Tag Archives: Priceline

TRAVEL TECH THURSDAY 2.7.13

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Rio de Janeiro skyline

Rio de Janeiro — © Mypix | Dreamstime.com

Rio de Janeiro embeds QR codes in sidewalks to put tourism info literally at visitors’ feet. KLM puts your friends’ travel tips in your hands. And a Russian online travel agency sets its crosshairs on Priceline.

BRAZILIAN BRILLIANCE
I don’t know how you say “slick” in Portuguese, but trust me, this is slick.

Rio de Janeiro has some of the world’s greatest sights — Sugarloaf Mountain, the Christ the Redeemer statue, the Copacabana and Ipanema beaches and their thong-clad beachgoers, male and female.
Rio QR code
But if you want to see some real genius in Rio, just look down — and have your smartphone handy.

The city is turning QR codes into mosaics and embedding them into sidewalks around Rio’s tourist attractions.

You can read all about this visitor-friendly urban innovation in this Associated Press story here.

For those of you who have yet to join Smartphone Nation, a QR code is a two-dimensional variation of the standard bar code, but can store a lot more information.

When you scan a QR code with the camera built into your smartphone, it can take your device directly to a Web site. A scan of the Rio sidewalk QR code takes you to a tourist information site — in English, Spanish or Portuguese, as well as a city map.

It works with any smartphone that has a camera and a QR-scanning app, the latter of which you can download off the Web for pennies or even free.

Rio plans install 30 of these at various tourist sites around the city.

The brilliance is as artistic as it is practical, since the QR design was worked into a mosaic sidewalk. The very design of the QR code lends itself perfectly to mosaics.

Like i said…slick.

You don’t even have to be in Rio to use it. I’ve scanned the Ipanema mosaic QR code right off my computer screen here in San Diego, more than 6,000 miles away. It worked as fine — and as fast — as if I were standing directly over it.

IBIT says: Within five years, you’ll be seeing QR codes embedded into sidewalks in major destination cities around the world. Bet on it.

Meanwhile, next time you find yourself in Rio, don’t forget to look down.

YOUR OWN LIVING TRAVEL MAP
Royal Dutch Airlines, better known around the world as KLM, is trotting out a computer app that lets you turn your friends into a travel information asset that you can put in your pocket.

KLM logo

Basically, it lets you incorporate tips from your social media connections into your own personalized travel map, which the airline prints and send to you, free of charge.

The airline calls it Must See Map. Here’s how it works:

  1. Go to the Must See Map site. Pick one of the 100 preloaded destinations, all of which happen to be part of KLM’s route system.
  2. Name — and SAVE! — your map.
  3. Invite your friends via Facebook, Twitter or email to look at your destination map and mark their own suggestions for must-do’s and must-see’s on it.
  4. When you feel you’ve got enough tips, order your map.

That’s it. About three weeks later, your personalized destination map will arrive via conventional “snail mail” from KLM. That’s right, an old-school, foldable, jam-it-in-a-pack-or-a-pocket paper map.

Again, it’s free. No charge for “shipping and handling.” No charge for anything. Gratis.

And yes, you will be able to access your customized map online, also.

If there’s a weakness in this idea, it’s that KLM forces you to create this map on a desktop, laptop or tablet computer. You can’t create your Must See Map on a smartphone.

Once you create the map, however, your invitees can add their destination tips via smartphone.

Also, this application evidently doesn’t cover all of KLM’s vast list of destinations. Perhaps the airline is waiting to see how travelers respond to Must See Map before expanding the destination list.

IBIT says: This could make a pretty cool trip souvenir, even if you end up not going — not to mention a good prop at a pre-trip or post-trip party. Also, I’ve flown KLM and they do a good job.

FROM RUSSIA WITH BARGAINS(?)
William Shatner may soon be hearing footsteps, and they’re coming all the way from Moscow.

Apparently, the Russian-owned online agency OneTwoTrip is looking to take on both Expedia and Priceline.
OneTwoTrip logo
According to the Russian business news site BSR Russia, OneTwoTrip already is selling airline tickets and is looking to move into booking hotels. And while initially targeting the expanding Russian middle-class market, the company has no intention of stopping there.

