10 Best Websites for Travel Deals
Over the fourteen years that we have been married, we have adopted a little hobby of finding great travel deals. Regardless of what financial bracket you fall into, saving on travel means you free up money to give generously, set it aside in savings, travel more often OR even take the trip you are researching in the first place! I don’t know about you, but for us, this is a huge incentive to doing good, thorough research before every trip to find the lowest prices.
Hopefully, scrolling through our amazing travel experiences and photos on our Instagram profile is fun and inspirational for you. However, it can also end in frustration if you desire to travel with your family but don’t think it’s doable or attainable. This is why we share travel deals on our Traveling Graces Facebook page! Our hope is to do the work for you, especially if your priority is a great deal and you are open to a variety of destinations. Of course, there are always times that we need a specific flight at an even more specific time. For these cases, we wanted to share with you our favorite sites for travel deals so that you can find your own amazing discounts that suite your particular needs. Our family has used every single one of these sites numerous times with great success!
1. Travelzoo
This is our absolute favorite… and it’s not even close! Travelzoo is always our very first stop when looking into a specific destination. We particularly love their weekly Top 20 e-mail newsletter that comes out every Wednesday. You can pretty much assume that it is a great price if a travel deal has made it on that list, which is quite a statement! Their deals include international packages, local activities, airfare, hotels, and more.
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2. Google Flights
We specifically love using Google Flights for their pop up calendar feature that shows you the lowest travel dates of the specified month. Since we try to keep our plans as flexible as possible to allow for great deals, we can pick the combination of days that have the lowest fares and work with our schedule. We recently did this while booking our trip to Turks and Caicos and ended up flying Tuesday-Tuesday.
3. Momondo / Skyscanner
After finding the cheapest days to fly, we then plug this information into Momondo. Most people have never even heard of this site, but it has become so valuable to our planning process. Although it does not have the best search function for flexible dates (that’s what Google Flights is for!), it is absolutely the best at finding the lowest price. We have even read numerous reports that, when compared with other search engines, Momondo found the cheapest airfare EIGHT or NINE times out of ten. Not many other sites can boast that! Like Travelzoo, it is just a link to a booking site. It even includes budget airlines such as Southwest, Allegiant, Frontier, etc.
We have also had luck using this same method with Skyscanner. Skyscanner has become our go-to during our trip around the world. For the most part, it has some of the best prices combined with amazing search features. You can even fill in your starting city and choose “Worldwide” as your destination to see what cheap options there are. If you are flexible, you can choose date options like “anytime in January” or a “1 week trip in the next 6 months”!
4. Scott’s Cheap Flights
Scott Keyes has a free and paid email subscription that alerts you when incredibly cheap airfare becomes available. Most of the time, they use the Google Flights + Momondo method as well, but all the work is done for you. An example email would basically read, “Flights to Costa Rica $200s-$300s during summer months from these 10 cities”. We did a free trial of a similar subscription and Scott’s was MUCH better.
5. Vacations To Go
For cruises, we have used Vacations To Go for years and have always been so pleased with their prices and service. If we find something cheaper elsewhere, they will usually price match it and sometimes even give you additional onboard credit. You can read more about our experience price matching with Vacations To Go in our Mediterranean blog post.
6. Airbnb / VRBO
Especially when our children were younger, having space to spread out and put them to bed in a separate bedroom was a very nice luxury. For our family, Airbnb and VRBO allow us to rent more space (often a 2-3 bedroom) for a similar price as a basic hotel room. Whether you are renting a home for your vacation or renting out your own home to provide extra income, both sites are a great way to find good deals and make traveling more attainable. Our favorite Airbnb feature is that they offer great discounts for 1+ week trips and AMAZING discounts for month-long rentals. These discounts can often be up to 50% off!
7. Hotwire
Hotwire operates similarly to most travel booking sites but gives you a star-rating instead of a hotel name. This site will immediately let you know if your offer was accepted by a hotel and, if so, you are charged the agreed upon amount and then told the hotel name. We mainly use Hotwire when we need to book a hotel quickly at the last minute, especially if it is the night of.
8. Booking.com / Agoda
Generally, we are not huge fans of traditional booking sites like this. However, we love that Booking.com often includes boutique hotels, bed and breakfasts, and small hidden gems that other large sites do not. During a recent trip to Ireland, we were able to find a tiny bed and breakfast located in an actual castle for a very reasonable price that only showed up on booking.com and the inn’s website! Agoda also has consistently great prices, and the ability to earn a small percent future credit for every booking you make.
9. Groupon/ Living Social
Our family uses Groupon and Living Social for everything from gifts and local activities to international travel. Sometimes we even just browse their deals to get new ideas for family experiences around our city or around a travel destination. When you couple their already discounted prices with additional promo codes that they offer often, you can find awesome deals.
10. WDW Prep School
Ok, this last one isn’t exactly a travel DEAL site, more of a general planning guide. However, because great preparation and planning have become so vital to a successful Disney World trip, it is important to have a go-to site for stellar information. WDW Prep School is by far our favorite site for everything Disney related. We particularly love her podcasts, and our kids enjoy listening to them too. Shannon seems to have a genuine love for what she does, and she comes off as enthusiastic but not “Disney hyper”. You can find a few of her blog posts that are more geared towards deals here, here, and here. You can also here our trip report interview with Shannon here.
** Head here for more ideas on saving money in order to travel more!
If you have any additional travel deal sites that you love, please let us know! We would love to check it out and add it to our rotation 🙂
