The Best Travel Websites You’ve Probably Never Heard Of
Social Network Sites
Yes, Trip Advisor. But what about…
Honest advice to get you going. It’s no wonder IgoUgo won the 2005 Webby Award for the Best Travel Site in the U.S. It definitely stands apart from other online travel communities that allow travelers to share photos and stories. Their newly added Travel Deals provides the best bargains in the coming week from a variety of travel sites, saving you the hassle of online booking research. IgoUgo rewards contributing writers and photographers with GO points, which can be redeemed at online retailers and used for frequent flier miles.
Cool Feature: Have a favorite IgoUgo member? You can search for a member, view their profile, and stay up to date on their travels.
Plan Together. Travel Together. Triporama enables you to plan a group trip and share the details with your group. It’s like your own personal trip website. Tools on the site include storing and sharing your research, manage invites, and posting messages to your group.
Connecting Internationals Since 1998. Looking to get away, and stay away? Iagora.com offers information on internships, study abroad, and permanent positions available abroad. This site will help you find housing, hotels, and provide tips for working and living abroad. By signing up for premiere membership you can submit your resume and network for job offers from around the globe.
The Ultimate Resource for the Independent Traveler. BootsnAll features guides, stories, book reviews, and insiders from every continent. The site also has message boards, blogs, and travel deals. You can book flights, hotels, and even hostels through provided links, they really do live up to the nall when it comes to traveling.
Your Unlimited Travel Guide to the World. Many of the most popular travel sites provide little information on U.S destinations. It may be hard to come across a site with detailed guides for U.S cities. That is what sets Planetware.com apart from other destination guide websites. Their ultimate goal is to eventually database every attraction in the world.
Cool Feature: Enter your Hobbies and Activities and it will bring up destinations that can entertain them.
Real People, Real Advice, Real Experiences. Voted as one of the 12 Best Travel Sites by Forbes.com, Realtravel is an online community for all things related to travel. Featuring photos, blogs, member profiles, and links to the latest in travel deals, it is a great way for people to obtain and share advice on travel experiences.
This “urban travel guide” has tidied up its act. It’s now easier on the eye and most straight forward to search. Great for advice on how to spend your city break in London, Paris, NY, LA, Berlin, Washington, Sydney, Tokyo or San Francisco like a local, not a tourist. The quirky tips on restaurants, shops, parks and nightlife are fresh and eclectic, and the site makes good use of images and maps. For city break advice also see thecoolhunter.net (great photography of design shops, restaurants, bars and hotels), itravelishop.com and urbanjunkies.com (for Barcelona and London).
This Amsterdam-based series of city blogs covers European cities inlcuding Berlin, London and Lisbon. It features shops, restaurants, bars, videos and tips and is written by a hand-picked team of residents in each city.
TRAVEL BOOKING
Maupintour.com
Deluxe and Escorted Independent Vacations. Traveling to a foreign place on your own can be intimidating, not to mention confusing. Booking a guided tour trip can be useful when visiting places with lots of sites and landmarks to see. Not only do guides keep you informed, but sometimes they allow you to bypass long lines. Maupintour.com is a great place for booking escorted tours and creating itineraries. Unlike most tour companies, Maupintours are all inclusive, so you know exactly how much your trip will cost before you go.
Stay Independent. Hotelbook.com presents travelers with a unique lodging option in today’s increasingly complex online travel arena. They provide travelers with alternative hotel options that will offer them something different in a hotel. Looking for a chic boutique hotel in Aspen, or a hotel with a golf course in England? Hotelbook.com can help you meet these specific travel needs without trying to sell you a stay at the Marriott.
The best way to share a cab to or from the airport. In many destinations cabs are the best way to get to your destination from the airport and back, but they can get expensive. Hitchster.com is a web-based system, which conveniently connects travelers so that they can share taxis, and thus split the fare. So, whether you’re interested in saving money, time, the environment, or just looking for a cab companion, Hitchsters.com can help.
Unusualhotelsoftheworld.com
Unusual Hotels of the World will help you book an experience, not just a hotel. Stay in an old railway car nested in an Alaskan mountain, a tree house in Sweden, or a hemp hotel in Amsterdam. The site features a detailed description of each hotel and member ratings.
Your Inside Connection to Worldwide Travel. The world of online booking sites has become so popular that you may not even get a deal by logging on to big name sites. cFares.com claims to have the lowest prices with the widest selections. You can also become a member and get below market fares, or use their name your own price feature. It’s basically all of those popular booking sites out there rolled into one, without the big name.
The Complete Online Cruise Guide and Community. Many online booking sites are offering vacation deals and packages, making it difficult to obtain objective travel advice. Cruisemates.com, the online expert in cruises, is not affiliated with any travel agent or booking company, so you’re getting straightforward advice from cruise industry leaders, and fellow travelers. Users can search for cruises by destination or category, share information via message boards, and even plan to meet with other cruisemate members once you hop aboard.
Cool Feature: Cruise Chat- Live online chat about all things cruise.
The travel search engine. Tired of figuring out which sites really have the best deals on flights, hotels, cruises, or rental cars? Well in you’re in luck because Kayak.com has the answer. Kayak is a travel search engine that allows you to search over 140 travel sites at once to find and compare results instantly.
Cool Feature: Fare alerts and fare history let you stay on top of the ever changing travel rates.