That by itself is interesting enough, but really raised my eyebrows was how OneTwoTrip plans to elbow its way into the Expedia-Priceline orbit — by providing what you might call value-added online information.

In addition to airline bookings, for instance, the site already rates airlines on seat pitch, the likelihood of flight delays and even the age of their airplanes.

Having recently flown on a Boeing 747 that may have been at least as old as the flight crew, with an in-flight entertainment system that your parents first flew with, I can tell you that aircraft age matters.

OneTwoTrip already is planning to do something similar with hotels, even telling you which ones — in their opinion, anyway — are overpriced.

You can read the entire BSR Russia story here.

Intrigued? I sure am. As a consumer, I’m also hesitant. Given the amount of cybercrime that originates in Russia, I would have to think long and hard before knowingly booking anything online over a Russian commercial site.

Still, if this enhanced online travel service shows signs of catching on, expect Priceline and its US contemporaries to upgrade their own offerings in response.

IBIT says: The folks behind OneTwoTrip sound smart and innovative. If they can get past Russia’s reputation as one of the world’s hacker capitals, they just might give William Shatner reason to sweat.

ALSO CHECK OUT:
INTRODUCING: Travel Tech Thursday
In search of travel apps, Part 1
In search of travel apps, Part 2
SAFE TRAVEL: Can your hotel room be hacked?

the IBIT Travel Digest 2.3.13

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The good, the bad and the bizarre in the world of travel

cropped-hburghof.jpg

When you’ve finished overdosing on Super Bowl hype, chips and dip, come refresh your mind with a peek at what’s happening in the world of travel

PRICELINE+KAYAK=?
We are soon to find out, because according to Travel Weekly, the Federal Trade Commission has signed off on Priceline’s bid to buy the popular travel search engine for $1.8 billion.

That pretty much makes the sale a done deal, which could go down as soon as next month.

Snapping up Kayak gives Priceline a powerful search tool to tie in with its existing travel sales service. Less clear is how this marriage will benefit the traveling consumer.

On the other hand, Priceline has said that Kayak will to function as an independent entity, so we’ll see what happens.

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CAR SHARING: THE BIG BOYS TAKE NOTICE
You know that a new way of doing things really works when the big, old-line corporations start diving into it. That’s what has happened with car sharing.

Car sharing is kind of the automotive version of couchsurfing. It got its start in Switzerland in 1948 and took hold in the rest of Europe in the 1970s.

Once you become a member of a car-sharing service, you can rent a car for an entire day, a few hours or even a few minutes, if that’s all you need. You pick up the car in town, use it around town, drop it off in town. Cheaper and often more convenient than conventional car rentals, more flexibility and independence than taxis.

The concept doesn’t appeal only to travelers. Some people who don’t need a car full-time every day are actually getting rid of their own wheels (and the costs that go with them) and resorting to car sharing instead.

It’s also a good way to get a real-world feel for operating an unfamiliar vehicle type, whether it’s a pick-up truck or an electric car — without having to put up with a car salesman.

One of the pioneers in this field has been Zipcar, available in 34 states and the District of Columbia, as well as Ontario and Vancouver in Canada, as well as Barcelona, Spain and five cities in the United Kingdom.

How well does this concept work? Well enough for some of the rental car industry’s biggest players to take notice.

Hertz is answering its challenge by creating a car-sharing service of its own which it calls Hertz On-Demand. Enterprise followed suit with what they call WeCar. Even U-Haul has jumped into this game with U Car Share.

Avis, too, is buying the Zipcar concept. It’s also buying Zipcar…for $500 million.

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MORE (CRUISE) SHIPS AHOY
At this point, I’m not sure if the cruise industry’s shipbuilding binge is entering its second decade or its third. The one thing I do know: It’s not stopping.

Royal Caribbean, locked in mortal combat with Carnival for the dominant share of the market, is showing every sign of both expanding and updating its fleet super-sized cruisers.

