It’s officially summer – the kids are out of school, the weather is fine, and for many of us it’s time to travel. We here at Deemable Tech are planning vacations of our own, and we’ve got some really useful tools to help make things easier.

Image credit: Atlas Obscura

Here, in no particular order, are some of our favorite vacation planning websites:

OptionsAway.com – Sometimes when you’re looking to buy an airline ticket, you might find a price you really like early on but aren’t quite prepared to buy. For a fee, Options Away lets you put a hold on that price for up to 21 days and buy it later, even if it has increased on other sites. Fees start at $4 for holding the price for a day to about $20 for 21 days. We should note that they currently only offer their services for flights within the continental U.S. and Canada.

Peek.com – Peek mainly focuses on offering curated packages for attractions in selected cities like Paris, London and New York City, but the reason we included it on this list is their Perfect Days section. Here, users can submit their “perfect day” in a city with a day’s worth of suggestions activities. For example, a user might suggest visiting a certain cafe for breakfast, taking a bike ride along a particular river, shopping at local boutique, etc. It’s a great free way to plan a vacation day.

Tingo.com – Have you ever booked a hotel room online only to see the price drop a few days later? When you book through Tingo and the price drops, they will actually refund the deference to your credit card. Tingo also offers free upgrades, so if you pay for a room and a better one opens for the same price they will automatically give you that upgraded room. We’re not entirely sure how the site makes money as no fees are listed, but we love the idea.

AtlasObscura.com – If you like to travel but don’t like tourists, Atlas Obscura is a good way to get off the beaten path. The site is sort of a Wikipedia for the sights most travelers won’t know about; simply enter a city to find nearby stuff you would never thought to look for. You can also use Atlas Obscura to come up with great staycation ideas for when you want to try something new at home.

Booking.com – Finding a hotel room in a city where a major event is happening – like San Diego during Comic-Con – can be practically impossible. This doesn’t stop Booking.com from finding vacant rooms, though, even just days before the event and for rates comparable to other sites. We don’t know how they do it, but our bet is on some kind of black magic.

Hipmunk.com – There are dozens of sites for booking airline tickets, but Hipmunk is one of the few we’ve seen that realizes that price isn’t the only thing that matters when you fly. When you search, Hipmunk displays the results in an easy to understand grid that shows the length of each of flight, how long any layovers are and even whether or not the plane has WiFi (it also, of course, shows the price). We’re also intrigued by the fact that it lets you sort those results by “agony” – direct flights are listed first, then ones with longer and longer layovers. It doesn’t hurt that the site has an adorable mascot as well.

BeFrugal.com’s Fly or Drive Calculator – An important thing to consider when you’re planning a trip is whether you should fly or if it would be cheaper to drive to your destination. Be Frugal’s Fly or Drive Calculator not only calculates your trip using the price of gas and the cost of an airline ticket, but also takes things like car rentals into consideration.

Twitter.com – OK, OK. We know Twitter’s not really a travel site, but we wanted to include it because it can be helpful when dealing with travel companies. For example, most airlines have whole customer service teams that just monitor Twitter for tweets about their flights and complaints from passengers. We’ve heard many stories of someone tweeting an airline about something they’re not happy about (like the plane being too hot) and the customer service team contacting that individual flight to resolve the problem.

Did we miss your favorite vacation planning website? Let us know in the comments!