbitz is fairly similar in pricing compared to Expedia. I still would keep an eye on both sites, though. Sometimes, hotel chains or flights run specials that only exist on one website.

• Built by a group of airline companies
• Solid reward program
• Is essentially the smaller shadow of Expedia

If you’re looking purely to rent hotels and cars, Hotels.com is the company for you. Notorious for its “Every 10th Night Is Free” rewards program, it’s no wonder people use this website to rack up deals.

My favorite part is how much detail they go into about each hotel… You’ll see information about every detail you can think of- from parking to maps to reviews.

It’s also got a high rating for user experience on both the website and its apps and has a fairly solid customer service department. However, that benefit seems to come at a cost, as their prices are slightly higher than most of the competition. 

• One of the best reward programs in the business
• A good choice if you’re looking for a specific hotel
• Can be a bit pricier to book through

Priceline is one of the biggest competitors to Expedia, and for a good reason. Even though the company is generally a bit small in scale, its ratings pack a punch.

The best bet to get a deal on the site is to join its free loyalty program, Priceline VIP. Once inside, you’ll get access to prices that are often cheaper than Expedia. Along with exclusive hotels that are only available through Priceline. 

Another major difference between Priceline and Expedia is their method of obtaining rates and inventory. Priceline built its system for rates and inventory instead of connecting to the Global Distribution System.

This means they only charge hotels a commission after the customer stays instead of charging upfront. This allows them more flexibility to give better rates.

• Its free loyalty program takes their prices to the next level
• Significantly better customer service
• A smaller company, which means you’ll have a smaller network of hotels to choose from

Kayak is a travel shopping website specializing in flights, hotels, and car rentals. My favorite thing about Kayak is how simple the user interface is on the website and the app.

They also have a great “Price Alerts” feature where you can get notifications in the background when prices change for a particular destination. This saves you lots of time, so you don’t have to keep checking the prices. 

Kayak also has a great feature called “Hacker Fares,” which can significantly affect your flights’ prices. It pairs separate airlines together if there’s a connection to get you the best fare. Truly a game-changer for flights.

• Simple user interface
• The price alerts feature can save you lots of time
• Refunds must be done directly through the company Kayak books for you, which can be difficult to deal with

See also: How to Find the Best Travel Gear (& Things to Consider!)

Scott’s Cheap Flights

If you’re an incredibly flexible traveler, Scott’s Cheap Flights might be an option you consider. It’s essentially an email list where you can save up to 90% on last-minute deals worldwide.

The catch is that you’ll generally have to be able to pack up and leave within a few days- if not hours. These flights are so cheap because the airlines have no choice but to try to fill them as fast as possible or lose money. 

The only step is to choose which airports you want to see deals from, enter your email address, then wait for the deals to start rolling in. 

• Massive deals on flights to anywhere in the world
• Simply check your email inbox to see details
• Little choice on where you’re going, and you’ll have to be able to pack up and leave quickly

Frequently Asked Questions

Answer: Although they are two different brands, Expedia and Orbitz are owned by the parent company Expedia Group. Orbitz was acquired in 2015 for $1.6 billion. You’ll find that they each have their own reward perks, but in general, Expedia has better deals for flights while Orbitz has better deals for hotels.

Answer: Each travel website has its own perks that can make it cheaper than the others. I would say the best strategy is to check all of the websites simultaneously to get a comparison for travel. Also, keep in mind that loyalty to a particular website could save you more money in the long run. For example, if you constantly book through Hotels.com, you’ll get a free night every 10 nights you stay somewhere. 

Answer: In today’s worth, it’s cheaper to book flights online. If you go through a travel agent, you’ll often pay a commission fee for the flights. However, hiring a travel agent might be the best option if you’re on a time crunch and don’t want to do the daily research to get the best deal.

The best trick to finding deals on travel fares is to check as many of these websites as possible for a consistent deal. They fluctuate so rapidly that there’s no “one website” that’s the best for deals 24/7.

However, if you’re looking for the best user experience, I would argue that Kayak is my favorite website to start. It’s clean, to the point, and can give you great “Travel Hacks” and price alerts to keep you in the know about the best deals. 

My next favorite travel shopping website would have to be Scott’s Cheap Flights because I’m impulsive and not married to any destination. I’ve found that some of the best vacations are unplanned. 

I hope this article has been helpful to you in determining some travel shopping website alternatives for Expedia. Have fun out there!

Recommended Reads:

• How Bad is Spirit Airlines Really?
• Puerto Vallarta vs Cancun Compared
• Cabo vs Cancun Compared
• Tulum vs Cancun Compared
• American Airlines vs Southwest Compared

What’s the Cheapest Way to Travel for the Holidays in 2023?

Holiday vacations can be crazy expensive, so consider these 5 ways to keep costs down.

2023 Holiday Travel Hacks to Save Money

Getty Images

While the cheapest way to travel for the holidays depends on factors like where you're going and the length of your trip, these tips can help you find deals to lower your travel costs this holiday season.

Are you looking for the cheapest way to travel during the upcoming holiday season? After two years of elevated costs and high interest rates, many Americans are pinching pennies. But that doesn't mean you have to stay home. Here are five ways to keep your travel costs down.