They’re already moving to trademark the names of six new Oasis-class vessels that haven’t even been built yet.

The Oasis-class — led by its namesake, the Oasis of the Seas — is currently the largest cruise ship afloat, maxing out at 5,400 passengers.

But Royal Caribbean isn’t stopping there. The line also is working on a new, slightly downsized cruise ship, the Sunshine-class, designed to transport and entertain a mere 4,100 passengers at a time.

This ship is so new, the first one hasn’t been named yet, much less built. But according to Travel Weekly, Royal Caribbean has already committed to building a second one.

I have no idea how the folks at Carnival will respond to this, but you know that they will be respond. It’s like an arms race, only with oceanview suites, water slides and Bahama Mamas.

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AND FINALLY…
If you were (or perhaps still are) a regular viewer of the 1970s TV series M*A*S*H, you might vaguely recall lots of occasional references to some mythical town or village whose name sounded like “Wee-John-Boo.”

Well, it turns out that Uijeongbu is no myth. It’s a real place, where the real Mobile Army Surgical Hospital operated during the Korean War. And in South Korea, its legacy extends far beyond film and television.

The people of Uijeongbu, desperately hungry during the war, made meals of whatever they could get their hands on. The result was a dish the locals called budaejjigae, Korean for “army base stew.”

Basically, it combined traditional Korean ingredients with whatever leftovers the locals could scrounge or smuggle from U.S. Army mess tents.

The shooting eventually stopped (the Korean War has never formally ended), but “army base stew” remained a staple of Uijeongbu — and Julie Wan of the Washington Post took advantage of a visit to her family in Seoul to seek out this most unconventional dish in its birthplace.

And as you’ll see when you read her story, she found it.

If you know the origins of things like gumbo, barbecue or fried chicken, you can relate to budaejjigae. Cookbooks today are full of dishes devised by poor, hungry people who tossed anything and everything into a stew pot and used a slow fire, a lot of spices and their imaginations to create something unforgettable.

If I ever find myself in South Korea, I may need to make a small side trip to Uijeongbu.

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And now, here’s The Digest:

AIR
from Travel Weekly
JetBlue experimenting with an expedited security service that could — maybe — speed you past regular airport security lines. For a fee, of course.

from Smarter Travel
Visual advice on how to dress for air travel. Aimed mainly at women, but the fellas can learn a few things from this, too. SLIDESHOW

from Smarter Travel
The TSA shuts down an airport terminal in Atlanta because of an unattended…toothbrush? You can’t make this stuff up. I mean, those Colgate bombs can be deadly…

from Smarter Travel
Did you know that fresh oranges, in addition to being healthy for you on the ground, can help keep you hydrated in the air? These and other healthy food tips for air travelers.

LAND
from Travel Weekly
Hertz now letting its Gold Plus Rewards members upgrade their rental cars via their smartphone app.

SEA
from Travel Weekly
Carnival cancels Belize port calls for two of its biggest ships through 2013. The cruise line says the port is overcrowded with ships.

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AFRICA
from Tanzania Daily News (Tanzania) via allAfrica.com
Serengeti National Park, already a UN World Heritage Site, wins a prestigious international tourism award.

from The Star (Kenya) via allAfrica.com
The German cruise ship MV Astor makes a historic port call at Lamu, setting aside fears of kidnappings by Somali bandits.

from The Star (Kenya) via allAfrica.com
Are British Army units training in East Africa arming and equipping poachers?

AMERICAS
from CNN Travel
Today’s Super Bowl is more than just a battle between two pro football teams. It’s also a tale of two cities, Baltimore and San Francisco, and how they play. SLIDESHOW

from NBC News
New York City’s Grand Central Terminal celebrated its centennial last Friday. The Empire State Building and the Statue of Liberty may be great monuments, but if you want to locate New York’s beating heart, you’ll find it here.

from the New York Times
Yes, you can send an email to the Bahamas, but a mail boat can send you there.

from Travel Weekly
Haiti officially protests the latest U.S. State Department travel advisory on visiting the island nation, which reads in art: “No one is safe from kidnapping, regardless of occupation, nationality, race, gender or age.” State denies trying to discourage Haitian tourism.

