“The Best Travel Sites to Save You Money” gives you a quick list of the single best websites to book the cheapest flights, the best hotels, and awesome tours.
Friends who know my crazy travel lifestyle are always asking me, “What travel sites do YOU use for flights, hotels, tours, etc.” I finally decided I ought to put it all in one place.
There are soooooo many travel booking websites out there it’s easy to become overwhelmed with options. I hope this simple list can cut through all the noise.
Why trust me? I’ve traveled (frugally) to over 100 countries on every continent but Antarctica. I’ve ridden in Ubers in Kenya, and I’ve stayed at AirBnB’s in Ukraine. I’ve spent nights at hotels through Booking.com in Djibouti, and driven around Iceland using RentalCars.com. I’ve been on bike tours in Serbia with GetYourGuide, and found the meeting point using Google Fi phone service. After years of trial and error, I keep coming back to just the following companies/websites:
Get the best credit card to earn travel rewards:
The best personal credit card to get travel rewards is the Chase Sapphire Preferred VISA.
Why? To start off, it has a phenomenal sign-up bonus. When you spend $4000 over the first three months, and pay the $95 annual fee, you’ll get 60,000 Chase Ultimate Reward Points. Those points are worth $1200! Ultimate Rewards are the universal multi-tool of travel reward points. You can transfer them at a 1-1 ratio to United Miles, Southwest Points or to 11 other travel partner airlines and hotel chains.
They can also be used like cash to book tickets with ANY airline at 1.25 cents per point. I like this flexibility, because I don’t have miles on EVERY airline. Sometimes I need to book a one-way flight on Air Serbia, and I can use Chase Ultimate Rewards.
You earn 2x points on any purchases related to travel or dining. That’s a nice way to earn points quicker. I mean, you do travel and eat, right?
You get primary rental car insurance when you use the card to book your rental car. This means you can always decline the supplemental insurance, and Chase pays for the car if you wreck it! This is a very valuable perk, and one that only a couple of credit cards offer. It’s worth it to keep the Sapphire Preferred long term just for the peace of mind this provides.
You get trip delay / cancellation / interruption / baggage delay insurance. You never know when this could come in handy. I haven’t used it yet luckily.
It’s really the best personal travel rewards card out there. If you sign up through my referral link here, you’ll get me a referral bonus too. Mahalos!
The Best Travel Sites- Find the Cheapest Flights:
I generally get all my flights for free through credit card signup bonuses, so I’m seldom searching for flight deals. Check out my post How to Fly for Free.
On the rare occasion that I can’t get where I want to go for free, I’ll check Momondo first. Momondo searches the budget airlines that some of the big search engines do not. If that doesn’t work for me, I use Kayak. Also, remember that Southwest Airlines refuses to let those sites sell their tickets, so if Southwest might be an option for you, you’ll have to search their website separately.
The Best Travel Sites – Find the best way to get around:
When I’m renting a car, I check two sites for the best deals, Rentalcars.com and Turo.
Rentalcars.com is the best international rental car booking site. They are the world’s biggest car rental booking service, with local rental companies in 167 countries, and over 50,000 locations. They generally match or beat any other booking engine’s prices.
If I’m not happy with the price of rental cars in a given city, maybe due to a shortage of cars, or high taxes, I’ll check out what is available on Turo. Turo is sort of the AirBnB of cars. People rent out their own personal cars. I’ve had only good experiences with it so far. One of the best was when I really needed a pickup truck to haul lumber to my cabin in Maine. Rental car companies wanted $89 a day. I found a guy on Turo who rented me his truck for $30 a day!
If I’m not renting a car, like in a big city where parking is outrageous, or in a developing country, where I don’t feel comfortable behind the wheel, my #1 go-to choice is Uber. Uber is cheaper than taxis. You don’t need cash or credit cards, just your phone. It’s especially useful in developing countries where there might be a language barrier to explain where you want to go, or a hassle factor in getting ripped off by taxi drivers. I have recently used Uber successfully in such places as Kenya, South Africa, Belarus and Ukraine. If you’ve never used Uber, sign up for an account here, and you’ll get $5 off your first ride, and I’ll get $5 credit too. Thanks!
The Best Travel Sites – Find the Best Deals on Hotel, Hostel, Apartment, and Home Rentals:
I use two sites when I am searching for lodging, Booking.com and AirBnB.
Booking.com is the best place to search for hotels and hostels. This is the best site to find the cheapest deals, no matter where on Earth you are going. There is no reason to use any other search site. Booking.com is by far the biggest, and it’s getting bigger and acquiring more companies each year. You can find everything from thousand dollar Paris suites, to $10 a night guesthouses in Asia. One great feature is that many of the properties offer free cancellation within a certain window. If you are staying in popular destination, you can book a room way ahead of your trip, and then cancel later if plans change.
I also always check AirBnB to search for private home and apartment rentals. I find myself choosing AirBnB’s over hotels more and more each year. They are especially convenient when traveling with my family and needing 4 beds and more space then a hotel room. AirBnB’s also seem to be proliferating in cities where hotels rooms are unreasonably expensive. In a place like Iceland, tourism has exploded, and they can’t build new hotels fast enough. But people are entrepreneurial, and AirBnB’s have filled the gaps. Just be aware that not all AirBnB’s are created equal, so there are specific steps you should take to get the smoothest experience possible. If you’ve never used it before, sign up for Airbnb here, and you’ll get $40 off your first stay, and I’ll get $20 too. Everybody wins!
