One of the reasons I wanted to start this website was to give people all the information they needed in order to be more comfortable traveling, particularly abroad, and to help people travel smarter. Part of that is helping people find the best places to search, as well as how to search, and is one of the main reasons I decided to start Fat Guy Travelz in the first place.
It’s no secret that there are a myriad of travel websites on the interwebs. Not only do you have each individual airline, hotel, car and tourist company operating their own website, you also have what are known as Online Travel Agencies (OTA). OTA’s are third-party websites that can be used to book hotels, cars, flights, and so on. You probably know a handful of them already, such as Expedia, Orbitz, Hotels.com, and Hotwire. This page will mostly cover generic travel searching, with more specific niches (Disney, Caribbean, etc.) covered elsewhere.
Some tips and definitions of travel-search related terms:
1. ALWAYS, ALWAYS research all your travel arrangements from a handful of websites. It can get daunting and time consuming, but sometimes you can find significant savings by shopping around. If this seems like too much work, a travel agent may be right for you.
2. Consider always making your reservations directly through the website of the company who’s services you want. If you want to book a night at the Marriott, book it through Marriott.com. If you want to book a flight through American Airlines, book it through AA.com. So on and so forth. The reason for this is that anytime you want to cancel, change reservations, or have issues with your travels, it is almost always easier to deal directly with the company than through a third party. Often times dealing with third parties can lead to very long wait times on phones, just to find out they don’t have the power to do anything themselves. It is not uncommon to call the OTA and have them tell you to call the company directly, just for you to call the company directly and they tell you to call the OTA…it can be a vicious cycle. Not only that, but often time you may get better incentives booking direct such as free WiFi, and now it is common for hotels to only give you credit for your loyalty reward nights and points by booking direct.
3. Utilize any credit card and reward points schemes to your advantage. Many cards offer the ability to earn points or miles by using your card for everyday purchases. Some of these cards have significant advantages and points-earning capabilities, and can help you earn free/discounted travel, or often times are best used for earning upgrades on flights. Two great resources for learning more about this are Thrifty Traveler and The Points Guy. Also, with credit cards often times comes with other advantages like car rental insurance coverage, trip protection plans, and sometimes special purchase protection when buying goods with the card. Be sure to check your cards details for more information.
4. Be Flexible. It can be really hard getting exceptional travel deals when you have rigid travel plans. Maintaining some flexibility with your plans can often help save you money, sometimes several hundred dollars our more. It’s also exceptionally helpful when special travel deals become available, or when last-minute-travel specials are too good to pass up.
5. When in doubt make sure to use your new favorite friend, Google. Typically typing a few words into the search engine will get you relevant articles, blogs, and even Facebook pages that will help you through your travels. Hopefully as this site matures, everything you may have questions for will eventually be answered here. Worst case, email me at [email protected], and I’ll do my best to help!
Secret Deals, Hidden Deals, Express Deal (Priceline) – The concept goes by several different names, but they all function in basically the same way. The OTA will let you choose your dates, star-rating, and location, but does not reveal which property is being booked until after it is reserved. In exchange, you are theoretically supposed to receive a significant discount. To be honest, I have not used this feature much on any website, and have not researched just how much of a discount is realized by actual travelers. For those of you who don’t mind gambling on which place you get, as long as it meets a star-rating and is a great price, this may be for you.
Name Your Own Price – concept in which you are able to name the price in which you are willing to pay for whatever service you are bidding on, however it still lies with the OTA to accept your bid. I have only used this feature a handful of times, but not at all recently. My experience with it was mediocre, at best.
Hacker Fares – You don’t see this too much, but when you do it typically means that the search has found an airfare deal that requires two or more tickets to be purchased separately in order to get the lower price. Make sure you look at these fares in detail, and ensure that each site still has the ticket at the advertised price before booking any of them. Last thing you want is to book the first portion of the flight just to find out that the second or third leg has gone up in price.
Search-Only Travel Websites
Google Flights
Believe it or not, one of my top recommendations is a site where you will often find the best pricing for airfare, but they don’t let you book! Google Flights is one of the best resources out there for finding prices for flights you need to book. Google Flights is also incredibly useful if you are flexible with your travel plans, as it has several powerful and visually appealing ways to search for alternative days or locations. When you find a flight you would like to book, Google Flights will actually give you the link to the website that allows you to book it. For its relative ease of use, accurate pricing, and unique price-search-via-map (as shown below) function, I highly recommend Google Flights as one of your first stops for researching airfare.
(Searching flights from EWR to Europe, the map feature allows you to see prices to multiple cities at one time. You can
also zoom in and click on other cities to get quick, accurate pricing. Super useful for when travel plans are flexible!)
