The following Websites have proven the most consistently useful travel information and booking for the economic online traveler.
Budget hotel travel agency sites
Priceline.com - Priceline is the undisputed king of discount hotels, car-rental agencies, and airlines unload all sorts of inventory at well below published prices. Priceline's Name Your Own Price® (fly any time of day, on any major airline, stay in any name-brand hotel or rent from any of the top 5 U.S. rental car agencies. Flexible visitors enter their travel dates and offer amount for an airline ticket, hotel room, or rental car.) Features in which travelers don't know specific details until after their bids have been accepted are not for everyone. But if you are a flexible traveler using Priceline to bid blindly you'll find the best results when bidding for upscale hotels in large cities, paying up to half off what other guests pay. The trade-off is that your hotel's location will be something of a surprise. But in many big cities, it doesn't really matter which neighborhood you're staying in, because you're hopping all over town sightseeing anyway. Complaints about odd flight times, multiple connections and endless layovers have diminished now that Priceline.com offers guarantees regarding flight quality as well as price.
- Expedia negotiates directly with hotel suppliers to secure access to exclusive rates and superior inventory at over 70,000 properties world-wide. Expedia books airline tickets, hotel reservations, car rentals, cruises, vacation packages, and various attractions and services. Expedia has a rewards program called the ThankYou Network that allows travelers to earn points when they book travel on Expedia and can qualify for a free trip, an iPod shuffle, or even get cash. ThankYou Network is a free, flexible rewards program where you earn rewards points for booking eligible travel on Expedia—or even shopping online at ThankYou.com. Travel rewards include more than 40,000 hotels as well as any available flight on Expedia.
Orbitz.com - Orbitz.com enables travelers to research, plan and book a broad range of travel products. Orbitz is a leading global online travel company that uses innovative technology to enable leisure and business travelers to research, plan and book a broad range of travel products. Orbitz Worldwide owns a strong global portfolio of consumer travel brands that includes Orbitz, CheapTickets, ebookers, HotelClub, RatesToGo, the Away Network, Asia hotels, and corporate travel brand Orbitz for Business. Orbitz was the airline industry's response to the rise of online travel agencies such as Expedia and Travelocity.
Hotwire.com - Hotwire.com's blind reservation system tells you the general location of a property and its rating, but not its name or specific address. Since Hotwire's general locations can span a large area, it's easy to wind up with a hotel that's distant from some of the most desirable spots. Rental car reservations work similarly. You specify the car type and your destination, and Hotwire.com gives you rates, but does not reveal the car agency. Hotwire.com's airline reservation system, however, works like those of other major online travel sites -- including Expedia.com and Travelocity.com -- and also features specials such as Hot Rates that can slash up to 40 percent off of last-minute airfares. Although the hotel savings can be substantial, less flexible travelers could be better served by Kayak.com, which looks at more than 400 online travel sites -- including airlines and hotels directly -- to find the best published and discount deals.
Travelocity.com - Travelocity is the sixth-largest travel agency in the United States and the second-largest online travel agency, a product of leading travel innovator Sabre (the world's largest travel agent reservation system). Travelocity searches the lowest fares from hundreds of airlines and hotels, and gives you access to Web Fares. Choose your plane seat with Seat Maps, and know when fares to your favorite destinations drop with Fare Watcher. Booking over $4 billion of travel per year, Travelocity negotiates the best rates at over 17,000 hotels in hundreds of destinations. Read honest customer reviews from real travelers and see independent hotel ratings from AAA, features found only on Travelocity. Search by neighborhood or amenity for the hotel that's right for you, and pick your room type with the majority of our hotels.
Hotels.com - For more than 15 years, hotels.com has provided you with great prices on the hotels you want to stay for both leisure and business travel. Hotels.com offers more than 40,000 properties worldwide in over 400 destinations - from hotels and B&B's to condos and all inclusive resorts. Hotels.com also specializes in providing travelers with accommodations during sold-out periods. Hotels.com offers travelers the information they need to book the perfect trip all backed by the hotels.com Low Price Guarantee. Hotels.com offers the information you need to book the perfect trip through detailed hotel reviews, Flexible Booking and our Price Match Guarantee. Hotels.com is an operating company of Expedia, Inc.
