On this page you’ll find a list of travel resources that we use to plan and book our trips, starting with websites we use to search for and book our accommodation and flights. 

In this list, you’ll also find some of the tools we use for running Wanderlust Designers.

These are websites, tools, and other things that we personally use and can recommend, with comments on what we like (and maybe don’t like) about them.

Elsewhere on the site, you can see some recommendations from us that we haven’t used personally – but, in any case, be sure that we’ve read reviews before putting them there. Here, though, I repeat, all of the resources have been used by ourselves.

The list will be updated from time to time, so make sure to check it regularly!

This post may contain affiliate links, which means that if you purchase anything via them, we might earn a small commission – at no extra cost to you. Check our affiliate disclaimer for more information.

HOTELS

Here you go, our favourite hotel booking websites. We use them to search for and usually book hotels, although we always check the hotels’ own website as well, to see if they have better prices or deals.

• Booking.com is one of our favourite hotel booking websites. They have a great selection of accommodation and good deals. And there’s a loyalty program – when you complete at least 2 stays in 2 years, you get a “Genius” discount – 10% – on select properties; when you complete 5 stays in 2 years, there’s a 15% discount on select properties on top of the 10%, complimentary breakfast on select options, and complimentary room upgrades on select options;
• Hotels.com – another great hotel booking website with an excellent selection of accommodation, although we do use it much more rarely than booking.com. They also have a loyalty program, where you collect a stamp for each night you stay, you get one night as a reward. The value of your reward night is the average price of the 10 stamps you collect. You just have to sign up for the program! Be sure, though, to print your reservation – we had a situation in a hotel where we booked a stay with dinner included, but the hotel wanted to charge us for it.
• Airbnb – we have stayed with Airbnb only once, in Oahu, because they didn’t have any hotels, and it worked out very well. Basically, through this website you can find homeowners who want to rent out their apartment, home or room.

FLIGHTS

During the “Searching for flights” phase of vacation planning, we usually compare the flights on select websites, and more often than not, book them on the actual airline website. 

But for comparisons we use these websites:

• Kiwi.com – so many things I like about kiwi… you can check flights on a map – they’ll show the best prices. You can choose to include trains and buses in the search as a mode of transportation, which will show you a connection to a nearby airport if the price will be better that way. There’s a “nomad” function, which offers longer stays in stopover airports, giving you a cheaper ticket price to the final destination and a chance to explore another place. And so on, and so on. If you decide to book through kiwi, they actually have a connecting flight guarantee. So, yeah, it’s a great option.
• Momondo – another great flight booking site. What I like about momondo is the graph that they offer for flight price comparisons, and the possibility to choose the “best”, “quickest”, and “cheapest” options. The same as kiwi, they have an “explore” function, where you can check the cheapest flights for your dates on a map.
• Skyscanner – I like that, when searching for a destination, Skyscanner offers you to check out flights, hotels, and guides for that place, and it shows other places in the same country that you could explore. 

BLOGGING TOOLS

Running a blog isn’t just writing articles. It requires quite a few tools to make sure people know about your blog and come and read it. So here are some of them:

• A laptop – well, basics, right? To make a blog, you need something to write on and create things on. In March 2023, I bought a new laptop that I’m really happy with – it’s Lenovo IdeaPad5 Pro 14″. It’s light and powerful, exactly what’s needed for working when travelling! I couldn’t find the exact model I have on Amazon, but here are some other IdeaPad5 Pro’s. Some of them are “Flex” – wish they were available when I was looking for mine!
• WPMU DEV– straight from the creators of the exceptional plugins Hummingbird and Smush! No website can work without hosting. In the beginning, we used Bluehost, and many people work with it just fine. But I got tired of my website being rather slow (shared hosting will do that to you), so I started looking for something better. WPMU DEV offers dedicated hosting for a very reasonable price (only 12$ a month for the Bronze level of hosting, which is enough for quite a while!) and the hosting is great! The site is fast, and the server is very reliable. Plus, the customer service – out of this world, those guys are the best of the best!
• A theme – we were using Ashe Pro before, but now I changed it to Kadence. It just seemed that with the blog growing and me starting to understand better what I want and need, the Kadence theme with the Kadence blocks came the closest to fulfilling my wishes. They are lightweight, and even the free version has a lot of features. I’m using the free versions for both the theme and blocks, and that’s completely enough for me for now.
•  Tailwind – a Pinterest and Instagram scheduler. It makes them so much easier! Just schedule your pins, and Tailwind will do the rest. Saves so much time AND increases traffic!
• Blogging Fast Lane course – if you have found this blog, it’s probably due to us going through the Blogging Fast Lane. The Blogging Fast Lane is an accelerator course created by Tom & Anna, the two bloggers behind the world-leading adventure travel blog, Adventure in You. In this course, they teach the exact strategies that they used to turn their blog into a six-figure business in a little over 2 years! After spending years trying to figure out what works, they finally narrowed down a solid strategy on how to successfully monetize a blog which they placed in what they call the F.A.S.T. Framework. Honestly, this course is amazing and jam-packed with value! Read our full Blogging Fast Lane review to find out what’s inside the course and how you can start monetizing your blog today. 
• Canva – I use Canva for basically two things – creating pins for Pinterest and stock photos. The packing lists that you can get on our website (just check out the packing articles) are designed in Canva as well.
• WP Rocket – a website speed-improving plugin. The theme, plugins, images, videos, colours, fonts… every single little thing slows down the website. So, to have it work nicely, it’s a good idea to have a caching plugin that also helps improve other things. After going through a bunch, I’ve found that WP Rocket helped the most. So I definitely recommend it.