1. Comparison Shop

Before you rent a hotel, book a flight, sign up for a tour or even stop for gas, check to see where you can get the best deal. Here are popular tools that can help:

• Gas : GasBuddy and Google Maps show you the current gas prices at stations throughout the U.S.
• Flights : Skyscanner, Google Flights, Orbitz, Cheapflights, Kayak, Expedia and CheapOair track and compare flight prices.
• Trains and buses : Kayak, Wanderu and Busbud compare train and bus ticket prices.
• Vehicle rentals: Kayak, Rental Cars, Expedia, Orbitz, Skyscanner, Travelocity and HotWire compare rental car prices.
• Hotels : Trivago, Hotel.com, Priceline, Kayak, Orbitz, Expedia and Skyscanner compare hotel pricing.
• Activities : Expedia, Viator, Airbnb Experiences, Groupon and TripAdvisor list a variety of activities with varying prices and reviews.

"If you need a combination of flights, hotels and cars (or any combination of those three), check the 'vacation packages' or 'bundle' sections of travel sites like Orbitz and Travelocity, and on your airline’s website," Tanya Peterson, a vice president at Achieve, a personal finance company, said in an email.

A few quick searches can reveal deals on pretty much anything you need while traveling. Plus, they can help you compare the costs of various modes of transportation to see which is the cheapest for your particular trip.

2. Beware of Surcharges

It can be difficult to estimate travel costs when companies offer a budget-friendly price up front but add surcharges on the back end. In many cases, you won't know the full cost of a stay, rental or activity until it's over and the dust settles.

When you reserve a hotel room, for example, the hotel may require a deposit of several hundred dollars on a credit card, which remains on hold until a few business days after your stay.

You can also encounter a slew of hidden costs such as resort, pet, additional person, gym and parking fees. Car rental companies also typically require a deposit and may tack on toll fees, insurance, refueling costs and more.

To reduce the chance of being hit with surprise costs , read the fine print, contact companies to ask about surcharges or deposits and check out reviews from past customers.

3. Consider Alternatives to Renting a Car

If you need transportation upon arriving at your holiday destination, weigh your options. A rental car is often the go-to choice, but consider if it's the most cost-effective.

If you're visiting a friend or family member, see if they can pick you up and provide transportation while you're in town. If they can't or you prefer more independence, consider other options like a transfer or ride-share service.

The best solution will depend on your situation and preferences. If, for example, you just need a ride to and from the airport, it can make sense to hire a ride-share driver because you won't need the car for the entire trip. No reason to pay for a vehicle to sit at your destination unused.

On the other hand, if you plan to drive to various places and explore your destination, a rental car may be worth it.

4. Plan for Food On The Go

Buying food throughout your trip can get expensive fast but you can save by bringing some along.

If you're driving to your destination, pack a cooler with meals, snacks and drinks. Once you arrive, you can stock the fridge so you don't have to go out or order every time you get hungry or thirsty. You can also get creative with when you opt to eat out.

"Switch lunch and dinner. Because lunches are often less expensive than dinners , make lunch your main dining-out experience, and eat breakfast and dinner in your lodging, or outside as a picnic if possible," Peterson says.

If you're flying, you can save money by bringing solid foods and a drink container on the plane.

"Consider buying high protein stacks in bulk that are packaged individually. The best food to pack are things that don’t need anything else but the food itself - no utensils, don’t need to be heated up and don’t need to be kept cold," Bobbi Rebell, a certified financial planner and the founder of Financial Wellness Strategies, said in an email.

She adds that you can bring an empty water bottle and fill it after passing through security so you don’t have to buy the pricey bottled water in the airport.

5. Utilize Credit Card Travel Perks

Lastly, take some time to review your credit card rewards and benefits. Many card providers offer perks that translate into meaningful savings, such as:

• Auto rental insurance : Collision, theft, towing and loss-of-use coverage for rental cars so you don't have to buy insurance.
• Trip cancellation and interruption insurance: Reimbursement of non-refundable travel fees if you suffer a covered loss that results in the cancellation or interruption of your trip.
• Baggage insurance: Compensation if your luggage gets lost or delayed.
• Airport lounge access : Free access to airport lounges, which often offer complimentary drinks and snacks.
• Free checked bags : No charge for a certain number of checked bags.
• No foreign transaction fees : No fees on transactions with foreign merchants, which otherwise cost 1% to 3% of the purchase amount.
• Hotel perks : Credits and room upgrades at certain hotels.
• Companion passes: Two-for-one deals that allow a guest to fly free of airline charges.
• Roadside assistance : Complimentary or discounted roadside assistance services such as lockouts, jump starts, fuel deliveries and tows.
• Rewards on travel-related purchases : Higher reward amounts on travel-related purchases like flights, gas, restaurants and hotels.

"If you have a travel rewards credit card, the holiday season is a great time to cash in on rewards you've earned throughout the year. This season is easily the most expensive time of year, but rewards such as airline miles can greatly reduce your overall travel costs," Jake Hill, CEO of DebtHammer, said in an email.

The Bottom Line on Holiday Travel

The cheapest way to travel for the holidays depends on factors like where you're going, the length of your trip, if you're visiting someone and what you plan to do.

In some cases, it's cheaper to drive. In others, it makes more sense to fly or take a train. No matter the case, these budget hacks can help you find deals and take advantage of savings that will minimize your travel costs this holiday season.

Holiday Finances

Erica Sandberg Nov. 20, 2023

Tags: money , personal finance , personal budgets , holidays , Travel

Popular Stories

Saving and Budgeting

Family Finance

Credit Cards

Personal Loans

SEE TODAY'S TOP COUPONS

Kohl's Coupons

Wayfair Coupons

Lowe's Coupons

Best Buy Coupons

Walmart Promo Codes

Comparative assessments and other editorial opinions are those of U.S. News and have not been previously reviewed, approved or endorsed by any other entities, such as banks, credit card issuers or travel companies. The content on this page is accurate as of the posting date; however, some of our partner offers may have expired.

