Travel Tools - Welcome to the Travel Tools forum: please read first

One of the great values of FlyerTalk is discovering the plethora of travel tools that are available to help optimize the travel experience. These can be tools to help find award availability, seat maps with discussion of preferable seats, software to track earned miles and points, and people that provide award booking services. There are often competitive offerings. Some are free. Some are only available by subscription. And some require a per use fee. This forum is a centralized location for frequent flyers to discuss and compare what is available and learn what will help them create a better travel experience.

This forum is also to be an incubator for new products developed by FlyerTalkers. For example, jyflyer has developed AwardFinder. It is currently free; he is seeking feedback (http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/star-alliance/1303104-awardfinder-free-web-based-award-search.html). kudroz is developing a tool called dcovery (http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/18212711-post31.html). He might bring it here for review. It’s in our interest to help our fellow FTers develop their tools to make them as useful as possible for us.

This forum is not a marketplace. While we want vendors to participate to answer any and all questions about their products, it is not a place for them to solicit business. The same guidelines relevant to all of FlyerTalk cover this forum. However, a vendor is free to start a thread to explain their travel tool.

These are some of the topics appropriate for discussion here:
• Award booking services
• Airline seat maps
• Mileage tracking
• Car rentals
• Award availability, fare rules and more
• Software for trip organization

We have sister forums for other discussions.

Travel Technology ( http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/travel-technology-169/) – travel gadgets such as laptops, smartphones, portable gear, portable power, adaptors, how to make your equipment work overseas

Travel Products ( http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/travel-products-639/) – from luggage to travel clothes

Online booking and bidding agencies ( http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/online-travel-booking-bidding-agencies-204/) – Travelocity, Expedia, Orbitz, Hotwire, Priceline and the like

Some of the travel tools that immediately come to mind are here. There are sure to be many more appropriate for discussion here, and more yet to come from the creative genius of FTers and others.

Airline Route Mapper (http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/travel-tools/759472-new-airline-route-mapper-tool-released.html) - provides routes for 600 airlines (Windows based)
Award booking services (http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/travel-tools/1296363-award-booking-services-list.html#post17711690) - List of members who offer fee based services for finding award travel
AutoSlash ( http://www.autoslash.com/) - find the cheapest car rental
Award Nexus ( https://awardnexus.com/user/login?url=%2F) – find available award space on Star, OneWorld, and SkyTeam
Awardtravelr (http://beta.awardtravelr.com) - Search for *A/ST/OW awards online for free (beta)
Award Wallet ( www.awardwallet.com) – keep track of all your miles and points (except AA) in one location
ExpertFlyer ( http://www.expertflyer.com/) - award space, award and seat alerts, fare rules
FlightAware (http://flightaware.com) - tracks flights in US and Australia
GateGuru (http://www.gateguruapp.com/[/url) - identifies airport layouts and vendors (phone ap)
GoMiles ( www.gomiles.com) Tracking service for miles and points
HotelMagician (hotelmagician.com) - Tool for determining hotels in specific geographic area; has filters to limit it to favorite brands
KVS Availability Tool ( http://www.kvstool.com/) – award space and fare rules
mileBlaster ( https://www.mileblaster.com/) - track miles and points
MileWise ( https://secured.milewise.com/) - compares cost for flights in both cash and miles
Milez.biz (www.milez.biz[/url) - compares points required for various awards
PointHub ( https://www.pointhub.com/) - compares cost for flights in both cash and miles
SeatGuru ( http://www.seatguru.com/) - shows seat maps for a broad range of airlines and comments on the desireability or lack thereof of individual seats
SeatExpert ( http://seatexpert.com/) - shows seat maps for airlines
Superfly ( https://www.superfly.com/) - compares cost for flights in both cash and miles
TripIt ( http://www.tripit.com/) - organizes all your trip information into one organized document
UsingMiles ( https://www.usingmiles.com/) - track your program miles
Star Alliance award finder (http://flisea.com) (development) - find Star Alliance award seats