This holiday season, competition between airlines will dictate the going rate of your flight ticket. Travel columnist Tom Belden recently discussed how one Philadelphia-Boston business traveler was shocked to see US Airways offering a basic round-trip coach ticket costing $1,115 for the 281-mile route, even if he purchased two months in advance! To find a better way, this passenger considered driving or taking the train from Philly to Newark, New Jersey, where he could hop aboard a $270 US Airways flight to Boston, which ironically connected through Philadelphia. “Think about the irony,” Belden writes. “The travelers on US Airways could wind up on the Philadelphia-Boston leg of the trip sitting next to someone who got on in Philadelphia and paid five times as much.” Since Delta pulled its Philadelphia-Boston route in August, there is no competition among carriers, Belden argues. To sort through this madness, many holiday travelers will visit www.farecompare.com, a website full of researched flight deals.

FareCompare is a new website geared toward helping you find the best flight deal, and each day processes feeds from over 500 airlines and more than 270,000 city pairs worldwide. You’ll even see fares from carriers like Jet Blue or Southwest, which typically don’t share their deals with aggregator websites. Their high-tech software delivers fast results for an enjoyable shopping experience. On this website, you can find cut-rate tickets for domestic and international travel, discounted first class flight ticket deals and expert insider travel advice. In addition to finding great deals on flights, you will also find up-to-date information on cheap hotel rooms too.

One of the most popular features at FareCompare is the “Best Time To Buy” tab. If you’re looking for a flight ticket and your departure/return dates are somewhat flexible, you can save yourself as little as $20 or as much as hundreds. The unique thing about this website’s search is that you receive real-time information right away. For instance, you enter your departure city and your arrival city. Then, when you click on the departure date, a calendar will pop up telling you when the cheapest and most expensive flight fares are offered, so you can pick a date accordingly. The same calendar option comes up for your return date as well.

FareCompare understands that many a traveler has been burned on a flight ticket purchase in the past. Conventional wisdom seems to say that planning and purchasing ahead will save you big bucks. However, last year, procrastinators saw record-low prices on their travel due to oil prices dropping from $145/barrel in early July to $60/barrel in early November, not to mention the recession left fewer travelers than expected. FareCompare founder Rick Seaney doesn’t expect this rare confluence of events to occur this year. Oil prices are always a wildcard, of course, but so far it seems like cheap flight ticket deals are in abundance.

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Despite the recession, a number of people are still buying flight tickets to visit their families for the holidays and use their vacation days. The internet is a vast sea of flight deals and cut-rate hotels if you know when, where and how to look. Having the right resources is critical to your success. If you value your time, first and foremost, then you may just want to call up a travel agent to find you a worthwhile deal. However, if you have a little bit of gumption and you’re willing to do some surfing to find the best fares, then the following websites will be great assets to you.

Airline tickets are one of the most popular areas of search, when it comes to internet travel resources. Airfare Watchdog (www.airfarewatchdog.com) is a great site for travelers who are looking for the best airline deals either from their city or to another city. Users can visit the site to check for updates themselves or opt for automatic email newsletters advertising sales from their departure cities. This site also features fares from Southwest, Jet Blue and other lesser publicized airline carriers. Farecast (www.bing.com/travel) has now merged with Bing to run a unique “price predictor” service, which forecasts whether domestic fares are likely to go up or down in the coming days or weeks. Classic sites like www.orbitz.com, www.expedia.com and www.travelocity.com have some of the most user-friendly interfaces.

Cheap hotels can be found just as easily as flight tickets, but you’ll have to determine what sort of traveler you are before looking. For instance, if you’re a budget student traveler, then you’d be best looking at www.hostelz.com, which offers over 34,000 hostel listings starting as low as $19/night, or www.homeexchange.com, which is a house-swapping program costing just $100/year for unlimited swaps. If you’re looking for creature comforts at rock bottom prices, you might like the idea of a bed-and-breakfast (www.bedandbreakfasts.com) or a plush vacation villa (www.villasintl.com) instead. Last-minute travelers who care more for price than where they’ll be staying can snag red hot deals at www.hotels.com, www.laterooms.com or www.priceline.com.

As you can see, there are a number of ways to secure inexpensive flight tickets and inexpensive hotel accommodations. Another great resource to check out is Luggage Online’s “50 Best Travel Sites You’ve Never Heard Of” (www.luggageonline.com/50-travel-sites.cfm), which offers a comprehensive list of places to check out. Last minute travelers will find a link to www.licketytrip.com, which shows exclusive deals over the next two weeks. Pampered travelers may want to stop at Hotel Book, which lets them check off the amenities and specific accommodation style they’re searching for, whether it’s a golf property in Phoenix or a chic boutique in Aspen. Perhaps you’d like to read about a destination before visiting at www.wikitravel.com or you want to sign up to a social networking site for travelers, like www.triporama.com so you and your friends can share your adventure through photos and blogs.

Kenny Leichester is a foremost expert in the interior design industry specializing in the outdoor or patio settings using outdoor heaters, patio umbrellas, outdoor cushions, patio lighting and so on to create exquisitely beautiful layout. His work on patio umbrellas are widely distributed and is a regular contributor to PatioShoppers.com.