Your Money Decisions

Advice on credit, loans, budgeting, taxes, retirement and other money matters.

You May Also Like

Beth Braverman and Erica Sandberg April 25, 2024

5 Best Free Budgeting Apps

Erica Sandberg April 24, 2024

TikTok's 6-to-1 Grocery Method

Personal finance ratios to track.

Jessica Walrack April 23, 2024

Unexpected Kid Costs

Erica Sandberg April 22, 2024

Here's Why the 60/30/10 May Be a Problem

Jessica Walrack April 19, 2024

Here's When You Don't Have to Tip

Geoff Williams April 19, 2024

7 Tips for Starting a Side Hustle

Jessica Walrack April 18, 2024

Why Is Your Tax Refund Delayed?

Kimberly Lankford April 16, 2024

Cheapest Restaurants to Feed a Family

Erica Sandberg April 15, 2024

How to File a Tax Extension

Kimberly Lankford April 12, 2024

Red Flags That Could Trigger a Tax Audit

The Other Tax Deadline on April 15

How to Calculate Your Effective Tax Rate

How to Get Free Help With Your Taxes

Kimberly Lankford April 11, 2024

File Taxes Directly With the IRS

Erica Sandberg April 11, 2024

Lifetime Learning Credit Tax Break

3 Odd Tax Deductions

Jessica Walrack April 10, 2024

What Is the Earned Income Tax Credit?

Geoff Williams and Tanza Loudenback April 9, 2024

Smart Ways to Gift Money to Children

Jessica Walrack April 8, 2024

Compare flights from 100s of sites.

• Hi New York City Hostel $56+
• West Side Ymca $112+
• Central Park West Hostel $163+
• Radio Hotel $170+
• Pod 51 $180+
• OYO Times Square $192+
• The Washington by LuxUrban, Trademark Collection by Wyndham $192+
• Pod Times Square $192+
• Pod 39 $197+
• The Gallivant Times Square $198+
• The Manhattan At Times Square $202+
• Paramount Times Square $203+
• DoubleTree by Hilton New York Downtown $212+
• The New Yorker A Wyndham Hotel $220+
• YOTEL New York $222+
• Flight Atlanta - Newark (ATL - EWR) $37+
• Flight Chicago - New York (ORD - LGA) $49+
• Flight Atlanta - New York (ATL - LGA) $51+
• Flight Fort Lauderdale - New York (FLL - LGA) $56+
• Flight Miami - New York (MIA - LGA) $56+
• Flight Dallas - New York (DFW - LGA) $57+
• Flight Fort Lauderdale - Newark (FLL - EWR) $60+
• Flight Houston - Newark (HOU - EWR) $60+
• Flight Houston - New York (HOU - LGA) $63+
• Flight Orlando - New York (MCO - LGA) $63+
• Flight Orlando - Newark (MCO - EWR) $65+
• Flight Chicago - Newark (ORD - EWR) $79+
• Flight Dallas - Newark (DFW - EWR) $87+
• Flight Los Angeles - New York (LAX - LGA) $95+
• Flight Los Angeles - Newark (LAX - EWR) $108+
• Monumental Movieland Hotel $49+
• Grand Hotel Kissimmee At Celebration $53+
• Ramada Plaza by Wyndham Orlando Resort & Suites Intl Drive $64+
• Flight Atlanta - Orlando (ATL - MCO) $33+
• Flight Philadelphia - Orlando (PHL - MCO) $37+
• Flight Baltimore - Orlando (BWI - MCO) $39+
• Book A Bed Hostels $25+
• Generator London $37+
• Ramada London North M1 $66+
• Corbigoe Hotel $71+
• Flight New York - London (JFK - LGW) $371+
• Flight New Windsor - London (SWF - STN) $374+
• Flight Boston - London (BOS - LGW) $381+
• Flight Los Angeles - London (LAX - LGW) $408+

