Best Travel Websites

One day, we hope to be included in Travel & Leisure's roundup of the best travel websites. Until then, we'll share our faves off the 2009 list.

The article gives high marks to Bing.com's fare forecasting. The site would have come in handy when we were booking our airline tickets to Vegas. We waited a week to book our tickets in the hopes the prices would come down. They didn't. T&L says Bing.com is right 87 percent of the time, which is a heck of a lot better than a shot in the dark.

We like idea of iFly.com for "Make the Best of a Layover," but think the site must be run by men. Point 1: We found no mention of spas or nail salons, like SeaTac's Butter London. Point 2: The in-town layover ideas give users no idea how long the trip will take. For example, if you want to checkout NYC's Radio City between flights at JFK, you better have at least 3 hours to get there and back with traffic. A woman would never be such a poor planner.

TripKick is another site that could have helped us on our recent trip to Vegas. The site dishes on what rooms to select for size, noise, view and more at various hotels. In Vegas, Hope was the first to arrive and had to change our room at the Palazzo twice! The first one had plumbing problems, then the second was a 3-mile hike from the elevators. As T&L points out, the list of hotels TripKick covers is small, but growing.