These sites allow you to search for flights, hotels, cars and packages:

Best Travel Sites From Forbes Magazine

Breezenet.com

Some of the best domestic car-rental discounts on the Internet are available here. The site compiles pricing info from car-rental companies at major U.S. airports and links to special rates on other sites (like a recent Priceline.com sale for a $12-per-day rental car). Because it works with airport locations, Breezenet.com is most useful if you’re traveling via plane and want a car waiting for you when you land.

Concierge.com

Gridskipper.com

Owned by Internet empire Gawker Media, Gridskipper.com is a self-proclaimed "urban travel guide," pointing out the raunchier aspects of life in big cities across the globe. Recent posts, inspired by emails from international tipsters, include "Paris Riotblogging" and an interactive map of New York City bars in honor of St. Patrick’s Day. A searchable drop-down list of cities on the right-hand side of the screen allows readers to browse for their city of choice.

HotelChatter.com

This Web site is an uncensored compendium of hotel reviews from all over the world: The good, the bad and the disgusting get equal weight. Click on "Hotel Hell" for horror stories (avoid the Pembridge Palace Hotel in London, which has bed bugs, it says), "Hotel Heaven" (try the peach tea at the French Quarter Inn in Charleston, S.C.) and "Celebrity Scoops" for places your favorite stars have been spotted. Tips, news and deals are available as well.

This is the place to browse when your next holiday is in the prenatal stage and you are seeking inspiration. IgoUgo guides write detailed journals about recent trips, so specific information is available about everything from what to do with 24 hours in Reykjavik, Iceland, to the best hotels in Chicago. Best of all, anyone can sign up to write a travel journal, and writing earns you points that are redeemable for gift cards and frequent flier miles.

Kayak.com

Unlike many of the major travel Web sites, Kayak.com includes flight listings from budget air carriers like Jet Blue and Spirit Airlines. It also has user-friendly features, like remembering your home airport, letting you search more than one airport simultaneously (for arrivals and departures) and a movable grid that lets you eliminate flights whose time specifications don’t match your itinerary.

MyTripJournal.com

Personal travel blogs have overtaken mass e-mails as the tool of choice for staying in touch with family and friends while on the road--and thank goodness. We like MyTripJournal.com for its colorful and easy-to-use features like "Find a Friend’s Web Site" and the customizable world map. Even if you aren’t currently traveling, browsing the site allows you to experience someone else’s vacation vicariously.

Priceline.com revolutionized the way consumers bought travel, allowing them to name their own prices for everything from hotels to flights to rental cars. Today, with the abundance of airline travel sites, most online travel veterans use Priceline.com for one thing: hotels. Try bidding $99 for a four-star hotel in pretty much any American city, and users say you’ll often end up staying in one of the city’s very nicest hotels. If $99 is too steep, bid $50 or $30--even these low prices may be accepted at top hotels, according to our sources.

SeatGuru.com

Listing more than 30 commercial airlines, SeatGuru.com provides seating maps and a helpful color-coded quality key (green is a good seat, yellow means be aware, and you don’t want red). Once you select your airline and aircraft, you’ll be able to see just where each seat falls on the floor plan, as well as which in-flight amenities (including video, AC power and Internet access) are available. The site is most useful when booking a ticket on an air carrier’s site.

Site59.com

Site59.com’s niche is the last-minute weekend getaway: Bookings can be made up to three hours before departure. The site works with partner hotels, airlines and car-rental companies to garner deals on last-minute inventory or services that would otherwise go unsold, compiling packages in site-specific categories like "Under $250," "Romance," or "Vegas/Casino." Packages are available in flight/hotel, flight/car and hotel/car combinations, but users must use every component of the package.

TravelZoo.com

If you can be flexible with your dates and even destination, TravelZoo.com is more effective at offering cheap fares than any other Web site we’ve encountered. Examples include $88 round-trip tickets to the Caribbean--though be warned that very often they're only available on undesirable travel days, like Monday, and the deals can sell out quickly. Airfare, car rental, lodging and cruise specials are displayed right up front on the home page. There’s limited search capability (by destination only), so be prepared to be spontaneous!

America 's clearinghouse for deeply discounted cruises. Since our founding in 1984, we have provided hundreds of thousands of savvy shoppers with a dream vacation at a fraction of the regular price. Vacations To Go is a bonded and fully accredited travel agency, and a member in good standing of the Airlines Reporting Corporation (ARC), the International Airlines Travel Agent Network (IATAN), the Cruise Line International Association (CLIA) and the Society for Accessible Travel and Hospitality (SATH).

In today’s Internet-savvy world, many people choose to take control of their travel plans. And we’ve all heard the horror stories – undisclosed travel times, the luxury hotel suite that was anything but luxury or the lackluster tour guide. Some travelers like the risk and “adventure” of do-it-yourself traveling. But, the more discerning traveler knows to let a travel specialist do what they do best.