Momondo
Another player in the search-but-not-directly-book game is Momondo. To be honest, I think Momondo’s features are so good, and its design so nice, I sometimes find it more useful and fun to use than Google Flights. As a seasoned traveler, as I’m sure YOU are too *wink*wink*, I always make sure to check at least 2-3 resources before I book any flight. Lately I’ve been making sure Momondo is one of them. Momondo has much of the same features as Google Flights, such as a dynamic map searching tool and the ability to search via regions (europe, asia, etc), but it also allows you to search using ‘nearby destinations’ and’direct preferred’ routes. I think the best, and most useful aspect of Momondo, is after you have found your desired destination and the search runs. Momondo will give you a graph (see below) at the top of the screen that is a representation of the estimated prices for the same flight on different days. It is incredibly useful if you have some flexibility in your travel, as sometimes you can save HUNDREDS of dollars just by moving your departure or return by a few days. While Google Flights does have a similar function, they don’t offer it up automatically and force you to click another link to get the feature. Kudos to Momondo for a search engine that not only works great, but is visually appealing as well.
(Notice the graph above, give you a bar chart mimicking the estimated prices of the same flight on different dates. Equally
useful are the tools on the lefts side of the page which allow you to fine tune your searches to any specific requirements that you may have. This is often a feature of other travel search sites as well.)
Kayak – Kayak is a great resource, and while they do offer searches for hotels and are pretty darn good for cars, I use it mostly for researching airfare as it is pretty exceptional, and often comes up with some of the lowest prices you can find. The site also pretty useful search tools to narrow down flight options, as well as the ability to see a grid of prices over different departure/return dates, allowing you to shop for the best prices. When you click on an airfare that suits your times and prices, it will redirect you to another site to book it, just like Google Flights and Momondo. *Note: Kayak is one of several websites that offer ‘Hacker Fares’. These are typically fares in which two or more tickets must be purchased separately in order to get the lower price. Make sure you look at these fares in detail, and ensure that each site still has the ticket at the advertised price before booking any of them.
Top OTAs for Researching and Booking Travel
While there seems to be an overwhelming number of websites to book travel from, there are only a few companies that dominate the market. These major players actually own several different travel fare aggregators and metasearch engines.
The Priceline Group
The Priceline Group is the King of OTAs. They operate their namesake travel site, Priceline.com, and they also own CheapFlights.com, Booking.com, Agoda, OpenTable, Kayak, and one of my faves, the above-mentioned Momondo.
Priceline.com
Priceline has a clean and basic approach to their website, with self-intuitive tools and search functions. They do NOT however, allow you to search for generic destinations (i.e. Europe, Asia, etc) when looking up airfare. You will need to enter specific destinations to get any results. Priceline is one of the many websites that does offer hidden hotel deals, special deals for registered travelers, and also ‘Name Your Own Price’ for hotels. Priceline has the habit of showing what appears to be exorbitant price reductions on properties that make you think only they have this ‘special’, but in reality it is a price you’ll find on most other sites as well. It aggravates the hell out of me they do this, but for some reason is even worse with Agoda as you’ll see in my rant below 😀
Booking.com
Booking.com allows you to search for airfare, hotels, rental cars, trains, and airport taxis, the latter two I did not even realize until writing this page! While Booking.com offers all these options, their real bread-and-butter and what you’ll want to use them for, is researching and booking accommodations. According to their website they offer approximately 1.6 million properties in 125,000 destinations within 230 countries and territories around the world, with more than 1.5 million rooms nights booked everyday…incredible! The website is pretty basic with the normal bells and whistles for fine-tuning your searches, so searching and booking anything you need should be a breeze. Like many others, Booking.com also offers ‘Secret Deals’ to registered travelers. The site even allows you to earn a referral fee when you get friends to book lodging on their website!
For instance, if you CLICK HERE and complete a stay at any property, both YOU AND I will get a $25 credit on our credit cards…SWEET!! If you’re interested in referring people yourself, simply sign in and navigate to the ‘Refer friends and earn’ icon on the left hand side. Here you will find your special code that you can share with others, though it is worth noting you can earn only up to $250.
Agoda
I think Agoda is worth mentioning as I have heard about it from numerous travelers while I made my way around Asia. Agoda has become famous with travelers as one of the go-to websites for finding the cheapest lodging throughout Asia. After hearing about them so many times I downloaded their app and used it to cross-reference prices quite often. I will also say that I REALLY enjoyed their layout, the visual aesthetics of the website, as well as them offering some locales that allow you to pay on-site. What drives me ABSOLUTELY MAD about Agoda (and Priceline) is their incessant desire to give an oft-false representation of savings on their rooms. You’ll often see the results of a hotel search come up with the going rate, as well as a ‘slashed’ out higher rate, often giving you the appearance that you are saving a massive amount of money. In reality, just about every other provider out there is giving you about the same pricing as Agoda, even the hotels directly. Where they get these significantly higher rates from, I’ve not a clue. This is one of my biggest pet-peeves with them, but having said that, it is a great resource with a very beautiful appearance.
