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04/30/2012 05:00 AM

Travel with Val: Handy websites keep eye on discounted flights, hotels

Some helpful websites can keep your summer travel plans on budget by keeping a virtual eye on hidden deals. Valarie D'Elia has more.

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If you haven’t noticed, summer is headed our way and you‘re probably thinking of how to save money on your hard-earned vacation.

I’ve always been a fan of airfarewatchdog.com for news alerts that notify you of airline deals, and now the dog has a sister site, called Tingo.com, which keeps an eye on hotel rates.

What’s different about this site is that it will track your booking until you check out, automatically rebooking you if the rate drops and then refunding the difference on your credit card.

If you don’t have the luxury of booking your hotel room in advance, then you may be a candidate for a popular app from hoteltonight.com.

Designed to be used from your smartphone on the go, hotel tonight is a domestic marketplace for same-day unsold rooms, sometimes going for 70 percent off.

For students and travelers on a strict budget who enjoy staying at hostels, renting out a room or a couch, a New York based site called inbed.me lists low cost options and connects you with a social circle at the same time.

Should you need some travel inspiration from the people who know you best, then head for trippy.com, which taps into already-existing networks of friends and family through social media sites like Facebook.

The world of frequent flier miles and hotel points just got a lot easier to manage with a website called pointhub.com. It will aggregate all your points and miles so that they won’t go to waste, tell you when they are about to expire and alert you to new deals.