I love to travel and go on trips. Actually, that’s where I spend the majority of my “fun” money. So far this summer I’ve been on three road trips with friends…and I’m planning at least two more before summer’s end! Apparently I’m not alone with my love of summer travel. According to a survey conducted by Ebates, 82% of Americans are planning a summer trip! The site set up a page devoted to travel bargains with cash back rebates – I’m in love.

1) Cash back on hotel rooms –  Ebates offers cash back at major hotels. In fact, all three hotels I’ve stayed at this summer (Tropicana in Atlantic City, the Holiday Inn in Boston, and the Marriott in Boston) all were available on Ebates. Ranging from 1.5% to to 7.5% cash back, that adds up to big savings when booking hotel rooms, especially if you’re booking multiple nights. On average, the hotels I stayed at were about $400 a night (don’t worry I cut costs by staying with friends) which is common for destination hotels. If you were to book 5 nights at the hotel at $400 a night it would cost $2,000…even with only 2.5% cash back you’d get back $50. And all for logging in at Ebates and clicking through to the hotel’s website.

2) Categories – At the top of Ebates travel page is a list of categories including hotels, spa, airfare, car rentals and more. The categories make is simple to navigate through the different vendors. For example I only really need to look at hotel vendors so I can narrow the results by clicking on hotels. By doing so, I change from seeing all the travel vendors to those with hotels. This makes is much easier to compare cash back rates.

3) Travel deal sites – Ebates has partnered with sites like Expedia (my favorite) and Priceline to help you find the best deal and score cash back. By booking through Expedia you can search different hotels for the same price AND get the rate of 5.2% cash back no matter what hotel you book. This is a great deal especially since the travel sites have higher cash back rates than most of the single hotels. If I’d booked my stay at the Tropicana through Ebates (at $420 a night and 5.2% cash back) I would have scored $21.84 in cash back! Note: The 5.2% is only valid on special rate hotels BUT many of them are big name hotels that are greatly discounted. A few I saw were Marriott, Tropicana and Trump Plaza.

4) Flight Deals – While Ebates does offer cash back on flights, you only get between 1-2 percent back. I compared this rate to other cash back sites and it’s typical. Using credit cards with points as well as Ebates cashback is probably the best way to get the most bang for you buck when buying airfares.

5) Promo Codes – I love promo codes! It’s fun to watch that price jump down by just typing in a word, but it can be time consuming to find them. Ebates helps with this by providing all the promo codes associated with each company on their main page. By listing all the codes and deals in one place you can easily and quickly compare each deal and decide which works best for you.

6) Activity & Dining Deals – Ebates has partnered with Living Social, Groupon, and Restaurant.com so you can now score cash back on everything you buy from these sites – from spa treatments to restaurant deals. Eating out can easily eat up your vacation budget so finding these deals is a great way to cut costs. They also have cash back options for pricey activities such as amusement park passes and concert tickets.

The only real complaint I have with Ebates is that I wish there was a way to see which vendor would give me the best deal. With all of the different vendors it’d be great if there were to compare all of the deals for a specific hotel on a certain date and see which would have the best price including discounts and cash back. Clicking through all the different vendors to find the best price is kind of tedious.

Since vacations can be very expensive the amount of cash back you can make in one purchase through Ebates is really enticing. Especially since all you have to do is click through a link.