A good place to begin is TravelWeb. They have a decent Hotel Search that lets you enter what you would like in your hotel. The hotels come with pictures and an extended description.

A nice "Net" for travelers to enter is the TravelNet. It's similar to the American Automobile Agency guides, but without the ratings. The number of hotels drops off exponentially as you get away from the major cities. The site is very bare-bones, but may provide you with some options that aren't available on other web sites.

Hotels.com has the right name, but smaller towns do not seem to register. You have to know the nearest city and then expand your search into the outlying areas. They offer coupons once you make your reservation, but I have no idea how good the offers are. The hotel descriptions are good and include pictures. On the down side, the rates are not as good as Travelocity. Maps and directions are sorely missing, too.

The Hotel Book has a sparse search engine to find you a hotel. The site tends to have fancier hotels in major cities, but their strong point is their worldwide coverage.

Pretty sure you want to stay in a major chain? Try Hotel Chains for listing of a dozen major hotel chains. Each listing has a good amount of information about the hotel.

You can get the best of all worlds by going to the Accommodation Search Engine. This British-based search engine will find hotels, motels, hostels, self catering flats, or bed & breakfasts throughout the world. This site has one of the most complete listings (they incorporate other web site's listings), which is especially good if you are going somewhere out of the way. You can choose the criteria for hotel, etc., selection, such as price, type of accommodation, facilities, and activities. You can then weight each of the parameters to get your list of hotels or whatever. From the list, you can get a description of the hotel (or whatever), a picture of it, and a map to it (sometimes). You can even make reservations.

1st Traveler's Choice has listings of bed & breakfasts, small country inns, small hotels and resorts worldwide. They also list vacation rentals. Properties are grouped on separate pages under activities, such as skiing, dude ranches, fishing, weddings and pet friendly hotels. They have some of the best information and photos for all of the listings.

Not quite as fancy and with fewer listings is the Internet Guide to Bed & Breakfasts Inns. On this site, you can search by state, town or city for B&Bs. Featured properties are listed with pictures and descriptions, but others just have the name, address, phone number, number of rooms, and the price.

The Register is a list of B&Bs and small hotels. All of their entries have pictures and descriptions along with a discussion of the area, but they have fewer listings than the Internet Guide.

1BBWEB has good information about each B & B, including maps and links to each B & B's web site. Other bed and breakfast web sites include InnSite (Good coverage, but could use a little more information and pictures) and Bed & Breakfast.com (very sparse listings - you get an address and phone number only with most listings).

Holiday Inn seems to be snubbing many of the travel web sites hoping that people will visit their own site. It is about the easiest hotel site to use.

If you are looking for a low rate, Hoteldiscount.com may be able to help. They rate the hotels and guarantee the lowest rate. Coverage is not as good as most of the other sites, with only the major cities covered and only a small number of hotels in each city.

RoomSavers offers the same coupons you can find in the magazines at the highway rest stops. You can't make reservations to get the deals, but if you don't have a reservation and need to stop, it might work.

Geektools has a listing of all the hotels with High Speed Internet access. The normally list the type of connection and note whether it is free. The listings are worldwide, so you can get connected anywhere.

Of course you could just go camping instead. Go to Campsites 411 and find a campsite that suits you. They have lots of important information along with links to the campsite's web site. You can search via a map or by entering a city and state.

Get bonus nights by joining hotel clubs. Choice Privileges appears to offer the quickest way to get a free night. Only 10 nights gets you a free night in a Comfort Inn, Comfort Suites, Quality, Clarion, or Sleep Inn. They don't have blackout dates to redeem points. They do, however, limit you to making your reservation 30 days or less from your travel date. You also get the a special room rate when you make reservations through them, usually the corporate rate. The rate is often better than the AAA rate or the government rate. The lower end hotels in the Choice lineup, Econo Lodge and Rodeway Inn, have the Easy Choice Program.

Priority Club is Holiday Inn's program. It will take you an average of 20 nights to get a free night, but you can also get free merchandise, dinners, club memberships, gift certificates, vacation packages, and even make a charitable contribution. They recently removed blackout dates, making it the easiest to use. Club is good at Holiday Inns, Crowne Plazas, Staybridge Suites, and Intercontinental Hotels and Resorts. Their web site is easy to use. I had no problems when I used my free nights. They were absolutely free and included breakfast.

Hilton has HHonors. It will take about 16 nights to get a free night and they have blackout dates to use the rewards. It is good at Hilton, Conrad, Doubletree, Embassy Suites, Hampton Inn, and Homewood Suites. Some folks reported bad experiences with HHonors, however. Someone on Epinions said that they did not always get points credited and when they went to use them, they were only offered discounts (15,000 points got them a $4 per night discount) not a free night. I tried it and had no problems. Their web site was easy to use and very clear. On one stay they charged tax, which came to $15 a night. On a later stay, they did not charge tax, so they may or may not.

Marriott has Marriott Rewards. This covers Marriott Hotels, Renaissance Hotels, Marriott Vacation Clubs, Courtyard by Marriott, Fairfield Inns, SpringHill Suites, Residence Inns, and TownePlace Suites. You only earn half the points at Residence Inns and TownePlace Suites. Blackout dates apply, but can be deleted if you use 50% more of your points. It will take an average of 18 nights to get one free night.

Radisson Gold Rewards gives you a free night after a minimum of 10 nights. You'll need to stay up to 30 nights if you want to go to the better hotels. You can also use your points for a free meal or a free movie.

Starwood Preferred Guest Program works at Westin, Sheraton, Four Points, St. Regis, The Luxury Collection, and W Hotels. Minimum for a free stay is $1,000.00 that you have spent (Could be as few as 4 nights at their better hotels). Maximum is $10,000.00 for their best hotels. You can also get things at the hotel or at one of their merchandise partners.

If you have any comments, if you find a link that doesn't work, or you have a link you think I should add, send me an E-Mail at Meckelnburg@prodigy.net