It's no secret that the Internet continues to grow at an amazing rate. And like most industries, valuable resources for travel planning - and booking - are growing too with new sites popping up regularly.
Meanwhile, reliable favourites are either refining their services or getting left behind. With all this action, which sites should you use? Which of the newcomers are worthwhile?
To point you in the right direction, we've got a few resources to recommend:
An excellent travel booking aggregator, SideStep seems to be an edge from the rest. The site incorporates a handy matrix at the top of the results page that gives an overview of the lowest prices pulled from 600 airlines across 200 sites. You can also refine the search by departure time or airport.
A great resource for low-fare carriers in Europe with 45 to search. Select your two endpoints and you'll see who can get you from one stop to the other on a direct flight. You'll need to book directly with the airlines and visit their individual sites for prices and schedules.
Want to know when to book a flight? Farecast uses historic pricing data to help you make an educated decision about whether it will fluctuate in the coming weeks. There is a supplementary service called FareGuard (approx $10) which will cover the difference if they tell you to wait for a price to go down and it rises instead. The only caveat is that Farecast covers only 78 cities, all in the US.
If you're not a world traveller (and you're a bit nervous about giving it a shot) try travel.state.gov. It will advise you on things like security, population, income, and politics.
Need to get the best seat on the plane? This site will show you where to find the power outlets as well as the extra leg room on 73 different models of aircraft with 39 different airlines.
Customize your itinerary and plan your trip from one to ninety destinations, from start to finish. Along with the basics, restaurant and entertainment ideas, you will find tips on what to read before you go, just beware - this site will let you pack too much into one day.
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