I recently updated our “cool travel links” web page. These are my favorite websites for preparing for travel to any of our great destinations.
PLANNING TOOLS
- Predicts trends in airfare over time in North America, Europe, Mexico, and the Caribbean. Also searches major airlines and airfare websites to compare prices and best times to fly.
- Searches over 140 websites for the best airfare, compare and sort results, and book directly from the airlines. Use the Buzz tool to search an entire area.
- Earn points for various airline frequent flier plans, trade points with other people, exchange miles between your plans, or buy more points.
- Find the best seats on an airplane based on airline and airplane type. A great stop before choosing your seat.
- The Evite of trip planning. Organize your group trip by creating a home page, sending invitations, and discussing plans.
- Creates an itinerary and maps from your booking confirmation emails including travel agencies, airlines, hotels, rental cars, trains, cruise lines, and even restaurants reservations from OpenTable. Email your confirmations and TripIt will add daily weather, local maps, driving directions, city guides and more.
- Track specific flights, and Yapta alerts you when airfare goes down. There is also a method for getting a refund if your flight price goes down after you buy it.
TRAVEL INFORMATION
- Just one of many currency conversion tools.
- Check arrival and departure information for commercial airline flights over the U.S. and Canada.
- Airport information and flight schedules for all airports in the world.
- Search for just about anything from your cell phone. Text message your search query to 466453 (‘GOOGLE’ on most devices) and Google will text message back results. Examples: “flight nw 956” returns all arrival and departure information for that flight for today, “10 usd is euro” returns the currency conversion, “weather nairobi” returns today’s weather and 3-day forecast.
Security Checkpoint Wait Times
- See how long you can expect to wait in security at major U.S. airports.
- Travel advice and tips from travel agents for everything ranging from women traveling alone to avoiding travel scams to dealing with jet lag and lots more.
- Convert just about anything to anything.
- See what electrical converter you will need for any country in the world.
- Information about each country including map, background, geography, people, government, economy, communications, and transportation.
- A quick map of the world and what time it is right now.
- Current local times around the world plus gadgets for your computer or website.
- List of U.S. embassies around the world.
TRAVEL FUN
- Use your GPS to “treasure hunt”.
TRAVEL SAFETY
Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
- Information on vaccinations, diseases, drinking water, and more for international travelers.
- Current travel warnings issued by the U.S. government.