Fort Lauderdale

• Red Carpet Inn Airport Fort Lauderdale $66+
• HomeTowne Studios by Red Roof Fort Lauderdale $68+
• Days Inn by Wyndham Fort Lauderdale Airport Cruise Port $68+
• Flight Atlanta - Fort Lauderdale (ATL - FLL) $33+
• Flight Dallas - Fort Lauderdale (DFW - FLL) $37+
• Flight Houston - Fort Lauderdale (HOU - FLL) $37+
• Green Tortoise Hostel Seattle $60+
• Travelodge by Wyndham Seattle By The Space Needle $127+
• Coast Gateway Hotel $140+
• Flight Ontario - Seattle (ONT - SEA) $73+
• Flight Phoenix - Seattle (PHX - SEA) $74+
• Flight Burbank - Seattle (BUR - SEA) $80+
• Fabhotel Royal Residency Lakdikapul $18+
• Katriya Hotel & Towers $29+
• The Altruist Business Hotel Hitech $33+
• Flight Chicago - Hyderabad (ORD - HYD) $496+
• Flight New York - New Delhi (JFK - DEL) $506+
• Flight New York - Mumbai (JFK - BOM) $536+
• Best Western Sapporo Odori Koen $30+
• Smile Hotel Premium Sapporo Susukino $32+
• Comfort Hotel Sapporo Susukino $35+
• Flight Los Angeles - Tokyo (LAX - NRT) $628+
• Flight San Francisco - Tokyo (SFO - NRT) $640+
• Flight Seattle - Tokyo (SEA - NRT) $754+
• Royal Grove Waikiki $118+
• Kuhio Banyan Club $121+
• Pacific Marina Inn $134+
• Flight San Francisco - Honolulu (SFO - HNL) $259+
• Flight Los Angeles - Honolulu (LAX - HNL) $260+
• Flight Oakland - Honolulu (OAK - HNL) $277+
• Super 8 by Wyndham Dallas Love Field Airport $52+
• Dallas Love Field Inn $58+
• Wyndham Garden Dallas North $63+
• Flight Fort Lauderdale - Dallas (FLL - DFW) $37+
• Flight Atlanta - Dallas (ATL - DFW) $39+
• Flight Chicago - Dallas (ORD - DFW) $39+
• OYO Hotel And Casino Las Vegas $27+
• The STRAT Hotel, Casino & Tower $32+
• Silver Sevens Hotel & Casino $40+
• Four Queens Hotel and Casino $44+
• Flight Los Angeles - Las Vegas (LAX - LAS) $25+
• Flight Burbank - Las Vegas (BUR - LAS) $26+
• Flight Dallas - Las Vegas (DFW - LAS) $38+
• Flight Oakland - Las Vegas (OAK - LAS) $39+
• Freehand Chicago $41+
• Chicago Getaway Hostel $54+
• Travelodge by Wyndham Downtown Chicago $106+
• Flight Atlanta - Chicago (ATL - ORD) $47+
• Flight Atlanta - Chicago (ATL - MDW) $48+
• Flight New York - Chicago (LGA - ORD) $59+

San Francisco

• Hi San Francisco Downtown Hostel $48+
• The Mosser $74+
• BEI San Francisco, Trademark Collection By Wyndham $124+
• Flight Ontario - San Francisco (ONT - SFO) $48+
• Flight San Diego - San Francisco (SAN - SFO) $64+
• Flight Los Angeles - San Francisco (LAX - SFO) $65+

Washington, D.C.

• Generator Hotel Washington DC $61+
• Days Inn by Wyndham Washington DC/Connecticut Avenue $117+
• Georgetown Residences by LuxUrban, Trademark Coll by Wyndham $150+
• Citizenm Washington DC Noma $159+
• Hyatt Place Washington DC/US Capitol $161+
• Hotel Harrington $164+
• Motto by Hilton Washington DC City Center $170+
• Beacon Hotel & Corporate Quarters $173+
• Arc Hotel Washington DC, Georgetown $174+
• Morrison Clark Historic Inn $182+
• The Churchill Hotel Near Embassy Row $183+
• Washington Plaza Hotel $185+
• Flight Atlanta - Baltimore (ATL - BWI) $39+
• Flight Orlando - Baltimore (MCO - BWI) $39+
• Flight Boston - Baltimore (BOS - BWI) $40+
• Flight Dallas - Baltimore (DFW - BWI) $57+
• Flight Houston - Baltimore (IAH - BWI) $57+
• Flight Houston - Baltimore (HOU - BWI) $60+
• Flight Chicago - Baltimore (ORD - BWI) $67+
• Flight Los Angeles - Baltimore (LAX - BWI) $80+
• Flight Boston - Washington, D.C. (BOS - DCA) $123+
• Flight Boston - Washington, D.C. (BOS - IAD) $129+
• Flight Dallas - Washington, D.C. (DFW - DCA) $148+
• Flight San Francisco - Baltimore (SFO - BWI) $159+
• Hotel Boutique Casa Mallorca $68+
• Suites Malecon Cancun $72+
• Avani Cancún Airport Hotel $81+
• Flight Dallas - Cancún (DFW - CUN) $165+
• Flight Fort Lauderdale - Cancún (FLL - CUN) $180+
• Flight Houston - Cancún (HOU - CUN) $181+

United States

• Flight Newark - Miami (EWR - MIA) $39+
• Flight Seattle - Las Vegas (SEA - LAS) $49+
• Flight Newark - Fort Lauderdale (EWR - FLL) $51+
• Kauai Palms Hotel $189+
• Tip Top Motel $194+
• Kauai Inn $247+
• Flight Los Angeles - Hawaii (LAX - USHI) $213+
• Flight San Francisco - Hawaii (SFO - USHI) $223+
• Flight Ontario - Hawaii (ONT - USHI) $281+
• Super 8 by Wyndham San Diego Hotel Circle $91+
• California Suites Hotel $96+
• Best Western Seven Seas $105+
• Flight Houston - San Diego (HOU - SAN) $39+
• Flight San Jose - San Diego (SJC - SAN) $39+
• Flight Sacramento - San Diego (SMF - SAN) $48+
• Shared Living Not A Hotel $37+
• Super 8 by Wyndham Phoenix West $54+
• Rodeway Inn Phoenix North I-17 $56+
• Flight Dallas - Phoenix (DFW - PHX) $39+
• Flight Ontario - Phoenix (ONT - PHX) $48+
• Flight Los Angeles - Phoenix (LAX - PHX) $55+

