Travel Tools that Make Travel Planning Easy!

I think that most of us are trying to squeeze in that last vacation before winter hits. The worst part of getting a vacation together, however, is the planning. You have to come up with a budget, find a hotel, figure out what the best days to get of work are…….it can be a very stressful time.

I wanted to shoot you all a few tools that I use that make vacation planning (and my life!) alot easier.

Cost to Drive (www.costtodrive.com)

-If You’re Driving- Cost to Drive is a very useful tool because it gives you a very good rough estimate of how much money you’re going to have to spend on gas for a trip. Half of my problem with budgeting for a trip is that I can never get a good estimate of what my gas cost will be to a place that I’ve never been before. (I also hate doing a lot of complicated math…and this saves me the trouble). I just type in where I’m going, tell “Cost to Drive” what kind of car I have, and it spits out a very good estimate of what the trip will cost me in gas.

There are a few limitations with Cost to Drive. For example, if you drive a car that was made before 1999 (Cost to Drive Just Updated their site and it now covers 10 more years of car info!), you’re out of luck. All in all though, it’s a very good way to get a rough idea of what your gas expenses are going to be

Kayak (www.kayak.com)

-If You’re Flying- I’m going to be completely honest, I had stumbled across Kayak’s page several times before I actually took the time to understand what it really did. Kayak is really good at helping you find the best deal on a flight or hotel by comparing all the major travel sites. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve done this the hard way by typing in my trip information at all the major travel sites (Priceline, Expedia, Travelocity, etc.) and then comparing them. Kayak does all the typing for you. You type in your trip info once at Kayak and it goes and gets all the results from the major travel sites for you. Kayak will save you a ton of time when you plan your next trip.

Schmap (www.schmap.com)

-If Your Planning Trip Activities- As you can probably already tell, I am a fan of sites that do the job of 4 other sites. Nothing brings trip planning down quicker then having to jump back and forth between different resources and then put the information together yourself. That’s why I love Schmap’s. If your going somewhere and you want to get a good idea of how you should spend your time when you get there, then Schmap is amazing. You tell Scmap where you want to go, and then it shows you where all the relevant sites of interest are, gives you a history on each, and more information then you could ever ask for. It cuts your “trip research time” in half (at least). (As useful as Schmap is, its a million times more useful if you happen to be carrying an Iphone around with you.)

Trip Stalker (www.tripstalker.com)

-If your looking for Cheap AirFare-There are a ton of services out there that help you find the cheapest airfare. The only problem is that rates change almost daily (and most services only search for the current rates). The key to finding the cheapest price for a particular flight is to check airfares everyday, at least twice a day, for every airline. That’s where Trip Stalker comes in. You type in what you want to pay for a flight and trip stalker will tap the airline databases continuously until the fare meets your criteria. You can set it up to send you a text message or alert via email when your flight gets priced where you want it. It will save you alot of time when your looking for your next flight.

Did I miss a gem? Got another useful travel tool? Send us a comment below!

Dr. Ben

Tags: cost to drive, kayak.com, schmap, tools, Travel, trip, trip stalker