ASIA/PACIFIC
from Yomiuri Shimbun
Deep in a forest, well away from the mad urban bustle of Tokyo, a village of Japanese craftsmen hand-builds elegant wood furniture with skills honed over 15 centuries.

from France 24
Missed out on the New Year’s Day festivities Jan. 1? Well, there’s still Chinese New Year coming up on Feb. 10, and the place to party is Hong Kong.

from CNTV
A small lake fishing village in China’s Yunnan province becomes a hidden tourist gem.

EUROPE
from the New York Times
Feel yourself choking on mobs of tourists in Venice? Find a way to go eat with some of the locals.

from Lonely Planet
Is this the world’s most beautiful train ride? It’s in Norway.

from Travel Weekly
The Waldorf-Astoria hotel chain is making a serious move on Europe. With hotels already in London, Rome and Versailles, the luxury brand is now opening a Waldorf-Astoria in Berlin. And they’re not done. SLIDESHOW

the IBIT TRAVEL DIGEST 11.11.12

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The good, the bad and the bizarre from the world’s best travel media

RETURN OF THE SLEEPER
Back in the 1860s, a fellow named George Pullman felt that overnight trains were well short on comfort, so he decided to do something about it. The sleeping car he created would make his name synonymous with luxury rail travel for the next hundred years.

Pullman is long gone, but according to Yahoo Travel, the company that bears his name is bringing those cars back.

Pullman Rail Journeys is now offering rail excursions in fully restored sleeper, dining and lounge cars between Chicago and New Orleans.

If you love rail travel, and especially if you love the idea of following the Mississippi River by rail from the Second City to the land of “laissez les bon temps rouler,” this one needs to go to the top of your bucket list.

But this also is a trip back into “our” history, because Mr. Pullman’s plush railcars also gave rise to the Pullman porters, who played one of the most important — and least-known — roles in the black American struggle for civil rights.

You can learn about that struggle in Chicago with a visit to the A. Philip Randolph Pullman Porter Museum.

What about the other end of the journey, you ask? This, I can tell you from personal experience: A train is one of the two most enjoyable and satisfying ways to arrive in or leave New Orleans (the other being via cruise ship).

For more details, visit the Pullman Rail Journeys Web site here.

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WHEELS OF FORTUNE
Actually, more like wheels that will cost you a fortune. NBC News serves up its list of the world’s ten most scenically glorious, luxuriously glamourous — and heart-stoppingly expensive rail journeys.

Not surprisingly, four of them are in Europe, with two in the Asia/Pacific region and one each in North America, South America and Africa. And on each, the trains are practically destinations in themselves.

Keep this list handy for that day when you hit the lottery. SLIDESHOW

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LIGHTEN YOUR LOAD
In the ongoing struggle to get travelers to pack less — for the sake of their backs as well as their wallets — the folks over at Smarter Travel started looking at what travelers typically bring with them.

The goal, to identify things you should leave at home and buy during your trip.

They came up with seven items, which they put in a slideshow.

Doing this not only can lighten your luggage, but if approached in the right spirit, can become a mini-cultural adventure. You can learn a lot about a place when you go shopping in a different part of the world for something other than souvenirs.

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PRICELINE SAILS OFF WITH KAYAK
The consolidation in the online travel industry continues. After Google bought up the Frommer’s travel Web site, online travel auctioneer Priceline now joins the party by purchasing price comparison site Kayak for $1.8 billion.

Travel planners aren’t likely to notice much difference at first, so long as Priceline sticks with its plan to allow Kayak to continue to function as an independent entity. Sooner or later, however, all of these massive mergers are going to make a difference in how we shop for travel online — and how much we pay for it.

You can check out the details in this USA Today story here.

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RHINO POACHING — LOCAL TRADE, ORGANIZED CRIME
In southern Africa, the ongoing tragedy of rhino poaching not only continues unchecked, but is accelerating to tragic levels, driven by well-financed organized crime.