Los Angeles

• Boutique Hostel $34+
• Freehand Los Angeles $41+
• City Center Hotel $104+
• Four Points by Sheraton Los Angeles International Airport $108+
• Rotex Western Inn $108+
• La Quinta Inn & Suites LAX $112+
• USC Hotel $131+
• Flight Oakland - Los Angeles (OAK - LAX) $39+
• Flight San Francisco - Los Angeles (SFO - LAX) $48+
• Flight Dallas - Los Angeles (DFW - LAX) $56+
• Flight Houston - Los Angeles (HOU - LAX) $58+
• Flight Houston - Los Angeles (IAH - LAX) $58+
• Flight San Jose - Los Angeles (SJC - LAX) $68+
• Flight New York - Los Angeles (LGA - LAX) $77+
• Selina Gold Dust $59+
• La Quinta Inn by Wyndham Miami Airport North $76+
• Motel 6 Miami. Fl $78+
• Miami Gardens Inn & Suites $82+
• La Quinta Inn & Suites by Wyndham Miami Airport East $92+
• Days Inn by Wyndham Miami International Airport $92+
• Holiday Inn Miami West - Airport Area $106+
• The Palms Inn & Suites Miami, Kendall, Fl $108+
• Holiday Inn Express & Suites Miami-Kendall $110+
• Radisson Red Miami Airport $113+
• Courtyard by Marriott Miami West/FL Turnpike $116+
• Flight Houston - Miami (HOU - MIA) $37+
• Flight Houston - Miami (IAH - MIA) $37+
• Flight Chicago - Miami (ORD - MIA) $38+
• Flight Atlanta - Miami (ATL - MIA) $39+
• Flight Baltimore - Miami (BWI - MIA) $39+
• Flight Philadelphia - Miami (PHL - MIA) $39+
• Flight Charlotte - Miami (CLT - MIA) $47+
• Flight Dallas - Miami (DFW - MIA) $51+
• Flight New York - Miami (LGA - MIA) $56+
• Flight Detroit - Miami (DTW - MIA) $65+
• Hometowne Studios by Red Roof Denver - Glendale/Cherry Creek $59+
• Super 8 by Wyndham Denver Stapleton $83+
• Microtel Inn & Suites by Wyndham Denver Airport $97+
• Baymont by Wyndham Denver International Airport $100+
• Quality Inn & Suites Denver International Airport $102+
• Days Inn & Suites by Wyndham Denver International Airport $105+
• Hyatt Place Pena Station Denver Airport $106+
• Flight Minneapolis - Denver (MSP - DEN) $38+
• Flight Dallas - Denver (DFW - DEN) $49+
• Flight Houston - Denver (HOU - DEN) $68+
• Flight Ontario - Denver (ONT - DEN) $68+
• Flight Detroit - Denver (DTW - DEN) $78+
• Flight Houston - Denver (IAH - DEN) $78+
• Flight Atlanta - Denver (ATL - DEN) $80+
• Hi Boston Hostel $66+
• Found Hotel Boston Common $93+
• Temple Place Suites $164+
• Flight Newark - Boston (EWR - BOS) $38+
• Flight Baltimore - Boston (BWI - BOS) $40+
• Flight Philadelphia - Boston (PHL - BOS) $48+
• Ramada Plaza by Wyndham Atlanta Airport $61+
• La Quinta Inn & Suites by Wyndham Atlanta Airport North $98+
• Sonesta Select Atlanta Cumberland Galleria $101+
• Flight Miami - Atlanta (MIA - ATL) $34+
• Flight Detroit - Atlanta (DTW - ATL) $36+
• Flight Fort Lauderdale - Atlanta (FLL - ATL) $38+
• Generator Madrid $32+
• C&h Aravaca Garden $40+
• Toc Hostel And Suites Madrid $46+
• Flight Newark - Barcelona (EWR - BCN) $333+
• Flight New York - Madrid (JFK - MAD) $394+
• Rodeway Inn Fairgrounds-Casino $64+
• Tampa Inn - Near Busch Gardens $68+
• Econo Lodge Airport at RJ Stadium $69+
• Flight Philadelphia - Florida (PHL - USFL) $37+
• Flight Chicago - Florida (ORD - USFL) $38+
• Flight Baltimore - Florida (BWI - USFL) $39+
• Flight Atlanta - Tampa (ATL - TPA) $33+
• Flight Baltimore - Tampa (BWI - TPA) $45+
• Flight Dallas - Tampa (DFW - TPA) $53+

New Orleans

• Ramada by Wyndham New Orleans $68+
• Wyndham Garden Hotel Baronne Plaza $95+
• Maison Saint Charles by Hotel RL $99+
• Flight Dallas - New Orleans (DFW - MSY) $38+
• Flight Fort Lauderdale - New Orleans (FLL - MSY) $39+
• Flight Atlanta - New Orleans (ATL - MSY) $42+

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.

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 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.

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 cheap flights with KAYAK. Search for the cheapest airline tickets for all the top airlines around the world and the top international flight routes . KAYAK searches hundreds of travel sites to help you find cheap airfare and book a flight that suits you best. Since KAYAK searches many plane ticket sites at once, you can find cheap tickets from cheap airlines and for trains and buses quickly.

KAYAK also helps you find the right hotels for your needs.

2018 Primetime Emmy & James Beard Award Winner

R&K Insider

Join our newsletter to get exclusives on where our correspondents travel, what they eat, where they stay. Free to sign up.

A History of Moscow in 13 Dishes

Featured city guides.

• lol Badge Feed
• win Badge Feed
• trending Badge Feed

Browse links

• © 2024 BuzzFeed, Inc
• Consent Preferences
• Accessibility Statement

People Are Sharing The "Not-So-Popular" Vacation Spots That Deserve WAY More Attention, And I'm Already Planning My Summer Vacation

"It's like Paris, only with a small fraction of the crowds..."

