Best holiday deal websites with the cheapest deals

There are incredible bargains to be had on holiday and travel deal sites – if you can be flexible.

On one, we found flights to Montreal for just over £300 and on another, a luxury Lake District spa break with free cake and dinner thrown in.

Almost 600 people told us about their experiences with nine deal sites, ranking them for everything from value for money to choice of deals and transparency of fees.

Jack’s Flight Club and Luxury Escapes came out on top. They both had genuine bargains, too. In fact, all the sites profiled below had decent deals on hotels, flights and package holidays, although each work slightly differently in the way they source and put together their deals.

How to get the cheapest holiday deals

The best holiday deal websites do all have one thing in common, though. If you can be flexible with where you travel and when (ideally both), you’ll get the cheapest prices.

If that’s not possible – if school holidays or work commitments limit your options, say – you can still find good UK deals, especially at weekends. Willingness to stay on a Sunday night could get you a huge discount on sites such as Groupon or Travelzoo – often with extras thrown in, such as a late checkout for a lazy lie-in.

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Best flight, hotel and holiday deal sites 

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Read the holiday deal fine print

Most of the deals we spot-checked were good, but a few were slightly less impressive than they first appeared.

An overnight stay at Marco Pierre White’s Rudloe Arms hotel was £125 through Wowcher, but also £125 direct – the only difference was a cocktail on arrival with Wowcher. Fine, but nothing special.

Still, Wowcher and Groupon offer some astonishingly cheap deals. They are voucher sites that act more like marketplaces for other businesses to post special offers. When sifting through them, you just need to check the small print. 

Weekends abroad through both sites are often a bargain, but a flight might have a very late departure time on a Friday – and lack of public transport may mean you need to factor in the cost of a cab to the airport, as a £50 taxi fare could wipe out the original saving. The return departure time can often be early on Sunday, which may mean your weekend 'break’ is really just Saturday. Part of the business model is then upselling you better-timed flights, so do some digging before you commit. 

Jack’s Flight Club review 78%

With Jack’s Flight Club, you don’t have to hunt for deals on their site yourself. It emails out price drops, early sales and error fares on flights for free – you get more if you pay for membership. We checked three of its deals – all were available for the advertised price and seemed genuinely good compared to other fares, including a £320 return to Montreal. Its best deals are usually on long-haul journeys like this, and often with lesser-known or budget airlines that may involve connections. Price drops to Europe crop up regularly, too. You get six to eight tips a month for free, but these aren’t personalised to your departure airport. For premium, pay £1 for a 30-day trial, which then rolls over into the annual £48 plan (unless you cancel) - and you can set preferred airports. You’ll get 25 to 40 tips. Finding Jack’s tip-off fares on the actual airline websites can be a bit fiddly, but it does give incredibly detailed instructions.

Sign up to Jack’s Flight Club

Luxury Escapes review 78%

Free membership club Luxury Escapes says it negotiates exclusive offers that consumers won’t find elsewhere. We put this to the test. One of its deals, an eight-night stay at a swanky hotel in Phuket (£1,129), was £445 cheaper than booking direct, and it included a free massage, a free hour of drinks daily, a cooking class, a six-course tapas dinner and afternoon tea. With deals that good, it’s hardly a surprise that one survey respondent told us they felt 'really spoilt’ and ‘loved the quality’ of their Luxury Escapes trip. We noticed that quite a few of Luxury Escapes’ overseas bargains are in the off season, but you’ll find that with most deals sites because that’s when hotels need to fill rooms. This wasn’t a problem for customers; Luxury Escapes was one of only two sites that garnered more than three stars for its choice of deals. and it came joint-top overall in our survey. 

