Last year I wrote some tips about getting the best travel deals by looking at a variety of online travel agencies. Since then, some of my opinions have changed and I have few new favorites to let you in on.

#1 Vacation Packages

Expedia is still one of my favorites for complete travel packages because they have a rewards program the gives you “Thank You Points” and they offer better travel protection insurance when compared with Travelocity, Orbitz, Priceline, or BookIt.

In particular, Expedia will let you change or cancel a trip/flight/hotel for any reason (not just an emergency) one time if your plans change! Everyone else uses Access America for their trip protection and the service is not as flexible. Someone basically has to die or be seriously incapacitated in order to get reimbursed for a cancellation.

Expedia has a solid reward program, good pricing power, and the best trip cancellation protection in the online travel business.

#2 Hotels

If you are strictly looking to book a hotel then look no further than Hotels.com. With the roll-out of their new reward program you can get 1 night free for every 10 nights booked at a qualifying hotel. This does not include every single hotel on their website, but there are plenty to choose from. I don’t know of a better hotel reward program for the average traveler.

In addition to this incredible program, I have found Hotels.com to blow the competition out of the water when it comes to pricing! As an example, I just booked a trip to Cleveland, OH and stayed downtown at the Radisson hotel that went for $120 on other websites. My price with hotels was $75/night for 4 nights and I got a free $75 visa giftcard bringing my total cost down to $56.25/night. Wow!

I understand that Cleveland isn’t everyone’s dream vacation, but they have promotions like this to all sorts of places! The last deal I saw was a mail-in rebate for $20 and $100 depending on you length of stay.

#3 & #4 Flights

As far as booking just a flight goes Kayak is probably the most powerful search engine for searching every major US airline except for Southwest. You just need to do an additional search at Southwest.com as they often times beat everyone else on price.

The newer Buzz feature that Kayak has is also a great perk as it shows actual deals that other customers have found on a calender. This can give you a rough idea of the best travel days and help to narrow things down.

#5 Rental Cars

I’ve got to go with Priceline on this one. Unless you require driving a Cadillac around then you can put in a bunch of low-ball bids for your car and get a fantastic deal. Priceline easily beats published prices on rental cars and they will save you up to 40% on this part of you travel venture.

Priceline is also great for hotels if you are not picky and don’t care where you stay. I unfortunately have not had luck with the random hotel booking and prefer to see the hotel’s rating before I go.

#6 & #7 Other Travel Deal Sites

For last minute deals and finding the best destinations from your local airport BookIt.com looks interesting. The search capabilities can be a little chaotic and the flight selections are bundled as round trip, but the deals appear to be really good! You might even find a few different hotels that did not pop up on the other online travel agencies.

Also on my radar is LuxuryLink.com. I haven’t used them yet, but the deals look pretty astounding!

LuxuryLink.com is an online auction for fancy travel packages all over the world. The packages are heavily discounted and include everything from romantic getaways with spa treatments included to scuba diving off the coast of Belize. They don’t have any deals right now, but they often publish coupons for a couple hundred dollars off new customer bookings. LuxuryLink.com is worth a look if you want the best for less and have flexible travel dates.

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