BuzzFeed Staff

Don't get me wrong, there's a reason why places like Paris, Tokyo, and Los Angeles are popular tourist destinations. These places have so much to offer visitors. But it's a great big world out there, full of hidden gems and lesser-traveled locales. So, redditor u/Hot-Vegetable3827 asked, "Which not-so-popular country is a must-visit?" Here's what people said, including some members of the BuzzFeed Community.

1. "hydra, greece. my wife and i just took a long greek honeymoon. one island we really liked that isn't as well known as santorini and mykonos was hydra. in fact, it was probably our favorite island. there isn't much to do or see there, but it was very laid back and chill. it was basically a vacation from our vacation, which we needed after a couple of busy days of sightseeing in athens and before we went partying in mykonos. there aren't any cars on the island, only donkeys, and it's very walkable and small.".

— flyerboy6

2. "Laos. I totally fell in love with every last thing about this country. The people are fantastic, the food is killer, and the landscape is just gorgeous."

— u/Westonworld

3. "Cartagena, Colombia. My wife and I went last year, and we have already planned our next visit. You can get there pretty easily and quickly from the US. There's cheap and delicious street food, friendly people, and nice weather all year round."

— u/Wakan_Tanka

"I always recommend Cartagena and the Rosario Islands. The whole week I spent there was cheap and incredible, and the Rosario Islands are on par with any tropical vacation spot but with hardly any tourists and extremely cheap."

— JessicaPage

4. "Slovenia. My wife was born there, and we go back every other year to see her family and friends. It's such a beautiful country. The secret is starting to get out now, especially Instagrammable places like Lake Bled and Predjama Grad. Granted, it's still nowhere near as crowded as similar countries like Croatia."

— u/gratusin

5. "Tunisia, especially Tunis and Monastir. I absolutely love it there. It's very cheap to visit, and the people are incredibly friendly."

— kimberlywilley1979

6. "Curaçao. I had an amazing beach vacation there. It was much cheaper than the more well-known and visited Caribbean islands."

— u/humancanvas79

7. "Oman. This Middle Eastern country has rugged mountains, desert dunes, historic forts, and amazing ships."

— u/Echo71Niner

8. "Sri Lanka. Damn, it is beautiful, and this country has it all: beaches, forests, mountains, ancient temples, and wildlife safaris. I loved the food there, including lots of curry. The beach areas offer a lot more culinary variety, like lots of fresh seafood."

— u/blahblahrasputan

9. "Ghent, Belgium is an incredible city. It's vibrant, historic, and fun! I would highly recommend a visit."

— laughingcaptain56

10. "Malta. You'll find delicious food (it's sort of a mix of Arabic and Italian influences) and lots of historical places like ancient ruins. The capital, Valletta, is beautiful, and there are also two smaller islands called Gozo and Comino that you can visit. There's also extensive public transport, so it's easy to get around if you don't drive. I can't recommend it enough if you're the sort of person who's into exploring history, food, and culture."

— u/TheKnightsTippler

11. "Belfast is underrated, IMO. I wanted to revisit Dublin, but hotel prices are absolutely wild at the moment, so I went to Belfast instead. I found that it was a very interesting city with excellent food, pubs, music, culture, and proximity to the countryside for day trips. Everyone I met in the city was funny and friendly."

12. "Lyon. It’s a two-hour train ride from Paris but with a fraction of the population. It’s like the Florence of France with its walkability and world-class cuisine."

13. "Kazakhstan. Stunning nature and landscapes, a unique cuisine, and friendly people who are really generous to guests. It's also home to some fascinating archaeological sites."

— u/Meorazhar

14. "New Mexico. People who live in the US don't realize how unique and beautiful the landscape is. The drive from Española to Taos is probably one of my favorite in the world. The food really is second to none. Plus, there's a Balloon Fiesta. Enough said."

— rachadach23

15. "I absolutely love Guatemala. If you can speak even a little bit of Spanish, it's even better. Fly in, leave Guatemala City, and make Antigua your base. There's enough to see in Antigua and the surrounding areas that it can be a whole vacation alone, but there are also many places to visit on a day or overnight trip from Antigua."

— u/ShitfacedGrizzlyBear

16. "Bolivia. It has an amazing landscape, it's spotlessly clean, the people are friendly, and there's a lot of fun to be had if you want to party. I haven't been back in ten years, and I hope it's still as lovely. It holds a special place in my heart."

— u/canntrelaxneverrelax

17. "Jordan. Petra is easily the coolest thing I’ve ever seen with my own eyes. Pictures do not do it justice at all. You could fit elephants through the door of the Treasury. It’s wild."

18. "Mongolia. There's really only one big city, Ulan Bator, and one or two days there is enough. But that countryside! It's so beautiful. I went out to a camp where I was set up with a ger (a Mongolian yurt), and you just hang out in the beauty of nature."

— u/da_choppada

19. "Sapporo, Japan. My husband and I went to this city on Japan's northern island of Hokkaido, and it was spectacular! When most people think about traveling to Japan, they think of Tokyo, but Sapporo is much less touristy, the mountains around the city are incredibly beautiful, and the food is to die for. A scenic hour-long bus ride takes you to the old city of Otaru, best known for its glass-blowing industry and beautiful canals. The subway system is amazing, and the people are friendly and helpful. I've been to a few places in my travels, but Sapporo stands out as the best so far. We already vowed to go back someday."

— Luckie11eleven

Do you have somewhere to add? What's an often overlooked destination that should be way more popular? Tell us in the comments or drop it into this Google form.

Share this article.

I've visited 93 countries, 57 of them with kids. These 5 underrated spots are great places to enjoy with your family.