African Arguments reports that Asia’s growing middle class has more disposable income to spend on folk medicines made from rhino horn and increasingly is doing so, ignoring all scientific evidence that such medicines have no medicinal value at all.

The poachers aren’t quite having it all their own way, though. At least one poaching kingpin recently got 40 years in prison.

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AND FINALLY…
When someone says “Greenland,” what comes to your mind? Frozen tundra? Glaciers melting under the effects of climate change? Icebergs floating menacingly offshore in the Atlantic?

I’m guessing the one thing you don’t think about is fine dining. But Greenland — which, under all that melting ice and snow, actually is green — has this new cadre of creative chefs who would love to change your mind about that.

The London daily newspaper, The Guardian, sent one of its writers, Tim Moore, to see if there was anything to this notion of one of the coldest nations on Earth as a hot foodie destination. Did he find culinary nirvana? Did he stay warm enough to taste anything, or did his frozen fork get stuck to his hand?

Read the Guardian story and find out.

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AND NOW, HERE’S THE DIGEST:

AIR
from Travel Weekly
Congress is siding with US airlines that are balking at the European Union’s plan to charge airlines a carbon tax.

from Smarter Travel
Free concerts. Yoga room. Golf course. Brewpub. A slide four stories high. All this and more at…the airport? If you’re at the right airport, yes. SLIDESHOW

from Travel Weekly
Flight attendants at Southwest Airlines approve a change in their contract that will allow Southwest to fly over water. What does that mean to you? For one thing, it means Southwest is one big step closer to offering flights to Hawai’i.

from Smarter Travel
Has your flight in Europe been cancelled or delayed more than three hours? You have rights, including the right to “get paid.” How do I love thee, European Union? Let me count the euros…

from the BBC
Is supersonic passenger air travel poised to make a comeback? If you’ve ever flown from LAX to Delhi or Papeete to Paris, you’re praying that the answer is yes. Check out the possibilities.

LAND
from Travel Weekly
Tour operator Tauck and PBS documentary filmmaker Ken Burns are teaming up to create an 11-day Mississippi River tour package, including a week-long steamboat cruise.

from the Los Angeles Times
The Space Needle is now a half-century old. If you saw it when it was new, that thought might be a little scary. If you’ve never seen it, it’s a good excuse to visit Seattle. That and the coffee, of course.

from USA Today
Ten places to get away from the cold-hearted winter wrath of Mother Nature. SLIDESHOW

from the New York Times
A Caribbean Carnival crawl, one island at a time.

SEA
from Travel Weekly
Cruise lines are increasingly going “green” these days. A surge in environmental consciousness after years of fouling the world’s oceans, or outreach to increasingly eco-conscious passengers?

from USA Today
When the cruise ship formerly known as Carnival Destiny emerges next spring from its $155 million makeover, it will have been renamed Carnival Sunshine and its attractions will include…wait for it…a water park.

AFRICA
from the Washington Post
Want to see the real East Africa? Bag the safaris and head for the cities, because these days, the “real East Africa” is urban.

from allAfrica.com
The Lonely Planet travel writers vote the ancient Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa as Africa’s top travel destination. See if you agree.

from allAfrica.com
A group of adventure travel enthusiasts is traveling the length of the Mother Continent by motor convoy — from Cairo to Capetown. They’re now in Tanzania.

from allAfrica.com
Uganda is world-famous for its rare mountain gorillas. As a tourist attraction, however, they’re gradually being eclipsed…by birds. Surprised? Don’t be. Birdwatching is huge in Africa.

AMERICAS
from the New York Times
Another chocolate tour — this time of the Caribbean.

from the Los Angeles Times
Ecuador is making a strong push these days to draw more visitors, and one of their lures is the old colonial charm of the newly freshened historic center in the capital, Quito.

from the New York Times
The Corn Islands off Nicaragua have no glitz, no glamor, no huge over-the-top resorts. They’re keeping it real out there. Real, rustic, tranquil Caribbean ambiance.

from the BBC
Can a man be buried in two places at once? Two intriguing travel destinations, one on each side of the Atlantic, claim to be the final resting place of Christopher Columbus.

