All you travel gurus...what are the best booking sites and

Honest, I book direct often.

Do your research. You can use the booking sites to measure deals, but they often have plenty of deals/packages listed directly on the sites if you dive into them.

Those booking sites work, but I did get screwed with Expedia one time years ago so I really don't trust them anymore. Was more of a headache than just booking direct.

Definitely look into the deals they have, and also reach out to them directly via email. They can usually give you special deals or make exceptions on bdays/anniversaries

Get a credit card that has a bonus and earn some points to go directly with either the hotel or airline that way.

I guess use the travel site for the other flight/hotel if the deal seems good, but yeah, I've heard some stories about how if things go south with the hotel, the travel sites can't help you really.

I do my research on TripAdvisor and if I was to use a booking site I usually use Expedia.

I used to use hotels.com for all my hotel bookings. Got a free night for every 10 (averaged out). They just changed up their reward program and now it’s about 1/3 of the value it used to be. Never had an issue with them, and their rates were usually cheaper than direct, but I don’t see myself being as loyal in the future.

Amex travel

We use Booking.com quite a bit.

Hotels and airlines, always book direct. This is the *only* way, when you're traveling, that the person in front of you at the check in counter can help you. If you do anything else, you shall sit thy rear end down in the lobby and call someone in a helpdesk thousands of miles away and explain your desperation to board the plane, or to go to sleep, at 0100.

There is at least one Reddit forum that produces content every, single F*ing day, about people that book through OTAs (Expedia, Priceline, etc.) that show up and have their experience ruined thinking the hotel could do anything about their reservation. The hotel and airline staff can't do squat *for* you when you've booked through an OTA. The OTA has to send them a new, disposable payment card number for your individual reservation to the hotel to change a rez, after you've spent 45 minutes explaining you forgot about leap year when booking, etc.

Screw OTAs, just use Google Flights and the "date flexible" searches on Marriott.com , etc., and book direcly.

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Hotels and airlines, always book direct. This is the *only* way, when you're traveling, that the person in front of you at the check in counter can help you. If you do anything else, you shall sit thy rear end down in the lobby and call someone in a helpdesk thousands of miles away

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I think you missed the important part.

Flights- always direct. Hotels depends on the situation. I price direct vs third party website if there is a specific hotel where I need to stay. If not I usually use Priceline express deals where I frequently get 25-30% off per stay.