1. Busbud
If you’re planning to travel by bus while overseas, Busbud will help make booking those bus trips a whole lot easier. Especially if you’re travelling to developing countries where information isn’t always online. It’s a unique website that allows you to search routes, compare prices between different bus companies, and book tickets online. It has routes for 10,463 cities in 89 countries.
2. Airhelp
If you find yourself in a sticky situation where you’ve either - lost your luggage, had a cancelled or delayed flight, or have been abused by an airline, check out Airhelp. The truth is, few travellers know about their airline rights. And airlines like it that way because it reduces the compensation they have to give. Airhelp wants to change that by helping you know what your rights are and what compensation you’re entitled to. We all know how tiring arguing with airlines is, and Airhelp will do all of that for you. For a small percentage, they’ll work on your behalf to secure you the legal compensation you are owed.
3. TripExpert
If you have a hard time trusting the likes of TripAdvisor and other crowdsourced review sites, TripExpert is for you. The downside with crowdsourced sites is that everyone can leave a review, and some of those reviews may not be genuine. There are businesses out there who often buy favourable reviews, making it hard to trust all ratings on TripAdvisor. TripExpert on the other hand, aggregates reviews from dozens of guidebooks, magazines, travel experts, and other trusted travel media to give hotel properties scores based off the average.
4. Autoslash
Need to book a rental car for your epic road trip around Europe, or the US? Reserve a vehicle from an agency through the AutoSlash site, and the site will instantly begin tracking rate changes for your reservation. If a sale pops up - ding! - it automatically locks in the lower price on your behalf. Handy, right? You can even use AutoSlash if you’ve booked directly with an agency. Simply enter your confirmation number, and the site will notify you when it’s found a lower rate - you’ll then have to rebook the cheaper rate yourself.
5. SkyScanner
If you haven’t used Skyscanner before, you need to jump in on this! It provides one of the best interfaces for finding awesome travel deals all over the world. The ‘flexible’ search option is especially valuable when being used to discover travel locations that might offer an attractive price.
6. SeatGuru
A little nervous about the long flight ahead of you? SeatGuru can help make your flight run a little smoother. It’s a database of airplane seat configurations by airline. You can view diagrams with notes on where the good (and bad) seats are on the plane. If you know what type of plane you’ll be flying on, and you get to pick your seat, it’s worth checking SeatGuru first so that you don’t end up with the bad seat next to the toilets.
For more travel tips and guides, head to the SimCorner blog.
