A look at recently launched travel sites MetroFlats, Hipmunk

Travelers have plenty of online resources, but two recent entries in the market stand out for their simplicity and ease of use.

www.metroflats.com

People who like the idea of staying in a home instead of going the hotel/motel route will want to drop in on MetroFlats, where they'll find a good hunting ground for houses, apartments, beach homes, rooms and business lodging.

MetroFlats is an online vacation-rentals marketplace that began in July. It's designed to connect travelers with hosts who want to rent out their homes when they're not using them.

The site was founded by Shamoon Siddiqui, who also launched the online book rental service BookSwim.

Hosts post photos, descriptions and prices on the site. Travelers can search by city and get a list of available homes in the area. In most cases, they can save a lot of money, compared with hotel rates. They can modify their search by price, number of bedrooms and bathrooms, and number of accommodations needed.

MetroFlats covers major U.S. cities and plans to expand to overseas listings in the first quarter of 2011.

www.hipmunk.com

Hipmunk is an airline-flight search tool that's designed to be easy to use.

Users type in the arrival and destination cities, and the site presents the results on one easy-to-read page. Flights are listed on a color-coded graph with departure and arrival times and are sorted by price, length and number of stops. Clicking on an individual listing gives you more details about that specific flight.

For people with more than one stop on their itinerary, there's a multi-city search feature.

The site has a blog with helpful advice for travelers, such as how to deal with bumped flights or how to minimize time spent in airport security.