ASIA/PACIFIC
from CNNgo
Go big or stay home. South Korea is planning a massive — and I do mean MASSIVE — new city devoted entirely to tourism and aimed straight at the Chinese market. If it’s built — and its projected pricetag of $275 billion makes that a very large “if” — there will be nothing else like it anywhere.

from CNNgo
A food writer goes on a six-food foodie odyssey in China, and comes back with a list of favorite cities for favorite dishes. If you’re planning a China trip, keep this list handy.

from the BBC
Chimelong Paradise is China’s largest theme park. Amusement at your own risk.

EUROPE
from Travel Weekly
Up a lazy, intimate, luxurious river. Barge cruising in the Alsace-Lorraine region of France.

from Rick Steves via SFGate
How to enjoy — and survive — a European road trip.

from Typically Spanish News
If you get sick or hurt while visiting the Spanish city of Málaga and you don’t speak Spanish, you might want to avoid Carlos Haya Hospital. They just fired their seven staff interpreters, whom they plan to replace with…a telephone service? What we may have here is an unhealthy failure to communicate.

Edited by P.A.Rice

SITE REVIEW: BackBid

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A new Web site is flipping the script on the Priceline model when it comes to scoring hotel bargains. Instead of you bidding on the hotels, they bid on you.

New travel booking sites come and go so fast nowadays that it’s almost impossible to keep up — and largely pointless to try.

Indeed, if you’ve found certain sites that consistently bring you real bargains on airfare, lodging and the like, you’re probably better off just sticking with them

Unless something truly revolutionary comes along.

Today’s would-be revolutionary: a hotel booking site called BackBid.

These guys are taking the travel auction model made famous by Priceline and turning it on its head. Instead of you submitting a bid for a bargain hotel stay, BackBid has the hotels bidding for your business.

Even better, unlike Priceline, you know exactly which hotels you’re dealing with before your credit card gets charged for your stay, not after the fact. That automatically appeals to me.

You can read about it in this USA Today story here.

Sounds great, but surely there must be a catch, you’re thinking — and you’re right.

First, you have to open an account on BackBid, a fairly quick and straightforword process. Once that’s done, you enter the particulars of your existing reservation into their online form, then forward them the email confirmation of your existing reservation.

After that, it’s a matter of waiting for the competing bids to come in.

Also, you can’t just log onto BackBid, put in your dates and destination city and other particulars as you normally would, and then watch the competing bids come flooding into your email inbox.

It doesn’t work that way.

Before you can use BackBid, you actually have to make a reservation somewhere else, which you then forward to BackBid, along with the confirmation number and that hotel’s cancellation policy — specifically, the date and time by which you can cancel that existing reservation without penalty.

So, as an experiment, I did. And since New York City has some of the highest hotel rates on planet Earth, I figured that would be the logical venue to test out this site.

I made a reservation just after midnight Saturday at a hotel in Harlem I’ve been dying to try out, then followed BackBid’s instructions and started waiting for the bids to roll in.

Hotels have until Feb. 29, the last day I can cancel the original reservation without a penalty, to submit one.

Two weeks later, I had three bids in my email inbox. The first was actually higher than my original reservation, but the second was $54 cheaper over the course of the entire stay — and the third was $114 cheaper than the original bid.

What’s more, BackBid tells you everything you want to know about the place up-front — the name of it, the location, the amenities it does and doesn’t offer. Nice.

You may receive a handful, a lot or none at all. BackBid makes your reservation available to competing hotels and gives them the chance to bid on your business with a lower offer at a hotel of more or less equal quality.

They don’t guarantee that anyone will.

Still, even to create a place online that lets the hotels chase after you with bargains is probably worth trying.

But if BackBid does come up with a better hotel deal for you, just remember to go back and cancel that original reservation before the deadline.

Another big disadvantage to this site, as pointed out in the USA Today piece, is that it’s limited to US hotels only — at least, so far.

If these guys were to go global, the impact on the travel, and the savings they could offer to you, the traveler, could be enormous.

