When planning a vacation there are so many things to consider, cost and budget most commonly being the top priority. It can be tough to navigate the flood of travel sites competing for your vacation dollar. Most of the time, you’ll end up clicking through to a different site to complete your booking. Within the past few years, I’ve been using Airbnb more often for booking individually hosted homestays, guesthouses, and serviced apartments when traveling abroad.

Some of the best travel deals are to be found on CTrip. Planning a small business trip can become a logistical mess, and online travel sites offer little help. Convenience fees: Some travel sites earn money by charging convenience fees when visitors book or pay for services online.

We’ve published reviews about online travel sites since 2006. But the company also sells vacation packages, hotel stays, and cruises on Costco Travel , and its sweet spot is rental cars, says industry insider Clem Bason, who used to run Hotwire and now heads goSeek.

The fact that the site focuses only on hotels and accommodation makes search less taxing. Kayak’s hotel search results are automatically sorted by the vague factor of what’s Recommended,” which is true of many hotel booking sites. According to CNET, it bests other travel search sites , due to the fact that it’s super speedy (plug in your dates, departure, and arrival destinations, and flights pop up almost instantaneously).

National tourist office websites wield much clout when it comes to spend, rah-rah design and SEO (or search engine optimisation). Out of the three, Kayak, Booking and Hotels for this inaudible third, I’m going to say would be my loser this month. A helpful technique when preparing to bid on your next vacation is to research the prices and user reviews of the properties you are interested in. , , WikiTravel , and many other user review sites are helpful in assessing what a fair bid should be.