Otel.com - Otel.com is a leading online travel distributor specializing in discounted hotel bookings for both business and leisure travelers. Otel.com offers competitive rates at over 55,000 hotels in 9,000 destinations-167 countries including all popular destinations in the North America, Latin America, Europe, Asia, Africa and the Middle East. Travellers choose from a variety of 1-5 star hotels such as budget hotels, B&Bs, luxury hotels, city hotels, apartments, boutiques and well known chains. And travellers save with our best rate guarantee (110% price guarantee on all rates) and loyalty program.
Budget hotel comparision sites
Kayak.com - Kayak is one of the best sites for finding the cheapest plane tickets in the U.S. Reviewers say that the first step in researching the best air, hotel, cruise and car rental prices should be a visit to a travel search engine, and by a large margin, most reviewers identify Kayak.com as the best of the… breed. Kayak searches more than 400 airline websites, online travel agencies and other travel sites, including some international ones, to come up with the best offers. Those looking to book a flight will appreciate an interesting tool lets Kayak users find the best fares for similar routes found by other search engines. You can also get fare alerts and compare search results to other travel sites like Expedia.com. There are no booking fees (Kayak refers you to other sites to make the actual purchase).
HotelsCombined.com - HotelsCombined.com is a unique search engine that consumers can use to find hotel availability and rates, and to compare prices and offers from multiple merchants. Using the HotelsCombined online Website, travelers no longer have to search websites one by one to find the best deals and lowest rates. Once you find the supplier suitable for your needs, HotelsCombined will link you through to the supplier website to book directly. HotelsCombined includes many budget hotel chains. HotelsCombined.com is not a travel agent. HotelsCombined does not sell hotels nor provide reservation services. You cannot make a booking on the website. HotelsCombined is a search engine that finds you the best deal for your accommodation needs. HotelsCombined works in may ways like Kayak.com.
Budget hotel information and review sites
TripAdvisor.com - By harnessing the power of the masses the user-hotel-review site TripAdvisor is one of the top way to hunt for hotels if reading through reviews is something you don't mind. TripAdvisor's spectrum of good, bad, and mixed reviews for the same property can be confusing. But after reading the reviews and disregarding ones that seem off or biased, you get a decent sense of what to expect in a hotel—which is the point. Another great feature of TripAdvisor is the user uploaded photos of the hotel. These photos are a great way of really seeing the property from the guest perspective unlike the standard photo fare that most web sites use to promote a given budget hotel in that they typically show the finer point of the hotel. However the user uploaded photos really show you what to expect, the good, the bad and the really ugly! Some other TripAdvisor features we really like include the "TripAdvisor Flight Search with Fee Estimator" which offers travelers a large inventory of flights with the best prices available and a fees estimator that helps travelers understand the true cost of a flight in a single display. Fees estimator calculates and compares the entire cost of a domestic flight, including ticket price, fees for checked luggage and even anticipated in-flight food service and entertainment, based on the traveler’s needs. TripAdvisor’s flight search also features SeatGuru airline seating maps with user reviews, real-time seat availability charts, and TripTip! Alerts when business class or first class tickets are available for a price close to the coach fare. TripAdvisor's "Top Values Index" feature is a way to sort the most popular hotels around the world to quickly find great values today. Enabling travelers to try and get the most bang for their buck, Top Values are 31 percent less expensive than all hotels listed on TripAdvisor and are updated daily to reflect the most recent prices and quality ratings.
- TravelPost, part of Kayak.com's brand contains millions of user-written budget hotel reviews, hotel photos, and travel blogs. TravelPost.com is a great resource for learning about hotels and activities before you book. Maps and user-submitted photos are available for many locations, as well as… recommendations. Some users complain that the site isn't well organized, but stress that searching by destination will usually net you the information you seek. TravelPost.com is also a travel search engine (closely linked to Kayak.com) that looks at online agencies, airlines and hotel chains to find the best deals. TravelPost search thousands of websites for hotel reviews, hotel information, and hotel rates.