Travelling is the best hobby one should have in their life. It is the most effective way to rejuvenate yourself after a hypertensive work experience. The Internet is making the experience even easier. Information about places complete with photos and user reviews can now be viewed in a single place to help you plan your vacation smartly.

Here, I have compiled 8 online travel tools that you may find useful on your next trip.

1. kayak.com

A perfect site that will help you find cheap airfare, and accommodation in any destination of your choice among others. The explore feature on this site is very popular. It gives you flight details together with rates from selected destinations around the world.

2. travel.yahoo.com

Powered by one of the leading search engines, Yahoo. This is one of the few online travel tools around that you can rely on to find the best hotels, cheap flights, car fare, cheap accommodation and much more, in a single click. They also have a blog where they share information and ideas about tours and beautiful places in this world to travel to.

3. tripadvisor.com

A popular site on the web to check various reviews of hotels, flights and restaurants. If you have your eyes set on any destination, I suggest you read this website before planning for the tour. Registered users can also share reviews of destinations or places they visited to help others make wise choices.

4. virtualtourist.com

A-Z online guide you need for travel and other related things. Besides giving details and reviews about hotels and flights they also have a forum where users can ask and answer questions.

You can, for instance, be planning to visit Eldoret and so you go to this site and ask other members what to expect. You will be answered within a day by over 1 million VirtualTourist members.

Have you visited a place and would like to share photos and reviews with other virtual tourists? They allow you a members’ area where you can set up unlimited pages, upload images, and videos and engage with other members of the community.

5. oanda.com/currency/converter/

Planning for a trip overseas? Do you know their currency conversion rate for your money? This currency converter site will help you in finding live exchange rates between two different currencies.

6. maps.google.com and bing.com/maps/

Although you may have a perfectly planned blueprint for your travel, sometimes you need maps to find your way around more easily. These two online travel tools by the search giants, Google and Bing, will help you find routes to places, hotels and so on, which makes your journey quicker, easier and safer.

7. foursquare.com

Perfect application to find local destinations like hotels and places of interest. With user ratings and comments, there is no need to roam around a place asking about a certain nice restaurant to eat at or the best hotels to stay in.

You can also collect rewards and the best discounts on all shops and hotels if you are a frequent visitor to that shop. If you ask me, foursquare is the best guide there is out there and all you need is a smartphone with an internet connection. Install and try foursquare on your next trip.

8. groupon.com/learn

The fastest-growing million-dollar company on the Internet. Sign up for this site by selecting the city you are staying in currently. You will start to receive discounts and coupon codes from local businesses from that particular city. Just present the discount voucher to the shop owner (business) and collect your discount when you purchase from that shop.

Hope you’ve enjoyed reading this article and don’t forget to share it on your social networks. If you know of any other useful online travel tools let us know by commenting below.