GEAR

Outdoor Gear Lab

They have great reviews and recommendations for outdoor and travel gear

FLIGHTS

Skyscanner.com

Useful for when you want to travel but don’t care where. There ‘everywhere’ option lets you find the cheapest flights for your dates of travel, to wherever that may be.

Google Flights

Great for when you want to go somewhere specific and you want to find out when the cheapest time to go there is.

Southwest Airlines

They don’t participate in any flight aggregator, but they almost always undersell the competition if you’re flying within the US.

RENTAL CARS

Priceline

Specifically the name your price option. I have gotten some amazing deals this way.

HOTELS

Tripadvisor

I generally trust Tripadvisor ratings and reviews. I also appreciate that people upload their own pictures and I can easily compare to the professional pictures making it easier to gauge whether or not the review was written by someone normal, or insanely high maintenance and whiny. I also find that they’re more reliable for international travel than something like Yelp – although nothing beats Yelp for restaurant reviews.

Hotel websites

Often if you go directly to the hotel website they will be running deals that will beat the promotional rates you find on something like Hotwire.com or Priceline.

AAA

You can book hotels through their website, and often hotels will be running specials specifically for AAA members. If you are a member you should be taking advantage of this, since this is how you get a nicer hotel in an expensive city, like NYC.

THINGS TO DO

TripAdvisor

Seriously, they have never let me down. It’s like the Yelp of traveling.

Word of Mouth

Make friends and ask them where to go, they probably have better, more current information that your guide book.