No matter what time of year it is, we’re all thinking about jetting off somewhere. Even if we tend to take our tech with us, we certainly like to leave the work behind. But sometimes booking a holiday online can be a tad overwhelming if you don’t know where to look – too many options can leave you confused.
Here, we break down a few scenarios and ways to book holidays online – from city breaks to package holidays, from DIY trips to Airbnb. We also recommend the best holiday and travel apps to help you out once you’re there.
If you're looking specifically for how to book a cheap holiday online, check out our tipshere.
We’ve broken things down into sections. You can click the links below to jump straight to particular sections:
  • Package holidays
  • DIY holidays
    • Flights
    • Accommodation
  • Booking a hostel
  • Handy apps to take with you
For a bit of vacation tech, check out the best travel gadgets in our round-up here.

Package holidays – booking flights and accommodation together 

If you don’t want the hassle of booking all the individual parts to your holiday, many websites offer package deals, sometimes at excellent prices. It’s particularly a money-saver for short city breaks, as airports are close by and there is a wealth of hotels to choose from.
Websites such as Teletext Holidays are a good place to start. You can search by destination, departure airport, dates and length of holiday. There’s also a handy feature that you can switch on that finds dates three days either side of your preferred dates to find you the best possible deal.
Short trips to European cities such as Rome, Paris and Amsterdam can be found in abundance here, and some hotels allow you to add on things like breakfast for a lump sum.
Another well known, proven site for holidays is Lastminute.com. So called as it supposedly offers last minute cut throat prices, but really this is just a decent holiday search engine – prices aren’t as cheap as you’d expect sometimes, and holidays don’t actually have to be booked at the last minute!
Icelolly is a good site as it helps you easily compare package deals to save money. At the first search bar, you can specify whether you want an all inclusive package, half board, or a range of other options. It also allows you to pick the holiday type at the first port of call from Sun, City, Ski, Cruise or UK to get you started. The simplification helps massively at this stage, and allows you to pick more granular options as you hone your holiday-building search.

DIY holidays – booking flights and accommodation separately

If you’d rather shop around for flights and accommodation separately online, there are a few ways of doing so, and it will by no means cost you more than getting a package deal.

Flights

A great combination is booking flights with easyJet or RyanAir and then searching for accommodation via a trusted site with a good range of prices. These airlines are cheap, and offer flexible prices and times for short haul flights to Europe.
Content continues below
You could also check flights on the popular website Skyscanner. It’s a great search tool to compare times and prices for flights, and searches over 1,200 airline and travel sites to find you the perfect deal. As well as flights, it can also search hotels and car hires. A great way to help piece together the different parts of your holiday, it comes highly recommended. 

Accommodation 

For your accommodation, a popular new choice is to find somewhere to stay on Airbnb. This is not a hotel site, but rather a community of people around the world who advertise their own properties for rental. The website is easy to use, though we’d recommend using it on a big computer screen rather than on a smaller smartphone screen, simply because all the options are easier to see. 
Once you’ve entered your destination and dates, you can pick whether you’d like an entire home, shard room or private room, and then dive deeper into pricing and amenity options. We’ve used it ourselves to stay in cities such as New York, Edinburgh and Berlin and had nothing but good experiences with our hosts.
Make sure that the place you choose has lots of positive guest reviews, as this is a great way of ensuring the place is top notch – don’t just rely on the say-so of the owner of the property. Often, unlike with some hotels, you have to pay upfront.
Booking hotels individually online is very easy via Booking.com. Again, being online lends itself to a plethora of menus and options. This can be overwhelming at first, especially when you can pick whether or not the room has a patio or if other people think it’s ‘pleasant’! However, persevere and you’ll find hotels you never would have though to search for on Google in excellent locations for the price to suit your budget.

Booking a hostel

Booking.com is also an excellent choice if you want to book a long haul hostel break, for instance to somewhere like India or Thailand. This is a good option as plans on holidays where you’re living out a backpack can often change when you least expect – many hostels will not charge you until you’re there, so if your plans change you can cancel the booking.
However, we would always recommend checking details such as this with the individual hotel or hostel, as the same rules don’t apply for all, even though you can book thousands of rooms via Booking.com. You can check under ‘Hotel Policies’ on the individual hotel or hostel’s Booking.com page.
Hostelworld is another undisputed king of collated accommodation options specifically for hostels. For the discerning hosteller, there’s a decent 'compare' option if you’re planning a city trip and want to see several options, and the clean-looking website is easy to navigate. Given the social nature of hostels, it has also collected hundreds of thousands of reviews, which helps no end picking out that rough gem you’ve been looking for.

Handy apps to take with you

The daddy of online holiday advice is undoubtedly TripAdvisor. Originally a reviews platform, it has now joined all other platforms mentioned here in allowing you to book holidays. However, given its longevity, it is an excellent research tool when faced with thousands of hotel choices before you leave thanks to the worldwide libarary of reviews. 
Additionally, if you download the app (and have a reasonable data roaming deal with your operator!) then it can be a useful tool when actually on your holiday too – worth it when you’re wondering if the restaurant nearby will give you a meal to remember or salmonella.
Other apps worth using while away are things like Citymapper, which can be an absolute life saver when you find yourself on the opposite side of Paris to your hotel at 3am – it plots your route from your location to your destination via public transport with detailed step by step instructions. You can also user the web version to plan in advance, of course.
For times when you need a translator, Google is here to help. Its excellent Google Translateapp has a handy feature where you can hold up your smartphone’s camera to text, and it translates it for you instantly. Witchcraft it may be, but it's unbelievably handy in a confusing foreign metro or menu situation. Get it for Android or iOS.