Beware of the pricing that Agoda shows….often the drastic savings on prices aren’t actual, as the going
rate can be find on many other sites. To me this seems very disingenuous, and was something I wish
they would remove.
Hostel-Specific Travel
To me, hostels are one of the great overlooked tools you should add to your backpack. They are often super cheap, have decent enough accommodations to rest in (particularly if you are out of the room all day like I usually am), and are a phenomenal way to meet other travelers from around the world.
Believe it or not, some OTAs do provide pricing for hostels. You will usually notice these when you do a ‘sort by price’ from lowest to highest. If you see places that range from a few dollars to a few Alexander Hamiltons (that’s the $10 USD for yuns that don’t know), it is quite likely a hostel.
Hostel World
Hostel world is the #1 resource for searching and booking hostels worldwide. They claim to offer booking for over 33,000 hostels and budget accommodations worldwide, and I have personally not been to one location where I searched for a hostel and there wasn’t one on Hostel World. You can find hostel and budget specific travel articles on their website as well. Hostel World’s search feature is pretty self explanatory. Put in location, dates, how many travelers…and VOILA! The search returns all the hostels and budget accommodations available for your dates, the price per night, and has a seem-less reservation process. Like some other travel sites, Hostel World does offer a ‘Best Price Guarantee’ where they offer to refund the difference if you find the same room booking cheaper anywhere else. Be sure to check their terms and conditions for more info. *Note: often times you are simply paying a deposit on Hostel World, with the balance due when arriving at the hotel. Be sure to double-check whether payment can be made with credit/debit card, or is cash only as is some places in Europe and Asia.
Generator Hostels
There are few chains of hostels that I personally know of, but Generator Hostels is one of them. They also happen to be some of my favorite hostels. The rooms can vary from each location, but they’re often quite comfortable with good sized beds. Some, if not all, provide in-room storage along with personal lights and charging stations at each bed. The best features about Generator Hostels are their common areas, to include their check-in spaces, cafes, and bars. So far I’ve stayed at the properties in Venice, Berlin-Mitte, Stockholm, and Barcelona. My favorites so far have been Venice and Barcelona, with their incredibly comfortable seating areas, well stocked cafes & bar, delicious food complemented by their beautiful decor and interior design. Going to these two locales made me realize there are more than $10-a-night dives in Central America (they suit their purpose), and that even budget destinations could be incredibly beautiful and inviting. As with most hostels, there’s plenty of tourist information available on site, including the ability to book group tours. *Generator Hostels has locations in some of the world’s most popular cities, to include Amsterdam, Barcelona, Berlin, Dublin, Copenhagen, London, Paris, Rome, Stockholm, and Venice. Future locations will be opening up in Miami and Madrid.
(The bar area of the Generator Hostel in Venice. The common areas are absolutely gorgeous, and the food and drinks are quite good. I even saw a group of Italians come here for a private party that was hosted in the common areas; kind of fucked up because it was a private party and us hostel guests were kind of pushed off to the side, but kind of shows you how nice the place is, especially for a hostel.)
Mad Monkey Hostels
Mad Monkey Hostels are a small chain of hostels in Asia, with locations in Cambodia, Thailand, and the Philippines to be exact. I’ve only stayed at two of their locations, one in Phnom Penh, Cambodia and one in Bangkok, Thailand. Both hostels were located in great locations, making it easy to walk to restaurants, cafes, bars, and some touristy stuff. Bonus points for the Bangkok location for being walking distance to Khao San Road, a MUST visit street in Bangkok full of bars, restaurants, and street food. Hell, it’s probably one of the reason any backpacker goes to Bangkok in the first place. I can’t speak for the other locations, but based on these two, you are in good hands with this brand as their rooms were of good size, beds were comfortable, pools were open, and drinks were flowing. Definitely worth checking out if you are in a bind of which place to pick.
Cruises
VacationsToGo
Vacations To Go is a resource I have used several times for researching and booking cruise prices. They are an exceptional resource for cruise research, allowing you to filter down based on departure/ending ports, time frames, cruising regions, as well as offering up some trans-Atlantic and World-cruise options. They offer great discounts on bookings, and can offer a myriad of discounts as well. As with all other travel, be sure to compare their prices with other websites and direct with the cruise provider.