25 Best Travel Sites

FREQUENT FLIER
WebFlyer is t he most useful site for getting the best seat or upgrade for the miles you've earned. See how your miles convert between programs, l earn about changes to your frequent flier program or discover how to max out the value of your mileage awards when you redeem them f or merchandise or services.

Lodging

TIME-PRESSED TRAVELER
TripAdvisor is the most comprehensive and easy-to-use listing of professional and amateur reviews of hotels in the U.S. and overseas, with about 10 million reviews. Its photos of the property and maps of the location are uniquely useful. TripAdvisor doesn't sell rooms, but it lets you compare and book rates sold by Web travel agencies, such as Expedia.com, Or bitz.com and Hotels.com.

BEST-DEAL TRAVELER
Priceline.com offers the best bargains for luxury hotel lodging. You submit a bid on a room after specifying a star class, the dates of your stay and a neighborhood in a metro area. Bids of less than $100 a night on luxury lodgings are often successful. (The site also sel ls airline tickets and rental cars this way.) There are three catches, though: Priceline doesn't disclose the name of the hotel you' re booking until you buy; it doesn't refund your money if you cancel; and it may book you in a hotel at a slight remove from the att ractions most central to you. One more hitch: We don't recommend booking a hotel in an overseas city without knowing its precise loc ation beforehand, so look to other sites to book a room abroad.

Priceline's rates for four-star hotels are usually the best values available from online travel sites. Yet you can boost the chances that you'll submi t the lowest possible winning bid by checking the message boards at Bid dingfortravel.com, where recent Priceline users note their successful and unsuccessful bids.

Priceline and TripAdvisor don't offer bed-and-breakfast getaways. To find B&B's offering discounted rates, sign up for free weekly e-mails from Bedandbreakfast.com. Every Wednesday you'll receive a list of B&Bs offering discounts of typically 20% or more off regular rates for the upcoming weekend in the city, state or regio n you want to visit.

Consider an alternative to hotels: Condo-apartment rentals. Vacation rentals generally offer more room an d amenities for the same price as hotel rooms. Plus, their kitchens can spare you from having to dine out for every meal. The best s election of rental lodgings we've found is at HomeAway.com

INTERNATIONAL TRAVELER
LateRooms.com emp hasizes last-minute bargains at hotels abroad. You know the name of the hotel before you pay, and rates are quoted in the local curr ency. The site offers a currency-conversion calculator to help you figure the prices.

Here's a tip: When you pay your hotel r oom bill on checkout, beware if the clerk offers to convert your bill into U.S. dollars. Resist this offer because hotels usually of fer less-favorable exchange rates than ATMs or your credit card. What's worse, if your credit card charges you a fee (typically 1% o f the bill) for currency conversion, your credit card company will likely still require you to pay the currency-conversion charge -- even if the hotel has done its own currency conversion. In essence, you'll be double charged.

Car Rentals

TIME-PRESSED TRAVELER
Orbitz fetches car rental rates and displays them in a matrix that is uniquely easy-to-understand. The site also discloses total pricing, including all taxes and fees, unlike many rival sites. The site also sells other travel products, such as plane tickets and hotel rooms).

BEST-DEAL TRAV ELER
Hotwire has the best deals for domestic car rentals offere d by Avis, Budget and Hertz. Hotwire lets you specify the dates, type of car and pick-up location. Then it fetches rates. You'll fin d out which company is offering your nonrefundable rate after you've paid. But at least you know the rental will be with one of the nation's three best-known rental car companies. (Hotwire also sells hotel rooms, airline tickets and other travel products in the sa me blind-booking format.)