In today’s age of technology, travel has become available to more people than ever before. No longer do you have to visit a travel agent to book a flight or vacation, or buy a traditional guidebook to plan your journey in the places you’re going to visit. In fact, now the availability of information is almost overwhelming, and it can sometimes be difficult to know where to turn for the best advice, information, and resources to make the most of your trip. We’ve curated this list of 7 flight resources to help inspire your travels and give you some practical guidance when travel planning, booking flights, or dealing with airline delays or cancellations. Whether you’re in the savings stage or ready to book that next trip, we hope that at least a few of these resources will help make your travel experience even better.

AirHelp

AirHelp is an online service that helps you claim compensation for your flight delay or cancellation. Yes, flight delays occasionally happen, but you don’t necessarily have to accept them nor the inconveniences they cause. In some cases, if your flight was in the EU, you may be entitled to as much as €600 in compensation if your flight was delayed, canceled, or overbooked. The amount of compensation depends on the distance of your flight. If your flight is delayed for over three hours or your flight’s canceled, you might be able to get compensated, and AirHelp will do the work for you. If AirHelp is able to secure your compensation on your behalf, they will take a portion of your compensation as a fee. If the claim isn’t accepted, you don’t have to pay anything, as making the claim itself is free.

We used AirHelp to submit a claim for a canceled flight to France. We know from experience that submitting claims directly through the airline can be a huge pain at times, so we were happy to let them do the work for us. If the claim isn’t accepted, you don’t have to pay anything, as making the claim itself is free.

You can visit AirHelp to make a claim for your delayed flight.

Kayak Explore

If you want to find cheap flights out of your area, Kayak Explore has you covered. You can get flights all over the world for excellent prices. For those with some flexibility, you could let the low fares help you decide where to visit next. You can also focus on your destination of choice and explore all of the options available. Either way, you can find a way to get to where you want to be at prices that can be much lower than those found elsewhere. Search flights on Kayak.

Service by Claim Compass

Millions of air passengers are entitled to compensation for flight delays, cancellations, and overbooking every year. Yet, because they are unaware of their rights and airlines make it so hard for them to get their money, less than 2% actually receive their flight compensation. Claim Compass takes the complication out of this process so you don't personally need to know your air passenger rights to claim what you're owed. They've also recently added the flight delay app Service to their portfolio, which saves you money when you travel. By making a quick inbox connection, the Service app will search for any past flights for which you might be eligible for monetary compensation. This allows you to get paid for flight disruptions and hotel rate changes without having to lift a finger.

Dollar Flight Club

Another great tool in any traveler's toolbox is Dollar Flight Club. By joining, you’ll get weekly emails from their flight-hacking-obsessed team with the cheapest deals on international airfare, like booking $250 round-trip fares to Bali. Check it out by signing up for their free trial – click here for more info. By signing up, you’ll get email alerts when flights to your dream destinations are really cheap. Join thousands of members and save over $550 per ticket.

Airport Lounge Access via Priority Pass

Do you travel a lot but hate waiting in the loud and uncomfortable airport before your flight – packed seating, trying to find an outlet to charge, and overpaying for food and drink? Check out Priority Pass – a program that gives you lounge access around the world in more than 1,200 airports. They have various pricing options starting at just $99, depending on how much you travel. We never leave home without our membership card and love the unlimited free food, alcoholic drinks, comfortable seating, Wi-Fi, and much more offered by the lounges in nearly any airport around the world.

Travel Insurance

Traveling abroad can be one of the most rewarding and memorable adventures, but leaving your home country presents additional challenges and risks. Among the most important parts of travel are your health, safety, and the security of your belongings. If you happen to get sick and can't travel unexpectedly, travel insurance will reimburse you for the costs of non-refundable flights. Over our many years traveling, we’ve had our fair share of travel scenarios gone wrong (or worse), and in many circumstances, our decision to purchase travel insurance really saved us.

Let’s be honest for a second… travel insurance sucks. These companies are banking on the fact that you’ll buy a policy and never need to make a claim. Sometimes worse is the effort some insurance companies put into finding a way to reduce or reject your claim based on the fine print of the policy. Still, there are lots of cases where paying for insurance might actually make sense, and traveling abroad is often one of those. One time we even saved $12,000 by purchasing travel insurance due to an unexpected medical expense.

Travel Credit Cards

Many credit cards offer great travel benefits to frequent flyers. You can find cards issued by major banks like Chase, Citibank, and American Express, which offer a variety of cards to give you points for purchases as well as additional benefits on travel, flights, and at the airport. There are quite a few airline-specific cards as well, issued in partnership with Delta Air Lines, United, British Airways, American Airlines, Iberia, and more. We personally hold the Chase Sapphire Reserve card, Capital One Venture X card as well as the Delta Blue and Delta Reserve American Express. These cards combined give us lounge access around the world, special point and mile earning opportunities, TSA Pre-Check, Global Entry, and more. If you're interested in learning more about points and travel credit cards, we definitely recommend checking out The Points Guy blog.

Note: You can visit AirHelp to make a claim for your delayed flight.