For students planning a summer vacation, the best prices for the best destinations may be just a click away.

Analysts at Forrester Research have discovered Sidestep, an online travel agency that scans more than 140 websites, including airlines and consolidators, for the best travel deals from 585 airlines, 40,000 hotels and 2,800 rental car locations worldwide. Company representatives guarantee that they can find a lower fare than its competitors more than 60 percent of the time.

Sidestep was founded in November 1999. Since then, it has won Forbes “Best of the Web” award and has attracted a customer base of around 3.5 million users in the past four years by word of mouth.

According to statistics from Consumer Reports, Sidestep may offer better deals than online agencies such as Expedia, Travelocity and Orbitz.

Michelle Evers, a Bowling Green resident, says she flies down to Florida every year for summer vacation. Every year she goes through the same ritual: sitting dazed in front of the computer for hours, hunting site after site, trying to catch the lowest deal possible.

“It’s not that Expedia and Travelocity are offering bad deals, it’s just sometimes they’re not always the best deal,” Evers said.

And she’s right. For example, one round trip from Toledo to Orlando costs $238 at Expedia. The same trip can cost the consumer $161 if they buy their tickets directly from TransMeridian Airlines. Why?

Major travel booking site’s searches are a little more subjective than objective. Analysts from Consumer Reports Travel Letter say these travel site’s searches are limited, tending to nudge consumers towards only a handful of airlines they favor, rather than a number of others that may have the best deal.

One thing that makes Sidestep different from its competitors is that the company is privately owned and does not make exclusive deals or alliances with any airline. Also, unlike other websites, Sidestep must be downloaded to the consumer’s hard drive, which is free of charge. This software allows a consumer side-by-side comparison of ticket prices and flight times.

For example, say a consumer goes into Expedia to find a flight. Once they enter the usual variables, such as destination and times into Expedia’s search engine, Sidestep will automatically pop up in an adjacent window and conduct its own search. Sidestep’s engine will duck down into every airline site and grab those other fares that Expedia might miss or purposely filter out. This saves the consumer time from having to check multiple sites to find the lowest fare.

Once the consumer finds what they are looking for, Sidestep will connect them directly to the airline’s site. By doing this, the company’s website points out, the consumer benefits in two ways.

First, a direct connection trims off any excess fees. A lot of people do not realize that Orbitz, Expedia and Travelocity charge customers a booking fee for using their site.

“Expedia and other sites will charge somewhere in between $5 to $7 for getting you set up,” a consumer representative at Expedia said.

Second, the consumer also has the chance to earn frequen flyer mileage points with their purchase. Airlines and hotels award frequent flyer points or frequent stay points only when a trip is booked directly on the airline’s or hotel’s website.

However, despite these perks, Sidestep does face potential hurdles. Forrester Research writer Henry Heveldt reports that there is at least one advantage other airline sites have over Sidestep. Sites such as Expedia, Travelocity and Orbitz generate enough revenue to play with their money, enabling them to cut their own deals with airlines and offer exclusive package deals to the consumer.

According to an Expedia representative, the company offers a wide variety of web specials and specializes in last minute travel deals that are not available anywhere else.

Sites like Travelocity, Expedia, and Priceline offer “opaque fares” which save consumers more money on a ticket if they agree to book a flight before they know the airline’s flight times. These flights can be almost $95 cheaper than Sidestep’s published rates. Thus, Sidestep may be a useful tool Harteveldt points out, but it is not a guaranteed winner in the fare game.

However, despite its imperfections, the company hopes its low fares, broad range of options and efficient search of multiple sites at the same time may outweigh its disadvantages to consumers and put it one step ahead of the rest.