Flying Airlines
The world’s finest and leading website about nothing but airline food. Airline meals are probably the most hated food since Brussels sprouts, and yes-this site is really devoted solely to discussing them. Surprisingly, it really is quite fascinating. Quirky and user-friendly, the site provides images of meals from more than 500 airlines, as well as the latest news and trends in the airline food industry. Even if you’re not at all concerned with your next airline meal, the site is a must see.
Don’t Miss! – Meals from the 70′s, 80′s, 90′s so you can prove, with pictures, that things were better, back in your day;
Airline Seats Comfort Report. Discomfort has always been a frequent complaint of airline travelers; Seatscorecard.com will give them an advantage even before boarding. This user-friendly site automatically locates the best and worst seats on your next flight. The airplane comfort guides consider factors such as seat width, seat pitch, seating plan, seat configuration, and legroom to determine overall seating comfort. Seatscorecard.com is a great way to be informed, and make the best of your next flight.
The Budget Traveler’s Guide to Sleeping in Airports Informative and quite funny, sleepinginairports.net reviews most major airports in dozens of cities across the globe. The ratings range from hell to excellent, considering it’s an airport. They are rated based on comfort and cleanliness by travelers who share their stories of spending a night in the airport. Some travelers had no other choice due to layovers and delayed flights; others just think that sleeping in the airport it’s a good way to save a buck.
Know When to Buy… Most consumers don’t have the slightest idea what goes on with airline pricing. You go online or call your travel agent, give them your travel dates and hope that you’re getting the best deal. Farecast.com takes hope out of the equation. They predict where fares are going and show where they’ve been for more than 75 airports. If you’re flexible with your dates, you’ll be able to get an even better deal with the help of Farecast.com
Lost Treasure from Around the World. If you’ve ever been a victim of lost-but-never-found luggage, somebody in Scottsboro, Alabama may be shopping through your bag right now. Unclaimed Baggage is the final destination for lost luggage, where it is picked through and sold directly to some very lucky consumers. If you can’t make it to the store for some major bargain shopping, you can visit the website for some entertaining lost luggage tales.
Travel Videos & Images
Videos For Travelers. Want to see your destination before you even board a plane? Travelistic makes this possible with hundreds of traveler&’s videos from around the globe. The videos are arranged by location, top ranked, and most viewed, making it user friendly as well as informative.
The Internet’s Largest Human Edited Travel Video Directory. TravelerVideo.com has over 5,000 travel related videos covering hundreds of top global destinations. Users can watch, upload, rate and comment videos, placing them in top rankings.
Budget Travel
If you think that budget is a four-letter word, then logon to Budgettravelonline and you just may be surprised. The online version of the popular magazine Budget Travel, offers up to date travel deals, advice, and vacation planning. Unlike other deal sites, they stay true to their magazine roots with great travel stories and real life tips on everything from airline security to a shoe lover’s guide to travel.
Want to save money on lodging but don’t know where to begin? The thought of staying in a hostel can be intimidating if you’ve never roughed it before. Hostels.net is an online network of independent hotels and hostels. They offer a wide arrange of accommodations for travelers who are interested in seeing the world for less.
Living the First Class Life, At Coach Prices. Not quite a budget traveler, but can&’t afford luxury stays? Learn how to travel like you can. Mark Ashley, a Chicago based frequent traveler, reports on travel news, tips, and trends, for the traveler looking to maximize comfort, style, and convenience, without paying high prices for it.
Misc. Travel Advice
Arguably second only to Google, Wikipedia has become an online source for information. They have compiled over 10,000 unbiased destination guides and articles submitted by travelers. In true ‘Wiki’ fashion, the page offers dozens of links on anything and everything related to travel and each specific destination. Each year they have a Wikitravel Get Together in a different vacation spot. Anyone can sign up to go, and the purpose is to gather information to improve Wikipedia&’s guide for that specific location.oh, and to have fun while doing so.
Cool Feature: Traveler’s Pub- an in depth help page to make this info packed site a little less intimidating.
Onebag.com
The Art and Science of Traveling Light. Do you envy that traveler strutting onto the plane with that one little carry-on bag? Onebag.com might be able to offer some help. With tips on how to go anywhere, for an indefinite amount of time with one single carry-on bag, there simply has to be an art and/or science involved. So even if you can&’t get down to a carry on, at least you can make the most of the one you have.
Travelsense.org
Travel Smart Travel Sense. Travelsense.org is a one-stop site for packing tips, advice, and news. Articles range from ;Traveling with Children—Pets—Handicapped—Teens; to How to Avoid Travel Scams.; It’s easy to navigate, loaded with information, and not at all sales motivated, so you get all of the advice you need without feeling like you’re being sold on a week in Disney.
Irish or Irish-related Websites
1) www.roomex.com – Irish hotels website, for both Irish and international hotels. They have a good repeat customer discount system. Good to support an Irish company, rather than the big international players. Otherwise, I also use hotels.com
2) www.abroad.ie – hundreds are travel articles.
3) www.gohop.ie – Irish travel agent – Ireland’s first online travel agent.
4) http://www.irelands-blue-book.ie/
5) http://www.irelandhotels.com/
6) http://www.zoombu.co.uk/ – many ways to get from A to B.
7) http://www.aviationreg.ie/Air_Passenger_Rights/Default.83.html – the trust about passenger rights
8) http://www.momondo.com/ – flight comparison website.
9) www.oz-bus.com – an alternative way to get from London to Sydney.
