Holiday travel advice to ease your stress.
Through my experiences booking vacations, it’s clear to me which travel sites are the best for giving you the best deals and quick answers. Holidays are meant for creating new memories, not creating stress. Here’s a list to ease your booking for the perfect holiday travel getaway:
5. Hotwire (hotwire.com)
Hotwire is last on my list. Although they have good results, you do not book a specific hotel. Instead, you choose the location you want to stay in and you get a number of results. You can end up in any of a number of hotels. They do give you a list of the hotel companies that are in the area, but again not the specific hotel until after you book. For someone like me, this is a feature that I really didn’t like. Although Hotwire gives you a list of options, it’s too last-minute for me; I need a concrete holiday travel itinerary.
On top of that, their rates were extremely high compared to other holiday travel booking sites I peeked at. One thing I do like is how Hotwire gives you a total with taxes and fees before you put your credit card in. I prefer knowing exactly how much I will be paying before the last second.
Hotwire gives you a bunch of choices and gives you a total quickly, but if you are someone who needs a concrete vacation plan, this site is not for you.
4. Priceline (priceline.com)
Priceline is another pretty good booking set, but it wasn’t high up on my list by my standards. The biggest advantage to using Priceline is that it not only gives you a list of prices through their site/company, but it also gives you a list of competitive rates based on other booking sites as well. This was great because it easily allowed me to see multiple results at once. This feature is completely holiday travel friendly.
However, Priceline’s biggest setback is that you are forced to enter all of your information before it gives you any prices – including your credit card. I really didn’t like this because as soon as you enter your email, phone number and other information, you automatically receive messages trying to get you to book a trip. I want prices, not telemarketers. This is also time-consuming to fill out all of your information simply to get an idea of prices.
Priceline lets you see many options at once, but the information you have to put in is very time-consuming and spam-inducing.
3. Kayak (kayak.com)
When people think about holiday travel sites, Kayak is usually forgotten. However, as a first-time user I was pleasantly surprised. They did have the lower rates, but they still weren’t the best. Also, I wasn’t really a fan of their tool that they have to compare rates to each other. When you search with the comparing rates tool, all of the sites you are comparing pop up in different windows and spam your desktop. In order to compare them all you have to keep clicking back and forth to and from different windows. This was extremely frustrated.
Kayak has decently low rates compared to Priceline and Hotwire, but their search tool definitely needs some fine-tuning.
2. The hotel itself.
This answer is pretty obvious. Although it’s not what you’d expect, sometimes it’s just easiest to book a room through the hotel’s site or phone number. It’s easy and straightforward, and you get a much better selection when it comes to choosing a room. Also, they tend to tell you about any special deals they happen to be running. It’s a great idea, especially if you have questions about the specific area around the hotel – the staff almost always knows the best eateries and local hot-spots, something that a simple travel site might not be able to provide. This is completely convenient for holiday travel booking.
The hotels might not always have the cheapest deals, but they are usually more knowledgeable about the area and try and hook you up as best as they can.
1. Travelocity (travelocity.com)
Who doesn’t love a gnome? Travelocity takes the cake because it has the best rates, most information and is easily accessible. They also have a great feature that breaks down every single cost for you, splitting it into each individual night and showing you where the taxes stand. Not to mention, everything you need is right there on one page – talk about ease of access. It is the best holiday travel booking site.
When it comes to booking, Travelocity is the easiest to navigate and still hooks you up with a great price.
Although there are many holiday travel booking sites out there, make sure you do your research before you settle on any specific place for your travels. Compare prices and make some phone calls – that dream holiday vacation with your family might be more affordable than you thought.
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