BackBid is still in beta-test mode right now, so it remains to be seen what final form the site will take, but I’d say it definitely shows some promise.

WARNING
BackBid has a few potentially costly boobytraps, especially for those of you who like to use online travel agencies like Expedia, Travelocity, Hotwire and so on.

I’m talking about the kinds of sites that bill your credit card the moment you make a reservation.

Hotel booking sites that require you to pay up front aren’t going to cancel your existing reservation for free, just because you found a better price somewhere else. So if you want to try out BackBid, be sure that you make the type of reservation that allows you to cancel within a certain date and time without penalty.

Also, take GREAT care when you manually enter ANY dates on BackBid. Why? Because on their site, BackBid uses the European format for writing dates, in which the month comes BEFORE the day.

Our American eyes interpret 5/3/2012 as May 3, 2012. In most of the rest of the world, it means March 5.

Why BackBid does this, I don’t know, especially since their site only works with American hotels, but it’s something to beware of.

Edited by P.A. Rice

TRAVEL: Place your bids!

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touring cyclists

<strong> © <a href='http://www.dreamstime.com/Naumoid_info'>Dmitry Naumov</a> | <a href='http://www.dreamstime.com/'>Dreamstime.com</a></strong>

Signs of worry in the travel industry just before an upcoming holiday is good reason to hit the travel auction sites. There are bargains to be had.

With the Labor Day weekend coming up, and forecasts of a downturn in holiday travelers making the country’s travel providers restless, this would be a good time to start scouting for some last-minute deals on airfares, hotels, rental cars, even whole weekend packages.

And that means it’s time to start working the travel auction sites.

You know, the Web sites that let you bid on airfares and what-not, with the chance to score yourself some true money-saving deals.

We’ve talked before about these sites and how they work. For a refresher, click here.

By now, just about everybody knows about Priceline,the McDonald’s/Walmart/Donald Trump of travel auction sites. They’re everywhere, or at least their incessant advertising makes them seem to be.

But there’s no denying you can find good deals there, provided you know how to play the game.

But they’re hardly the only game in cyberspace when it comes to travel auctions.

So here, in no particular order, is a handy list of travel auction sites for you to check out prior to Labor Day. and Thanksgiving. And Christmas. And New Year’s. And…

  • SkyAuction
  • eBay
    The grand-daddy/godfather of online shopping/auction sites.
  • Hotwire
    Almost as ubiquitous as Priceline. They do flights, rental cars and cruises, but as best known for their focus on hotels.
  • EasyClick Travel
  • LastMinute
  • BidShares
    A travel auction site specializing in vacation timeshares.
  • eBid
    Fancies itself a rival to eBay, especially when it comes to travel auctions.
  • uBid
    Another eBay competitor in the travel realm.
  • CruiseCompete
    Bot a travel auction site per se, but you can get cpmpetiting bids on cruise packages.
  • LuxuryLink
    Specializing in high-end hotels, vacation rentals and cruises.
  • Generous Adventures
    Travel auctions with a twist — they auction off vacation packages to the highest bidder, then donate the profits to charities.

Meanwhile, there are now two Web sites devoted to giving you info/intel/4-1-1 on how to work the travel auction sites to your best advantage.

The one I wrote about last year, which is still around, is called Bidding for Travel, is still around. The new one (new to me, anyway) is called Better Bidding.

These sites are basically message boards, albeit with some interesting bells and whistles thrown in, where users share information on winning bids they’ve made, the Web sites where they made them and what their bids won for them.

Armed with that knowledge, you have a better chance of making a winning bid yourself.

So take advantage of the angst in the travel industry, and go stalk some wild travel deals. and if you find some, come back and tell your fellow IBIT travelers!

After you’ve booked your own, of course.

NOTE: As always with any commercial Web site, do your due diligence, check them out thoroughly and ask lots of questions before you pull out your credit card. And never use a debit card for ANY online transaction. It’s just like writing a check; once you click on the button to accept the deal, the money is gone. Unlike a written check, however, you can’t call your bank afterward and request a stop payment order if there’s a problem.

