If you’re planning on traveling in your retirement it’s important to know which travel resources you can use best to book your trip. And planning can sometimes be a bit overwhelming because of the enormous amount of advertisers out there. But no worries, we’re here to help you out.
We’ve been full-time traveling for years, so we put together a list of the best and most reliable booking resources, we use all the time.
Please note that the links below are affiliate links. When you make a booking using our links, we get a small commission, at no extra cost to you. We use all the companies listed below and recommend them because they make our travels so much cheaper and easier.
Best Travel Booking Resources
- Booking.com (Accommodations)
- Airbnb.com (Accommodation)
- Momondo (Flightdeals)
- Skyscanner (Flightdeals)
- Rentalcars.com (Car Rental Deals)
- Rentalcover (Rental Car Insurance)
- WorldNomads (Travel insurance)
- GetYourGuide (Tours & Activities)
We want you to have the best travel experience in retirement and that starts with good and trustworthy travel insurance, finding affordable flights, and booking comfortable accommodations at your travel destination. And these booking resources will help you with that. We will explain why we use these resources below.
Best Accommodation Resources
When we book our accommodations around the world we only use these two resources: Booking.com and Airbnb.com. Both resources offering good prices vs. quality, and what we like most are the honest customer reviews. And there are a lot out of resources out there that we tested, but these are our favorite ones and find the most reliable:
Booking.com
We use booking.com when we’re looking for short stay accommodation. On Booking, you can find affordable hotels and accommodations anywhere around the world. It’s very easy to use and offers a wide selection of different accommodations for every type of budget. You can see scores about cleanliness, location, WiFi, comfort, facilities, and value for money from previous customers so you get a better impression of the accommodation.
We try to only book accommodations when the minimum review score is 8.5. And often we try to find places with a review score of 9+. And that doesn’t mean it’s very expensive but means within a certain price range it gets a high score.
If you’re a frequent user like use you’ll become a genius member and get great discounts and rewards on accommodations.
Airbnb.com
We love using Airbnb while we travel. They connect homeowners who rent out their homes/apartments/ rooms to travelers like you and me. With Airbnb, you’ll get all the comforts of feeling at home while traveling. And you stay at less touristy parts of a destination and get great local travel tips from your host. And often Airbnb is a lot cheaper than the cost of a hotel room. When we’re searching for a place to stay longer, like two, three weeks or a month, we use Airbnb a lot.
Best Flights Resources
We use a combination of resources to find the most affordable flights for our travel plans. These search engines will find and compare hundreds of airlines and websites to find you the best rates out there.
- Momondo: This search engine is our favorite. You should start with this search engine to find the cheapest flight. They will find airlines with the best deals and on their calendar, they show which days are the cheapest days to fly. And they search the small booking sites that no other search engine does.
- Skyscanner: This great website searches a lot of different (budget) airlines, that many other larger search engines miss. So after Momondo, you can check out this website to compare prices.
Best Car Rental Resources
When we need to rent a car we use Rental Cars. Their website searches and compares the biggest car rental brands over 60.000 locations around the world. It’s very easy to use and you’ll know exactly what you’re getting. Which is very important when it comes to renting a car.
And we can highly recommend using Rental Cover as an (extra) car insurance. Their coverage is way more than you’ll get at a rental car company and the prices are far more affordable. You will save a lot of money using Rental Cover. It’s the most complete rental insurance out there and makes your trip far less stressful.
Best Travel Insurance Resource
The best advice we can give you is to have good travel insurance before you start traveling. And World Nomad Travel Insurance is one of the best travel insurance out there that provides cover for travelers from over 130 countries. Their flexible travel insurance is designed by travelers and for travelers and is recommended by Lonely Planet and National Geographic. They have great customer service; 24 hour emergency assistance, competitive rates, and in-depth coverage for any type of traveler.
Best Resource to Book Tours & Activities
Once you’re at your travel destination you want to book fun things to do. And Get Your Guide is an online platform that makes it really easy by offering experiences around the world. You can find activities and tours in almost every city worldwide! And with just a couple of clicks, you’ve booked a tour for this afternoon, tomorrow or next week. The best part is you don’t have to wait in line at some touroperator office.