I will be the first to admit that navigating through the oodles of travel planning and booking sites on the Internet can be daunting. Travelocity, Expedia, Hotwire, Orbitz, Kayak and Priceline all promise to find the cheapest flights, hotels, car rentals and cruises available. Well, another site has come to play with the big names.

World, meet Travel Grove.

At first glance, Travel Grove looks like many of the other travel booking sites on the web. But the icons across the page highlight more than just cheap flights, hotels, cars and cruises. This site is also a travel community, resource center and forum. Now we’re talking about a site I can potentially get behind.

Flights

Travel Grove is very upfront about the fact that it is not a travel agent. Visitors to the site do not book through Travel Grove. Rather, the site searches other online booking agencies for the lowest fares, and users need to book off of the Travel Grove website. What is unique about the Flight feature is the opportunity to view the cheapest airline prices to and from a variety of destinations within the United States and around the world throughout the year. Searching for cheap flights to Orlando doesn’t show me any flights from Las Vegas, my hometown, but those flying from a variety of other cities will be able to see when it’s cheapest to fly to the Happiest Place on Earth.

I especially like that the cheap flights front page offers users the chance to select domestic U.S. flights as well as a range of international destinations. And while not every country is noted in this list (Honduras, anyone?), there are many cities beyond the predictable Rome, London and Sydney options. I love that Accra, Ghana; Riga, Latvia; and Chisinau, Moldova get some love on Travel Grove.

The cheap flights option is hard to find. To get there, scroll all the way to the bottom of the home page and click on the bottom footer link that says “popular flights.”

Hotel / Car / Cruise

Travel Grove also pulls the prices for hotels, cars and cruises from other travel booking sites. What is worth noting is that if you scroll below the booking engine on each of these pages, there is an explanation of the sites being used for the search and why they were chosen.

Also, on each of these pages, scroll over the six tabs in the right-side widget, which lists (among other things), last-minute deals on hotels, car rentals and cruises.

Vacations / Deals

This section also searches for cheap vacations across the web, but one unique feature here is at the bottom of the page where cheap vacations to popular destinations such as the Bahamas and Chicago are highlighted. Clicking on any of these listed vacations takes visitors off the site to other travel booking agents.

On the Deals page, scroll to the bottom of the page for “themed” ideas (such as Disney, skiing and romance) to get your travel bug excited.

Community

Travel Grove goes beyond the typical travel deal website with its community feature. Travelers are encouraged to create profiles, share photos and stories, and review destinations they’ve visited. The site got a little bulky when I started digging around this area, but once I navigated to a review of interest (I looked into Bryce Canyon), I was impressed with the thoroughness of the site summary.

The community also encompasses a forum, which has the potential to serve as a good planning and discussion tool for those who have questions or suggestions to offer fellow travelers, but it doesn’t seem to have taken off as well as others around the web. Though I don’t know how many people are in the Travel Grove community, if there aren’t many active members, this type of forum could either fall flat because of the lack of interaction or provide those who are active with a close circle of other travelers with which to bond.

Travel Guides

Travel Grove has travel guides for many of the world’s biggest and best-known cities, which offer tips on sights to see and information on the city’s history. Since I’m headed to New York City for the first time this summer, I checked out the New York travel guide and was admittedly disappointed that it suggests I check out the Statue of Liberty, Time Square and the Empire State Building. Really? In all of New York City, those are the only three things it suggests I see?

I stopped by the Las Vegas travel guide for a comparison and was equally disappointed to note all of Travel Grove’s suggestions (and there aren’t many of them) are located on the Strip. Few tourists venture beyond Las Vegas Boulevard to explore the rest of the city, but sites like Travel Grove have the opportunity to change that.

What Travel Grove hides on its website that is worth highlighting (and is actually more interesting and insightful than the travel guides) is its blog, which is updated daily. Recent topics include Krakow’s top-rated bars and the historic routes of five beverages.

My Thoughts

Overall, Travel Grove has done a good job of putting together everything a person would need to plan for travel. Searching for fares here is no different than searching on other sites, though I do like the cheap flights pricing chart. The travel community has potential if more people became active in it. And while I’m not a fan of the travel guides as they are too generic for actually planning anything beyond what you already know about most of the major cities in the world, I do like Travel Grove’s blog, and I’ve included it on my RSS feed to follow.

Have you used Travel Grove? What are your thoughts? Share your comments below.

This is a paid review sponsored by Travel Grove, but all opinions are my own.

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