• Karen Edwards has traveled to 93 countries, and 57 of them have been with her young children.
• Edwards said that her family has had more fun exploring underrated spots than the popular ones.
• Her favorites include Tanzania for its safari tours and Abu Dhabi for its vibrant festival scene.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Karen Edwards , who blogs about her family's travels around the world. The following has been edited for length and clarity.

Since 2000, I've visited 93 countries and 57 of them have been with my four children who are all under the age of 10.

I am a nurse by background, but I have been blogging about traveling with my husband and kids since 2014. I cover a lot of off-the-beaten-track destinations and write itineraries for places I've been to, explaining how they work for families with children.

Many popular family destinations tend to be overcrowded. They're usually the ones that get a lot of media exposure or are shown in viral videos on social media. In America, it'd be places like Disneyland in California or Disney World in Florida, while for Europeans, it might be some of the Spanish resort areas.

Although my family and I have visited these places, we have always come away disappointed. They often lack educational experiences, feeling like pointless affairs.

I think traveling to underrated spots makes trips feel more exclusive and you can learn more about the cultures of the countries you visit — it also keeps you away from tourist traps.

We went on a safari tour in Tanzania

Our family visited Tanzania in 2019 in collaboration with a tourism brand. We were there for 12 days.

Our flights to the country were kind of expensive; we paid about $9,000 for our then-family of four, including a stop in Zanzibar at the end of the trip for a few days. However, overall, the entire trip didn't end up costing us that much.

We had some really unique experiences in Tanzania. We went to Mto Wa Mbu village , which is beneath a banana plantation, and we went on a safari tour in its Lake Manyara National Park .

Interestingly, Tanzania is one of the few places in the world where lions are known to climb trees. I remember seeing them sit in tall trees; it was quite unusual, but my kids really enjoyed how close they were to the animals.

Throughout our trip, we actually felt like we were experiencing life in Tanzania. Our campsite was on a river's edge in the depths of nature. It was nice not to feel surrounded by tourists.

My kids fell in love with Abu Dhabi's culture

Many people mistakenly believe that Dubai is a country, but in reality, it's a city in the United Arab Emirates, with Abu Dhabi being its capital.

My family and I moved to Abu Dhabi in 2021 and lived there for 18 months. The city does have a lot of similarities to glitzy and glam Dubai , but you get a more down-to-earth experience.

There are amazing festivals in Abu Dhabi where they display their culture in different formats, whether that be through local food or crafts. It does feel authentic because it's usually mainly locals participating and organizing them.

The city is also 1.5 hours away from Al Ain, which sits at the foot of  Jebel Hafeet , one of the tallest mountains in the region. Along the way up, you'll find many ancient artifacts, such as beehive huts, which have been there for thousands of years. At the top, you can watch incredible sunsets.

Related stories

The city also has the Al Ain Oasis , which uses an ancient irrigation system. It has these beautiful paved pathways that look like cobbled streets.

My kids loved Abu Dhabi and are constantly asking me to go back — they really liked all the cultural celebrations.

We love Sri Lanka so much, we're building a villa there

In 2022, my family and I moved to Sri Lanka from Abu Dhabi. We thought we'd have more family time here, and it was going to be an affordable place to live.

We're building a family-friendly villa here that should be completed by August. The area where we are building has a lot of nice cafes, bars, and restaurants nearby.

Overall, Sri Lanka is an amazing country that has so many diverse experiences. There are tea plantations, mountains, and beaches. As for wildlife, their national parks have loads of elephants and leopards.

On one occasion, we went on a safari boat tour to an isolated national park where we watched elephants swim across a lake and onto a tiny island. It was amazing.

The beaches in Sri Lanka are pristine. They have beautiful scenery with swaying coconut palm trees, clear water, and perfect waves. Our favorite is Kabalana Beach .

Because we're always on the beach, my children have learned how to surf. I think it's the most fun thing that we do on the weekends as a family.

The ski resorts and spas are amazing in Andorra

We visited Andorra in 2018 for about six days. It's a tiny country nestled in the Pyrenees between Spain. It's a two-hour drive from Barcelona and three hours from Toulouse, France.

The city has a unique fusion of cultures, though I think Catalonian is the strongest influence. During our trip, my family and I toured many ancient churches.

We also went to some amazing spas and resorts in Andorra. The hotel and ski system there is really family-friendly.

During our visit to the Grandvalira ski resort , my daughter learned how to ski and my husband got to snowboard — the resort has a kindergarten at the foot of its mountain, where kids can play or ski.

Andorra also has amazing spa facilities that are suitable for families and are sectioned off for different age groups.

Our trip was in collaboration with Andorra's tourism board, but I feel like it wasn't overly expensive in comparison to some other places around the world.

I was treated like family in Macedonia

Macedonia is a Balkan country just north of Greece. I haven't been there with children, but I wouldn't have any issues taking my kids there.

It has many beautiful small villages and it's great for skiing too.

The country is also home to one of the oldest and deepest lakes in Europe named Lake Orchid, which borders Albania. There's this beautiful, small village on the lake that has charming restaurant and a lovely atmosphere for relaxing and enjoying good food.

I visited the country in 2008, and then again in 2012 with my then-boyfriend and now-husband.

The first time I visited, I went with two girlfriends, and we were backpackers. We arrived in the middle of the night by bus and had no idea what we were doing. The bus driver just made a call, and a stranger came and picked us up in his car — I thought I was going to die.

The opposite happened. He took us back to his home with his family, and we stayed there with them for a few days. We ended up extending the trip because he and his family were so amazing.

