Tips on planning your perfect holiday

I thought of sharing some tips (particularly tips for visiting the U.S.) with you guys which I found useful when I was booking hotels, flights and sorting out the car rental.

Of course, the main key is doing your RESEARCH!!! Do not rely solely on one source (say, lonely planet guide book)

I always find tripadvisor.com extremely helpful as a starting point. Type in the city/town you are visiting (in my case, San Francisco) and then, click on 'Things to Do' or 'Overview' or 'Restaurants' etc. It reveals to you all the top attractions, top restaurants, top hotels. I use tripadvisor a lot when I'm looking for hotel reviews. Never book a hotel without checking the reviews first. Also, you can click on 'map' when checking out a hotel. It shows you the location of the hotel on googlemaps.

Also, can may want to check out priceline.com. This website provides a lot of cheap hotel + car rental + flight packages. You may save a lot by using this website. I suggest getting the flight + hotel packages only if you don't mind obscure flight times. For example, you'll might arrive at your destination at 6 pm and leave your holiday destination at 8 am in the morning. Another popular website would be continental.com

Consider checking the local newspapers to see what's happening in the local scene or to check for good reviews at any eateries.

If possible, book flights and hotels during the mid-week, NEVER weekends. Its cheaper and there may be mid-week sales! For example, cheapest airticket from San Francisco to Las Vegas was 350 (after tax) when I checked on Sunday but on Tuesday it was 224 (after tax)!!!!

If you are a risk-taker, you may patronise lastminutetravel.com. I used this to book the hotel for my Las Vegas trip. The interesting thing about this website is that the actual hotel names are not revealed to you till you have finalised your transaction. Think about it as a mystery gift. They only provide you with details of the hotels (such as hotel ratings, restaurants in the hotel, location of hotel, hotel facilities etc). I saved $60 by using this website but my heart was racing before the hotel name was revealed. The same feeling I get before I view my exam results. Nonetheless, I was pretty satisfied with the hotel.

And of course, I always love hostelworld.com. It's the best website for booking hostels. Customer reviews when looked at in aggregate quantities provide pretty accurate feedback. [Don't you get irritate at those trivial negative reviews such as, "I hate that hostel because there are no tea making facilities." Sigh. So much angst and therefore, bad ratings for such trivialities. How about great location? Doesn't that deserve great ratings?!?]

Last but not least, ask your local friends for tips =)