Travel Planning Resources & Recommendations

Travel Planning Recommendations

Over the years, we’ve been asked countless times how we plan our travels and what companies we use and trust. So we hope this list of our favourite travel planning resources and recommendations comes in handy for you!

We’ve also included the various tools we’ve used to grow our blog at the bottom of this page (just in case you’re an aspiring travel blogger!)

Psst! Wondering what we never leave home without? Check out our travel shop here for our recommended travel essentials.

Travel Planning

Google Maps: My Maps

We all know about Google Maps – the bible when it comes to getting directions to and from your destination. But what about the My Maps feature? This allows you to plot out an itinerary or wish list of places you want to visit on your trip, and then you can save the map for when you’re finally there.

Wanderers of the World Custom Travel Planning Services

If you simply don’t have time to plan the trip of your dreams, then check out our custom travel planning services here. We’ll help you come up with the perfect itinerary for your trip and we’ll send you a detailed PDF you can save, print and take with you!

Accommodation

Booking.com

Booking.com is our preferred website when booking accommodation. Their prices are often some of the best around and their loyalty programme is pretty good, too. Even at Level 1, you can enjoy a 10% discount off hotels and car rentals, while Level 2 unlocks bigger discounts, complimentary breakfasts and even free room upgrades!

Hotels.com

We use Hotels.com if we can’t find anything via Booking.com. They offer decent prices and a large variety of places all over the world – from luxury five-star hotels to decent three-star villas and budget hostels. And the best bit? Once you’ve collected 10 nights with them, you get the 11th free. This is calculated based on an average spend over those nine nights and is a great little bonus. Plus, once you’ve booked with Hotels.com a fair amount, you’ll become a Bronze, Silver or Gold member offering you exclusive offers and discounts.

Flights & Getting Around

Skyscanner

As an independent flight checker across a large variety of airlines, you can be sure you’re going to get some of the best prices when booking with Skyscanner. We love their feature that allows you to enter the month you wish to travel in and they’ll offer you their cheapest and best options for destinations all over the world. This is great if you can be a little flexible with booking times and if you want to find destinations you wouldn’t have normally thought of!

Google Flights

Right up there with Skyscanner as being a fantastic flight comparison checker is Google Flights. Obviously they are independent, so again, you can be certain that the prices you’re seeing are the best. With Google Flights, you can also gain some travel inspiration by selecting the month in which you wish to travel and for how long you wish to vacation for, which allows Google to present you with their best offerings.

Omio

Omio is a fantastic app (and website) to help you plan how you’ll get around. Based on where you’re travelling to and from and when, it’ll help you find the best transport routes for your trip with costs available at-a-glance too!

Tours

Get Your Guide

We use Get Your Guide for all our tours for one major reason – their 24-hour cancellation policy! If you need to cancel your tour, you can do so for free up to 24 hours before. We’ve loved all the tours we’ve booked through them and will keep using them for many years to come.

Travel Blogger Toolkit

Keysearch

Keysearch is a tool to help you find keywords to use in your blog posts, which is essential for getting decent traffic from search engines. We’ve been using Keysearch for a couple of years now and seriously regret not using it sooner! Grab 20% off with the code: KSDISC.

Siteground

If you want to monetise your blog then you’ll need to go self-hosted. We’ve been with Siteground since the beginning and have stuck with them because we’ve had near-perfect up-time and great support when we’ve needed it.

Awin

If monetising your blog is something you wish to get involved with, then Awin (formerly Affiliate Window) are a fantastic option. They have a number of affiliate partners across multiple industries and a very simple method of signing up for affiliate programmes. You can even post opportunities for brands to partner with you, much like a job board. You need to pay Awin £5 when you first sign up, but this is paid back to you along with your first commission from one of the brands you’ve partnered with.

Skimlinks

Skimlinks is an affiliate network but it works differently from programs like Awin. Skimlinks enables you to earn money from various companies but without having to apply to join them. We also like that Skimlinks can automatically turn our normal links into affiliate links where available. The only downside is that Skimlinks take a 25% cut, so where possible, go for programs like Awin or a direct affiliate partnership with companies.

Mediavine

Mediavine is who we use for display advertising and we’re so proud to be with them. We make decent money with them and their ads don’t feel intrusive either (at least compared with other companies!)

Mailerlite

Mailerlite is what we use to send emails to our subscribers. As we have less than 1000 subscribers, we’re using their free version for now. We like that we can set up automated emails such as when someone first joins our list or if they click a specific link that triggers an automation.

Affiliate Marketing Superstars Course from Passive Income Superstars

We’ve wanted to up our affiliate marketing game for a while now and we were delighted when Leanne from Passive Income Superstars finally launched her Affiliate Marketing Superstars course. She earns a crazy amount of money through affiliate marketing on her blogs and her course is full of information on how to level up your affiliate marketing. It’s also cheaper than you think! It’s been a few months and we’ve already increased our affiliate sales by over 1000% since taking her course – and that’s during a year when travel isn’t really happening for many people either! If you can’t swing for the full course, then also check out her free 5-day email course here or even her SEO for Affiliate Marketing ebook (that alone is worth its weight in gold as she explicitly details some affiliate keywords you can use in your own posts, which really work!)