They didn't speak a word of English, and we couldn't speak a word of their language either. We'd just gesture at each other, and they'd give us food and red wine.

I just totally fell in love with them and their country.

• Main content

Book Hotels in Moscow

Cabins, apartments, houseboats! We offer comfortable & private vacation rentals

Save an extra 10% or more on select hotels with Member Discounts

Access exclusive hotel deals, only with the Travelocity app

Check hotel availability in Moscow

Moscow Hotel & Travel Guide

Moscow, the entrancing capital of Russia, is a hub of science, culture, and education. Lingering monuments from the USSR era lend a fascinating glimpse into Russia's Soviet history, while remnants of its imperial past hearken back to the days of the tsars. Book yourself on one of many flights to Moscow , take your pick of the Moscow hotels, and prepare to be amazed by this dynamic and alluring city.

Out and About in Moscow

No trip to Moscow would be complete without a stop in the legendary Red Square. Gaze up at the candy-striped spires of St. Basil's Cathedral and stop by to take a picture of Lenin's Mausoleum. Visit the numerous museums and cathedrals within the red walls of the Kremlin, and even peek at the presidential palace. If you're in an artistic mood, the Tretyakov Gallery houses the finest collection of Russian art in the world, and the Bolshoi Theatre is renowned for its superlative ballet and opera. Even traveling between attractions and hotels in Moscow is an experience: The exceptionally beautiful and efficient metro is famous worldwide.

Eating and Drinking

You can find dining options for any budget along the Arbat, one of the most famous streets in the city. There are cuisines for any taste, but if it's traditional Russian food you're seeking, be sure to try some pelmeni (a type of dumpling), borscht (beet soup), or a shashlik (a Russian kebab). Blini, a sort of thin pancake, can be ordered with sweet or savory fillings and is a staple of the local cuisine. As for drinks, it isn't all vodka! Tea is one of the most common beverages, and you should also take the opportunity to try kvas, a fermented drink made from black or rye bread. Ready for your Russian adventure? Travelocity can help you find cheap hotels in Moscow and all the best Moscow vacation packages so you have more time to read up on all the great Russian literature before your trip.

Moscow hotels essential information

Frequently asked questions, types of hotels.

• Convention Center Hotels (355)
• Historic Hotels (314)
• Kid Friendly Hotels (246)
• Spa Resorts & Hotels (139)
• Cheap Hotels (69)
• Hotel Wedding Venues (63)
• Hotels with Hot Tubs (49)
• Boutique Hotels (19)
• Casino Resorts & Hotels (1)

Hotels near…

• Vnukovo Intl. Airport Hotels
• Sheremetyevo Airport Hotels
• Domodedovo Intl. Airport Hotels

An attraction

• Hotels near Moscow Kremlin
• Hotels near Embassy of the United States of America
• Hotels near Sparrow Hills

Areas of Moscow

• Northern Europe Hotels
• Eastern Europe Hotels
• Khimki Hotels
• Krasnogorsk Hotels
• Domodedovo Hotels
• Vnukovo Hotels
• Mytishchi Hotels
• Odintsovo Hotels
• Shishkino Hotels
• Rybolovskoe Hotels
• Istomikha Hotels
• Dmitrov Hotels
• Lyubertsy Hotels
• Razvilkov Hotels
• Podolsk Hotels
• Balashikha Hotels
• Ramenskoye Hotels
• Istra Hotels
• Sergiyev Posad Hotels
• Obninsk Hotels
• Kotelniki Hotels
• Polivanovo Hotels
• Privalovo Hotels
• Putilkovo Hotels
• Yubileyny Hotels
• Sorokino Hotels
• Pirogovo Hotels
• Petrovo-Dalneye Hotels
• Kamkino Hotels
• Noginsk Hotels
• Ershov Hotels
• Nikonovskoe Hotels
• Oksino Hotels
• Balabanovo Hotels
• Troitskoe Hotels
• Central Russia Hotels
• Nemchinovka Hotels
• Mamyri Hotels
• Kommunarka Hotels
• Otradnoye Hotels
• Moscow City Centre Hotels
• Central Administrative Okrug Hotels
• North-Western Administrative Okrug Hotels
• Moskovskiy Hotels
• Molzhaninovsky District Hotels
• Northern Administrative Okrug Hotels
• Shelepikha Hotels
• Arbat Hotels
• Tverskoy Hotels
• South-Western Administrative Okrug Hotels
• Southern Administrative Okrug Hotels
• Presnensky Hotels
• Western Administrative Okrug Hotels
• Tyoply Stan District Hotels
• Eastern Administrative Okrug Hotels
• Butovo Hotels
• Kitay-Gorod Hotels
• Zamoskvorechye District Hotels
• Konkovo District Hotels
• Maryino District Hotels
• Rumyantsevo Hotels
• Zelenograd Hotels
• Zamoskvorechye Hotels
• Begovoy Hotels
• Airport District Hotels
• Nagatinsky Zaton District Hotels
• Izmaylovo Hotels
• South-Eastern Administrative District Hotels
• Lyublino District Hotels
• Brateyevo District Hotels
• Sosenskoe Hotels
• Zhukovka Hotels
• Usovo Hotels
• Novomoskovsky Administrative Okrug Hotels
• Rodniki Hotels
• Rogovskoe Hotels
• Yakimanka Hotels
• Meshchansky Hotels
• Meshchansky District Hotels
• Krasnoselsky Hotels

More ways to wander Moscow

Most popular.