(MONEY Magazine) – --These days, it's been easier than ever to find a great travel deal: SARS in Asia and Canada, a backlash against the French that sent tourism in France reeling, a tough economy that left many American families "vacationing" at home--all these factors have produced a bumper crop of bargains everywhere from Bangkok to the Cote d'Azur. And the Web has made snagging them even faster.

--AIRLINE TICKETS Buy tickets very early or very late--or very quickly: On the most competitive routes, sale fares disappear faster than a sunny day in Seattle. If you know where you want to go, use the Internet to keep regular tabs on air fares. On Travelocity you can set the search engine to e-mail you whenever the price drops $25 on a certain route. Or download the free SideStep application (sidestep.com), which allows you to search several travel websites at once.

When fares drop, how do you know when to buy? Tom Parsons of Bestfares.com says a coast-to-coast flight at 3¢ to 4¢ a mile is a screaming bargain--$180 to $240 for a round trip between L.A. and New York City, say--and should be snapped up ASAP, while 5¢ to 6¢ a mile is good but hardly great.

If you later see a lower fare for the same flight, call the airline's customer service hotline. You won't get a refund, but you might get a voucher for the difference. (This doesn't apply to discounters like JetBlue and Southwest.)

--FREQUENT-FLIER MILES If you're finding it hard to cash in your miles for award travel to a popular destination, consider forking over the extra miles (sometimes double) for a "rule buster" ticket, which guarantees you anytime availability. Puerto Rico in February, anyone?

--HOTEL ROOMS To snare a hotel over a weekend, call one that caters to business travelers. Avoid discounters like Ramada, which tend to hike their rates on weekends. And do the reverse on weekdays.

Sign up for every hotel membership program you can. This will net you about a 25% discount off the rack rate as well as other perks: Frequent guests at the Wyndham chain, for instance, get free local and long-distance calls. And once you've found a deal through a website like Expedia or Orbitz, call the hotel directly and ask them to match it. Hotels save their best rooms for their membership guests.

--CYBELE WEISSER