ellynet:

This bittersweet process of searching for hotel rooms led me to five online travel search tools I plan on using for future trip planning frenzies. I highly recommend these based on my experience with my OCD travel planning.

As most of us have done our travel planning 100% online for quite a few years now, innovation in travel-planning tools has taken a decidedly social bent. Trendy as that may seem, the collected travel experiences of a social network of like-minded people have proved pretty useful to me. Stupid About.com lists be damned!…