Sites for Flights: Best Bets on the Web

Kayak
Kayak scours the internet to find the best deals being offered for your selected destinations. It spans its search from the other travel discount sites to airlines themselves.
Drawback: No Southwest flights are included in the fares.

Site59
Need to jet to New York or hit the California coast this weekend? Check out site59. It gets you a flight/hotel combination for the upcoming weekend at the lowest price they can find. Car rentals are also included if you so choose. But be quick, deals on site59 are snatched up by the second.
Drawback: Now you see a cheap flight, now you don’t.

FareCast
Buy now or buy later? Booking flights online is like buying a new electronic device you’ve been researching for months--the minute you buy it, the next minute it’s cheaper or a better version comes out. But have no fear, farecast.com is here. You can find price predictions for 75 US cities and see when the best time to book will be. They calculate this based on the history of flight prices and other mathy techniques I don’t know about.
Drawback: Only domestic flights are included at farecast.

Best Fares
This site claims to save you up to 70 percent on flights. I don’t know about that, but Best Fares definitely gives you an idea of the absolute cheapest flights around the world. There’s no need to subscribe, unless you are a really frequent flier. When you search for a trip, the site will first show member-only prices, but look below that to see what the everyday-traveler can get. Snooze You Lose and Last-Minute Deals are fantastic.
Drawback: The Quickfare Finder does not include European destinations and the number you have to call to book will put you on hold for… a while. But, it isn’t a scam. I booked through Best Fares for a trip from Tucson to Albuquerque last year and it worked (really).

Hostel World
Reviews, pictures, prices, directions, and the ability to book online….Hostelworld rocks my world. Pick a country, any country, and you’ll be able to find a hostel through this site. It gives an extensive list of what each hostel provides and requires from residents.
Drawback: As I’ve mentioned on a previous blog, do not book the hostel that only has pictures of the city or historic sites, without the photos of the actual hostel. The hostel provides the photos for Hostelworld, so if they can’t even post a proper photo, you don’t want to stay there.

Hotels.com
For all those high-rollers out there who don’t need a dirt-cheap hostel, check out Hotels.com. Of all the hotel search sites, this is by far the best. You can search hotels based on landmarks, price, or the site’s recommended hotel.
Drawback: Sometimes it is difficult to find the contact information for the featured hotels.

Trip Advisor
Whenever I book a hotel, I have hotels.com and tripadvisor.com side by side. Go straight to the “Read and Write Reviews” section and find out the truth about the hotel you’re about to book. These reviews are honest and from authentic travelers. The best bit is the “candid photos” because it will show you exactly what you’re getting yourself into.
Drawback: You can’t book through tripadvisor, instead you go through another site.

Airfare Watchdog
Here’s where all of those buried fare prices hide. This is a good site for finding deals that aren’t openly advertised on other sites. They check seat availability, include taxes in the international fares, and they claim to search for "value, not just the lowest fare." Just type in your hometown and let the watchdog do the work.
Drawback: You can’t specifically input from “here” to “there,” instead, you have to put your starter city in and it will find the best deals.