Summer holidays are a time to forget about the stresses and strains of day-to-day life and consider instead two weeks of sun, sea and sand.

Bagging a bargain doesn't just mean a cheap flight to Madrid for £59. If you have the budget and the ambition, you can use the same online operators to search for something more exotic - a luxury break, a cruise or an adventure holiday - and still save a ton of cash.

Don't think we're about to advocate spending more money than you have to, though. Our endeavour in this investigation is not to break the bank for the sake of it. Rather, we intend to find out how well the online offerings of some of the big-name tour operators cater for anyone with more exotic travel tastes.

So, if you have set your sights beyond that fortnight in the Costa Brava then read on for our reviews of what the top online holiday hawkers have to offer further afield.

Thomas Cook
For a firm that is undoubtedly a prince among package-deal operators, Thomas Cook's website looks decidedly low rent. Indeed, much of the site's front end is devoted to cheap getaway breaks to popular European destinations, with a list of late (and hence cut-price) deals updated ever 20 minutes.

This is all well and good if you want to make a quick dash to Majorca and Tenerife, but what does Thomas Cook's online outfit offer for the more adventurous traveller? Initial prospects seemed good, with a dedicated Faraway section secreted under the Holidays link.

However, we didn't get very far with Faraway. A couple of weeks on Gambia's Kotu Beach, perhaps? Yes but no, apparently. While this is one of dozens of similarly exotic destination listed under the Faraway heading, Thomas Cook was seemingly unable to take us on a two-week trip in either June or July. Or August. Or September. So what, we wonder, is the point of enticing adventurous visitors in the first place?

Accepting that this might be a problem peculiar to this particular destination, we tried booking trips to numerous other far-flung places. Sadly, it was the same story: searches for dream breaks to the British Virgin Isles and Runaway Beach (Jamaica) on various dates throughout the summer turned up precisely zilch.

Of course, that's not to say Thomas Cook couldn't transport you to these luxurious locations - but goodness only knows what permutations might be needed to elicit some results from the site's search system.

Verdict: Thomas Cook's online service is great for finding and booking short-haul breaks, but during our tests at least, and in terms of finding anything fancier than well-trodden tourist traps, it flopped.

Opodo
The awkwardly named Opodo website is one of the newest online holiday outfits, but rest assured that the firms behind it - British Airways, Air France and Alitalia among others - are all old hands at the travel game.

The site's look is considerably cleaner than that of Thomas Cook; lots of white space makes focusing on the active areas far easier. Indeed, using the top-most tab headings it didn't take us long to find one of Opodo's strongest points - an extensive Travel Guides section. By extensive we mean the broad range of locations covered rather than descriptive depth, but it presents a great way to explore the world of travel.

Start with a world map and then drill down to areas of interest, whereupon Opodo will highlight points of interest along with current offers to those locations. It's a very intuitive way to pinpoint the perfect place for your period of play.

Most links invariably lead to economy class, flight-only deals, which might not be quite what frills-seekers are after. If you want all the trimmings then you need to try the Holidays tab, where luxury trips reside alongside cheap city breaks. A nice touch here is the Lifestyle section, where holidays are sorted under categories such as Safari & Wildlife and Diving - it's very easy to find a fantasy setting (though don't expect the site to help you find the cash to pay for the transport there).

Should you decide to indulge, then booking is straightforward, though we did detect a slight interface inconsistency here: the user is required to manually enter desired departure and return dates, rather than selecting them from drop-down menus or a pop-up calendar, as is the case in other areas of the site.

Verdict: Opodo is a great flights and holidays website for anyone set on something a little more special this summer. Shame about the brain-befuddling rotational symmetry of its name.

Ebookers
Craving a little luxury at low cost? Well, veteran online holiday firm ebookers is so confident that it has the cheapest deals on top-notch trips that it promises to match the price of any luxury holiday from any competitor. That's quite some pledge, and one that deserves to be put to the test.

As it goes, our desires were limited by budgetary constraints. For some reason the editor wouldn't let us squander company resources testing out numerous first-class jaunts around the world, leaving us to delight in the daydreams conjured up by exploring the links to plush breaks on far-off shores.

Within ebookers' Luxury section there is certainly plenty to fantasise about. Navigation mirrors Opodo's zoom-in-from-map approach, though beyond continent level there are only simple text links (Opodo's system allows deeper graphical exploration, which is somehow more natural).

In fact, our daydreaming was swiftly dealt a rude awakening, as an attempt to investigate holidays under the Pacific Islands link resulted in, well - nothing. Despite poetic descriptions alluding to the islands' 'luxurious resorts', 'picture-perfect beaches' and 'brilliant reefs, teeming with tropical fish', ebookers doesn't actually offer holidays to any of them. At least, it didn't during our tests.

Fortunately, the company will take you almost anywhere else in the world, with the Continental Drift package particularly worthy of attention (globetrot to eight destinations, flying first class, from just under £5,000).

However, it might be worth noting that, as is often the case with travel websites, finalising the booking of such a diverse-itinerary trip requires a phone chat with the firm's call centre. Which might make you wonder why you logged on in the first place.

Verdict: Ebookers' extensive range of luxury holidays is sure to appeal to travellers with a taste for life's finer things, and the prices aren't exorbitant. However, the company's claim to be able to offer travel on Concorde is distinctly questionable given the aircraft's retirement.

Cheapflights and Cheapholidaydeals
It's perhaps a little unfair to scout for anything other than cheap flights on a website called Cheapflights, but luxury is our aim and Cheapflights is a big player in the online travel game. Indeed, the content of the site's homepage is entirely eponymous, save for a couple of tabbed headings: Holidays and Short Breaks. Both link through to newly opened sister site Cheapholidaydeals.

Like several other services reviewed here, Cheapholidaydeals is, in fact, a travel aggregator, rather than a dedicated tour operator. In other words, while the site maintains links to hundreds of holidays and trips to all of the globe's curved corners, each links through to the website (or telephone number) of the company that will do the organising proper.

The benefit, initially at least, is easy comparison of deals from a variety of operators. The flipside is that you can never be quite sure where the site will direct you next, and as a new browser window is opened with each followed link, the screen can quickly become a confusing mess of windows.

That said, we really liked the site's destination-refinement method. Starting with where you want to go, the search is soon narrowed down to holidays with flights departing from desired (ie nearby) airports - the departure point so often proving the sticking point when hunting down suitable trips.

As for the class factor, Cheapholidaydeals is a little behind the pack. It's not that the site doesn't track top-notch trips abroad: the problem is that there is no specific luxury categorisation (apart from the niche-appeal Cruise Holidays), so finding pampered breaks can be quite hard work.

Verdict: Cheapholidaydeals (or Cheapflights, if you prefer) is easy to use but as superior stuff is mixed in with the more standard offerings, it's not the perfect place to book a high-class holiday.

Travelocity
Assuming that the image of Alan Whicker's face pasted over a chiselled physique and surfboard that greets visitors to the homepage doesn't immediately put you off exploring the site further, Travelocity has several points in its favour.