More and more people are taking advantage of fewer restrictions and barriers to travel to see parts of the world both near and far. As one of the safest modes of travel available, many travelers are turning to the large number of airlines giving us access to dozens of locations around the globe. The one barrier to finding and booking flights has been price. Historically, flights to both remote and near locales have been costly, but by taking advantage of a few easy to access resources, anyone can find cheap flights to almost anywhere in the world.Of all the benefits we receive from ubiquitous Internet access in this country, one of the best has been easy price comparisons. Any product can be researched for easy price comparisons to help you find the best deal. Same goes for travel but there are a few things to look out for. For one thing, many websites just show fares from some other discount sites known as fare consolidators. This means that many travel sites are just recycling the same fares. You’ll want to use dedicated price comparison sites to find the best fares. Also some sites, due to the way they are programmed, don’t always have up to date fare info. For smaller sites, very often the air fare information is stale and the actual price can be very different.There are a few large sites that strike special deals with the airlines allowing them access to the latest fare information. Sites like Travelocity, Expedia and Hotwire, all have access to information other sites don’t have, so they might be a better resource for finding great travel deals. Nevertheless, these sites can also give less than desirable results. The reason is that as a requirement of having access to the latest data, they are prevented from showing certain prices at certain times by certain airlines. so that depending on where you are travelling and when, even the best sites might not have the best fares.One way you can get past the negative aspects of online air fare searches, is to move your search offline. This means shutting off the computer and taking a trip to your local travel agent. Companies that are a part of the travel industry are generally a close knit group. They want to protect the business models that have made them so much money over the years. So many airlines, along with hotel and tour operators, save some of their best deals for distribution by the legions of travel agents that they’ve worked with sometimes for decades. Going to your local travel agent might just give you the best price since most travel agent fees are flat and they have no reason to try to sell you on the highest fares for your trip.While the Internet can offer great resources in general for finding cheap flights and air fare, the best resources are often brick and mortar travel agencies. Not only is there not impetus to push you towards the highest fare, (unlike airline affiliates), you gain the additional advantage of a personal hands on approach to finding the best fare and booking your trip.