Pro Tip: The reviews on Booking.com and AirBnB are all REAL reviews, by actual people who stayed at the property. You can trust them. TripAdvisor reviews are increasingly fabricated both positively and negatively by property owners… And don’t even get me started on the corrupt business practices of Yelp.
The Best Travel Sites – Find the Best Tour Deals:
I only use one site when looking for tours in a new city: GetYourGuide
GetYourGuide is the best source to find tours at the best prices wherever you are going. They are a tour consolidator, so they provide a one-stop-shop for booking with local tour companies. You can read real reviews (not faked like on Tripadvisor) by people who actually purchased the tour. The tour prices are always the same lowest price, just as if you booked directly with the local tour company. And you can cancel any tour more than 24 hours ahead of time for a full refund.
I am mostly an independent traveler, and not interested in multi-day group bus tours, but I do love guided city walking tours, bike tours, and pub crawls. GetYourGuide is where I go to book those for every trip.
Get the Best Travel Guidebooks:
My favorite travel guide depends on the destination.
For most of Europe, I go with Rick Steves. I really like the way he plans out an itinerary based on the number of days you have. He cuts through the crap, and gives you honest opinions on what is worth seeing, and what is skip-able. Rick has been doing the travel gig for over 40 years now, but he’s still got it.
For many of the off-the-beaten-path locations like Africa and parts of Asia, you can’t beat Bradt Guides. They are really well researched, and cover history and culture extensively. Bradt takes on countries where no one else is even attempting guidebooks. They could just mail it in, and still make sales as the only game in town, but instead they put out an in-depth quality product.
If neither Rick Steves or a Bradt Guide are available for my travel destination, I choose Rough Guides. They have great maps, are up-to-date, and are enjoyable to read. Their guides seem to run about 50% larger than Lonely Planet for any given destination. They put a lot of info and hard work into every guide, and I’m always happy to tear into one before my trip.
My 4th choice for a guidebook is Lonely Planet. Their content has gone downhill for years, it’s thin, often out-of-date, and their maps are terrible. Nevertheless, they make a guidebook for almost every country, so they are sometimes the only option. The quality varies massively between destinations. Some guides are very good. Some are just recycled bad info from the previous edition 5 years ago.
I never buy any of the other guides like Fodors, Frommers, Insight Guides, DK Eyewitness, or Lets Go. Fodors and Frommers seem to be written for 70 year olds. Insight and DK are just glossy picture books with not enough real information. I’m actually not sure if Let’s Go even exists anymore? They were huge in 1990.
Get the Best International Phone Plan:
Google Fi has the best international phone plan.
Google Fi is so incredibly convenient, every frequent international traveler should switch to it. It allows you to use your same data plan, at the same domestic usage price, in 164 countries!
It offers two plans; With UNLIMITED you get unlimited data use, in 164 countries, as well as unlimited voice and texting for just $70 a month plus taxes. After 22GB of data use, your data is slowed, but who uses 22GB a month?? You also get Google One membership with 100GB of storage in the cloud.
With the FLEXIBLE plan, you pay $20 a month plus taxes, and $10 per GB of data used, with data above 6GB FREE. Basically, if you go over 6GB a month, your bill is $80 plus taxes, and you would have been better off choosing UNLIMITED. For people who are always under 6GB a month FLEXIBLE is the right option.
With both plans, you CAN also use your phone as a hotspot tether. There is NO contract, you can cancel at the end of every month. When traveling, you get data at whatever the top speed the local cell towers can offer, which is always at least 3G, and usually 4G/LTE. International voice calling rates are reasonable too, usually not more than 21 cents a minute, and free over wi-fi.
I was with AT&T for years, but their international plan is massively overpriced, so I switched to T-Mobile. I had heard T-Mobile had “free” data in 200 countries. Well, that’s technically true, but its 2G data. Does anyone even know what 2G is anymore? Well, let me tell you, it’s like using that AOL dial-up CD your dad got in the mail in 1993. Not much fun. I spent 20 minutes trying to upload one picture to Facebook in Belize. This year I switched to Fi, and it has made traveling sooo much easier. I used to have to scramble to buy a new SIM card in the airport of every new country. Now I just use my phone normally.
If you sign up through my referral HERE, you’ll get $20 off your first bill, and I’ll get $20 off my next bill. Whoo-hoo! Everybody wins!
The Best Travel Sites – Get the Best Travel Insurance
I only use one company for my travel insurance; World Nomads
Travel Insurance is a must for every trip. You wouldn’t go without health insurance in America and risk a six-figure emergency room visit would you? Likewise, you don’t want to be hurt or sick or robbed abroad, with no help available. World Nomads provides comprehensive insurance, at reasonable rates, with excellent customer service, and a sparkling reputation in the travel community.
For example; in 2017 my wife and I spent three weeks in Africa, including a risky activity of climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro. We were able to get an extremely comprehensive policy that covered just about every possible disaster, even emergency evacuation costing $500,000, for just $7.66 per person per day. It’s well worth it.
Recap of The Best Travel Sites I use:
Credit Card: Chase Sapphire Preferred VISA.
Ground Transport: Rentalcars.com or Turo and Uber
Lodging: Booking.com and AirBnB
Tours: GetYourGuide
Guidebooks: Start with Rick Steves
International Phone Service: Google Fi
Travel Insurance: World Nomads
THANKS FOR READING
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