4th July vacation is nearby and people will be planning their vacation. So I thought of providing Knowliz readers some help in planning their vacation properly. Here is a compilation of all the necessary tools and sites that will help you plan your vacation better and might save you some money.

Flight & Hotel Deals:

Though all the following sites have almost the same basic interface and functionality – to provide you best rates for your vacation. All of them look for deals around the web. I will suggest searching on all of them before booking anything from one site. The rates might be different on different sites. Your mileage might vary (YMMV) from site to site.
All major airlines and hotels have their own sites which offer some excellent deals not available elsewhere. So better subscribe for their newsletters.
  1. Expedia : You can use your Live or Hotmail id. You get ‘Thank You’ network benefits as well.
  2. Orbitz
  3. Travelocity
  4. Cheaptickets
  5. Priceline
  6. Hotwire
  7. Hotels
  8. MakeMyTrip : My Indian friends out there love this for their travel to India.
  9. Kayak
  10. AAA : A MUST HAVE for anyone in US. Membership Costs ~ $48 per year, Very beneficial, Get you 10-15% discount at many places. Very helpful if your car broke down. Many other benefits, visit site for details.

Car Rentals:

You may rent the cars from above sites as well. But before booking make sure you search for online coupons for these rental companies. Online coupons bring their rates considerably down. Or at least you have a AAA card or some kind of gift coupon from your credit card company. You will love me for that once you see the considerable drop in cost of rental.
Some of the major car rental companies in US are listed below (Not all of them are available in all regions):

  1. Hertz : Before booking read this review.
  2. Enterprise
  3. Budget
  4. Advantage – Rent A Car
  5. Dollar – Rent A Car
  6. Payless Car Rental : Read this article on Cheap Gas Option
  7. Alamo – Rent A Car
  8. Avis
  9. Thrifty
  10. AAA

Maps & Directions:

Once you have booked everything, you will need to find out maps and directions of the places you need to go. Find out these information with:
  1. AAA : If you are an AAA member, then it is very good for you. AAA provides free Travel Planner (TripTik) where you can create your entire virtual trip before even starting. Print the pdf file created and you are all ready to go.
  2. Google Maps or Google Earth
  3. Google Transit : If you need help in planning your vacation using public transport. Then this is one thing which can help you in many places.
  4. Google 411 : Looking for Pizza Hut, Subway, an Italian restaurant or anything else. But you don’t know where it is. Just dial 1-800-GOOG-411 (or 1-800-466-4411) and follow the prompts to find what you were looking for. Very handy 411 service from Google. Checkout this review on the same.
  5. Live Maps
  6. Live Search 411 : Same thing as Goog-411 but provided by Microsoft Live. Dial 1-800-225-5411 to use the service.
  7. Mapquest
  8. Yahoo! Maps

Other Important Travel Tools:

  1. TripIt : Best service for planning your travel with friends. Keeping track of your expenses, flights, check-in, check-out, photos, maps & directions, bookings and other information. Just plug-in your flight, hotel and car information as soon as you book and TripIt will keep track of everything for you. Also useful if you want to find out more about a place from someone who have been there. Complete review of this useful service is coming soon.
  2. Weather : Find out the weather before you start travel.
  3. Flightstats : Find out airport details, flight status, delay and other information before you even start from home to airport.
  4. Yelp : If you want to find out reviews about anything, any restaurant, picnic place in any area, museum or anything else; head to Yelp and find out the unbiased reviews by the people like you and me.
  5. FlyteComm : Use it for real time flight tracking.
Hope all these services mentioned above provide you best experience while booking, traveling, staying in the hotel and driving a car. You have a very good vacation and save some money as well with the deals.
I have to plan something for my vacation too….You people have a nice time.
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