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Thanks to modern technology, you don’t have to be loaded to travel the world, meet amazing people, and explore different cultures. All you need is to know how to use the resources you have at your disposal to find great deals and get large discounts.
For many travelers, Expedia is the first destination they visit when planning a trip abroad, but there are many alternatives to Expedia in Dec 2019 that offer just as many great deals. Here are 12 popular sites like Expedia for you to try.
What Is Expedia?
Expedia is a popular travel website that can be used to find affordable hotel rooms, airline tickets, car rentals, and more. It’s owned and operated by Expedia Group, an American global travel technology company, whose other sites include Hotwire, Travelocity, HomeAway, and several others.
Expedia actually began its life as a Microsoft division. It separated itself in 1999, and the rest is history. Today, Expedia is among the 500 most visited websites in the world, and it has been translated into over 40 languages.
Most travelers use Expedia through the Expedia mobile app, which is available for Android and iOS devices. The app works as an all-in-one travel companion, featuring helpful trip reminders, easy reservations, and mobile-exclusive deals.
Best Expedia Alternatives and Similar Sites
If Expedia isn’t enough to satisfy your craving for great deals and large discounts, we have prepared a list of the top 12 best alternatives to Expedia in Dec 2019. Give them a try and let us know which one of them you like the most.
1. TravelSupermarket
TravelSupermarket makes it easy to shop for great travel deals and compare prices of flights, hotels, car rentals, travel insurance packages, and other necessities. The site features an easy-to-use filter that allows you to narrow down your options to just a few so you can pick the best deal available without wasting hours and hours looking for it.
All package holidays offered through TravelSupermarket are protected by ATOL, a financial protection scheme that offers protection to consumers and prevents them from ending up stranded abroad due to the collapse of their holiday company.
2. TripAdvisor
TripAdvisor is a large social media travel platform with over 700 million reviews of hotels, restaurants, and tourist destinations. While its user-generated reviews and recommendations are TripAdvisor’s main attractions, the company generates most of its revenue with its hotel, flight, and vacation rental booking facility, directing visitors to deals provided by affiliated companies.
For example, when you try to rent a room through TripAdvisor, you’re automatically redirected to a TripAdvisor-branded version of Booking.com.
3. Kayak
Owned and operated by the company behind Booking.com, Kayak is a search engine for flights, hotels, and rental cars. It allows users to search hundreds of travel sites at once, and registered users can save up to 35% with personalized recommendations and private deals, which are really just fancy ads you willingly sign up for.
To access even more deals, you should install the Kayak mobile app and reveal mobile-only rates and offers.
4. Skyscanner
Do you have that one friend who constantly brags to you about finding cheap flights to popular destinations? There’s a good chance that your friend is using Skyscanner, an online travel app for comparing flights, booking hotel rooms, and renting cars.
Skyscanner has a feature called World Map, which displays a zoomed out map of the world, highlighting the best deals to destinations far and near. All you need to do is click on an available deal and select how many nights you would like to stay.
5. BYOJet
BYOJet features the best prices from major airlines and a convenient online booking system that makes planning an unforgettable trip abroad a real joy. This popular alternative to Expedia is used by hundreds of thousands of customers every year, and its dedicated 24/7 support team strives to leave all customers 100% satisfied.
In addition to flights, BYOJet also offers hotels, car rentals, and insurance. The site is part of Flight Center Travel Group, the largest retail travel agency in Australia, with operations in more than 23 countries and around 20,000 employees across the globe.
6. Hopper
Hopper uses a smart algorithm to predict prices and help you book your flights at the best possible time. It can save you up to 40% because it predicts prices with 95% accuracy up to 1 year in advance. To date, Hopper has helped over 30 million travelers book trips around the world, and all you need to do to join them is to install the Hopper app on your phone.
With the app, you can easily book flights and hotels, pay securely, and get notified when the time has come to pack your suitcase, call an Uber, and board your plane. The Hopper app works on Android and iOS devices, and it has received hundreds of thousands of raving reviews from users who swear by the polished, ad-free experience it delivers.
7. Booking.com
The reason why we decided against featuring Booking.com closer to the top of our list of the top 12 best alternatives to Expedia is simple: you probably already know about it. After all, Booking.com is one of the largest travel-oriented websites in the world, listing nearly 30 million listings in around 150,000 destinations. According to the site, more than 1,550,000 room nights are reserved by Booking.com users each day.
The site launched in 1996, and it has since been translated into 43 languages. To find deals on Booking.com, simply tell the site where you’re going, how long you intend to stay, and how many beds you’ll need. Almost instantly, the site will list all available deals, and the only thing you need to do is pick the one that best suits your preferences.
8. Hipmunk
Hipmunk makes travel planning enjoyable by scouring top travel sites and comparing thousands of options in seconds. You can view available hotels on a map, see which flights work best for your schedule, and be confident that you’re planning your trip as cost-effectively as possible. If you need a last-minute hotel room but have a tight budget, the Hipmunk mobile app can help you save up to 60%.
The app features interactive hotel heat maps that visually explain how close a hotel is to shopping malls, restaurants, and other destinations. With TrustYou reviews, you can see how liked a particular hotel is and familiarize yourself with its strong and weak points before you book a room there.
9. Priceline
Priceline is an online travel site where you can find great deals on hotels, resorts, private homes, car rentals, flights, cruises, and vacation packages. You can either use Priceline’s search functionality and look for deals directly, or you can sign up for email-only coupons and let Priceline surprise you with special offers, promotions, and exclusive deals.
Just be careful when booking a hotel because Priceline doesn’t include resort fee amounts in the bidding. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) warned Priceline and other players in the industry about this practice, but the company decided to continue despite the warning, earning it a quite significant number of negative online reviews.
10. Orbitz
Owned by the company behind Expedia, Orbitz is a travel fare aggregator and travel metasearch engine that rewards its users with Orbitz Rewards. Essentially, the more users use Orbitz, the more perks they can enjoy. If you use this Expedia alternative to book 12 or more nights per year, you unlock Insider Prices, special promotions, a dedicated 1-800 customer service line, various hotel perks like complimentary breakfast or Wi-Fi, and get up to $50 back in Orbucks for travel expenses.
In addition to its reward program, Orbitz also runs a popular travel blog, where you can read articles about interesting destinations, useful travel tips, and more. To never miss a new article, make sure to add the Orbitz blog to your RSS reader.
11. Hotwire
Just like Orbitz, Hotwire is also owned and operated by Expedia Group, and the two sites have a lot in common, including great deals, limited promotions, and 24/7 support. One reason to use Hotwire instead of Orbitz or some other subsidiary of Expedia Group would be its mobile app.
Through the app, you can quickly access your itinerary on the go, check out with Apple Pay, Touch ID, or Google Smart Lock, and take advantage of exclusive mobile-only rates for hotels and cars.
12. Trivago
Trivago is a German hotel search engine and one of the largest tech companies in Germany. Like most other Expedia alternatives featured in this article, Trivago makes money using a cost-per-click (CPC) business model, by bringing visitors to its advertising partners.
At the time of writing, it compares rates from over 1.8 million hotels and 250 booking sites. With Trivago, you can find great deals both in the largest metropolitan areas in the world and in the smallest and cozies villages. If you need inspiration for your next trip, you can just read Trivago’s travel magazine and discover amazing places not many people know about.
