The Opera web browser is the perfect tool to help you find the best travel deals online. Whether you’re looking for flights, hotels, vacation packages or just a rental car, Opera makes it easier and just might help you get a better deal on your next trip.

Finding the best deals on flights and hotels isn’t as simple as it used to be. These days websites follow you using cookies and other trackers, see what you’re looking at and sometimes use that information against you. For example, if you’re searching for the best price on a flight, travel websites notice that and may raise the price on subsequent visits.

Fortunately, Opera offers several tools that can stop websites from tracking you and help you find those cheap flights and great hotel deals.

Use private browsing mode

To minimize the chances of a travel website raising prices on you, take advantage of Opera’s private browsing mode.

Every time you search for a flight or hotel, open a new private window. To do that, click the Opera logo in the upper left corner of the window and chose New private window. This will open a new window that’s effectively a blank slate, none of your browsing history or cookies will be visible to any websites you visit.

It works the other way around too. Once you close the private window, any cookies that were used in it will be removed, along with the record of the sites you browsed in that window, which means you won’t see those pages in your history. This is good for finding travel deals, since you will always look like a new visitor to the website, but bad if you want to get back to that site later. The best way around this limitation is to bookmark any page you think you might want to return to later.

Use Opera’s browser VPN

Another way to hide your tracks from the prying eyes of websites is to use Opera’s built-in VPN. Using the VPN means that travel websites won’t know where you’re really browsing from. They can’t, for example, show you higher prices just because you live in New York, if they can’t tell you live in New York. Opera’s free VPN obscures your origin and makes it impossible for websites to know where in the world you really are.

One final tip, don’t forget that Opera has a currency converter, so if for some reason a travel site displays prices in the wrong currency, just select the price and Opera will display a toolbar with the price converted to your currency (see Opera’s settings to change the converted currency).

The combination of private browsing mode and Opera’s built-in VPN will ensure that you always see the lowest prices on airfare and hotels, and help you get the best travel deals.

Searching tips and travel sites

It never hurts to start with a basic search, which is why Opera includes Booking.com in the default speed dial. Start your search for flights, hotels and vacation rentals via Booking.com, as they offer some of the best travel deals. Another great option is Kayak.com, also part of the default sites in Opera’s speed dial. Both booking sites offer flight, car and hotel booking, along with vacation packages and other travel deals.

While Booking.com and Kayak are at your fingertips in Opera, there are some other flight and hotel search companies worth exploring. Skyscanner and Momondo offer clean, simple search interfaces and usually find excellent travel deals. While it doesn’t always have the best price, Google Flights is a good way to see which days are cheaper to fly on (useful if your trip is flexible). Remember to open each of these sites in its own private window.

If you’re planning a trip with enough flexibility, several specialty travel companies can help find more unusual deals. AirWander specializes in finding layover deals. Give it an origin and destination and it will look for good stopping points and deals that would give you time in a new city. For example, when flying from London to Athens, it might be possible to stop in Paris for 24 hours, spend a day in the city and still save money.

Airfarewatchdog is a good place to look for error fares, or mistakes that have for some reason made it online. Another option for similar searches is SecretlyFlying. The last of our deal-finding travel tips is Scott’s Cheap Flights. Plug in your email address and the city you want to fly out of, and Scott’s Cheap Flights will fill your inbox with flight deals. If you take your time and use the right browser tools for booking sites and travel sites, you’ll be surprised by the great travel deals and flight deals you can come across. Compare what various companies offer, and in the end you will save money.

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