Find a holiday deal with Luxury Escapes

Travelzoo review 76%

‘We’d never recommend a deal we wouldn’t book ourselves,’ Travelzoo claims on its website. And based on our spot-checks, we believe it. New members pay £30 to access the deals on its website, but the subscription should quickly pay for itself. A Travelzoo one-night stay in The Olde Bell, in Hurley, Berkshire – one of England’s oldest inns – was £74 cheaper than going direct and included a bottle of fizz. Unlike some competitors, Travelzoo often lets you check availability before booking. And when you can’t, if you subsequently can't find any dates to suit, you can usually claim a refund. This explains the decent four-star score it secured for deal clarity in our survey, with one user commenting: ‘Offers arrive regularly; they’re clearly described, easy to book and genuine’ – a ringing endorsement. Just note who’s responsible for your booking and research reviews of the company before booking.

Discover bargains on Travelzoo

Groupon review 73%

Groupon, like Wowcher, acts as a marketplace for businesses. On Groupon, companies can post their own offers to members, which means they can write their own adverts and claims, although Groupon says on its website that it verifies deals before they’re set live. Despite this, could the lack of control have dragged down its customer service and transparency of fee ratings to two stars? Check who you’re booking with, as not every company listed on a voucher site may be someone you’d trust your holiday with. The three Groupon deals we analysed were good, though, including a swanky four-star hotel, The Alan, in Manchester, which was £63 instead of the £114 direct. It even showed when and where it sourced its ‘before’ price from. Despite a few gripes, customers still felt that they got a good deal overall, awarding Groupon a four-star rating for value for money.

Scour Groupon for holiday deals

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Wowcher review 67%

There are some good discounts on Wowcher, but our checks left us less impressed than we were with other profiled sites. Plus, it added an admin fee to all the deals we checked, so beware of the upsell. Wowcher tells businesses looking to join its platform: ‘Most customers will spend more with you than the cost of the original voucher.’ A mystery holiday is an example of where you might be upsold. ‘Maldives, Barbados, Thailand, Las Vegas…’ Wowcher’s headline reads – all from £99 per person. But its T&Cs say just six couples in 2,000 get to visit those destinations. Most end up in European cities such as Cologne or Riga. Want to fly from a nearby regional airport? You may incur a fee of up to £40 per person. (Groupon’s mystery deal we looked at also incurs a fee of £40 if you don’t fly from London.) And don’t forget that only an under-seat bag is guaranteed, potentially leaving you having to pay for hold baggage.

Search travel offers on Wowcher

How to check flight and hotel deals are genuine

No matter how good a deal looks, always do your sums to work out whether you’re making a genuine saving. If it’s a package deal, for example, check what it would cost to book the same airfares and hotel directly. But remember, if you book it this way, you won’t be protected by Package Travel Regulations, which we'd highly recommend. See what protection this provides in our Package Travel Regulations guide.

When sense-checking hotel-only deals, ensure you compare like for like. Check the room type, board basis, plus any extras that may have been thrown into the deal, such as afternoon tea. See our guide to the best-rated hotel booking sites.

How to get 10% off your next holiday booking with cashback sites

Can’t find a deal you want, or stuck with particular travel dates? Save instead by using a cashback site such as Quidco or Topcashback. These essentially offer you a percentage discount on many popular holiday and hotel sites, including Emirates, Eurostar, Expedia, Holiday Extras, Jet2, Trainline and Zest Car Rental. You pay the full amount upfront, then the cashback site will issue you with a saving recouped from the booking as cash in your account. This can take up to a few months.

For instance, if you want to stay at the Hotel Riu Plaza España in Madrid from 7-10 February and you click through to book it on Hotels.com via Quidco, you’ll get 8% of the cost back – a payout of £49.20 on your £615 booking. Cashback site payout rates vary, so look around. For instance, Topcashback offered even more back on our Madrid hotel via Hotels.com – an additional £18.55. Once the money clears, you can withdraw it as a bank transfer or via PayPal.

There are no hidden tricks here, but before committing to buying through a cashback site, shop around for the best deal, including with airlines and holiday companies not linked to cashback sites.

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