Airfares — Up, Up and Away!

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Southwest Airline Boeing 737

Southwest Airlines Boeing 737 landing in San Diego | © Greg Gross

Think of airfares as the Titanic and fuel costs as the iceberg. Only in this case, nothing is going down.

We already warned you that airfares would likely be going up this year, and that higher fuel costs, pushed by rising crude oil costs, were one of the major reasons why.

Every time the giant oil companies jack up the price of crude oil, the cost of everybody’s gas goes up, and the airlines are no exception.

Now, USA Today is reporting that the airlines just this week started raising fares by to $10 to $20 per round-trip flight. And it’s only going to get worse.

You can read the entire USA Today here.

This is the one area in which I actually feel some sympathy for the airlines. Being one of their biggest customers worldwide, you’d think the oil companies would cut them some slack on prices.

Not a chance.

Consider. Airlines track their fuel prices by the barrel. A barrel is 31 gallons.According to the International Air Transport Association, the going rate for Jet A this weeks is $112 a barrel.

The most numerous airliner flying today is the Boeing 737, seen above. A 737 typically holds just under 5,000 gallons of fuel. The newest models, called Next Generation 737s, hold just under 7,000 gallons.

So it takes 161 barrels of what they call Jet A fuel to fill up an older 737, and 225 barrels to gas up a new one.

Every time an older 737 pushes back from the gate, some oil company’s cash register rings up $18,000. For one of the NG737s, the tab will be more than $25,000.

Now consider an airline like Southwest, that flies more than 550 of those 737s, more than 350 of which are NGs.

That airline has to burn more than $12 million a day just to get its planes off the ground.

Feel free to wince.

And Southwest doesn’t even fly wide-body jumbo jets.

Have you ever felt sorry for the guy across from you at the gas station, the one filling up his Hummer or his RV? It’s the same with airlines. The bigger the airplane, the bigger the bill.

One of the world’s most popular wide-bodies, the Boeing 777-200ER, takes a max of just under 48,000 gallons of Jet A. That’s 1,548 barrels. So feeding that beast will set you back about $173,000 per plane.

American Airlines flies 47 of them, one of 11 different types of planes they fly. This is typical for major airlines around the world.

I’m guessing the beancounters who track fuel costs for AA periodically have all sharp objects removed from their desks.

Throw the salaries of flight crew and the cost of maintenance into the mix, and it means that every airliner that goes out less than full loses money. And you can bet the rent that the current jet fuel price will be higher this time next month than it is now.

This is one reason why you won’t see the airlines giving up their add-on fees anytime soon, if ever. It also explains why they deliberately oversell every flight. It’s how they’re keeping themselves profitable.

But they’re keeping themselves in the black by making your wallet see red, and it’s only likely to worsen as the year goes on.

This means you need to be more diligent than ever in stalking airfare bargains, by any means necessary.

Check the individual airlines sites, hassle though it may be.

Check the online travel agency sites like Expedia, Travelocity and Orbitz and the rest.

Check fare auction sites like Priceline.

Check the aggregators like Kayak, Momondo and CheapOAir.

Find a sharp travel agent who really knows where the bargains are buried.

Use sites like FareCompare.com, that track airfare prices and suggest when to buy and when to wait.

Do whatever you have to do, but do it. There’s no way to avoid paying more for airfares, but diligence on your part will ease the pain.

It also means you need to keep an eye on the efforts of airlines to limit your access to fare information online.

the SUNDAY TRAVEL DIGEST

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The good, the bad and the bizarre from the world’s best travel media

Winter in San Diego

See above. This is winter. This is winter in San Diego. Don’t hate me ’cause my weather’s beautiful!

A MATTER OF TASTE
I have a good friend namedShay Olivarria, who travels a lot for her work as a motivational speaker. Her motto is “the world is Bigger Than Your Block,” and I couldn’t agree more.

Where Shay and I part company is on international eating habits.

She went through Europe happily bouncing from one Burger King to another. She recently rejoiced on Facebook at the discovery that Tokyo now home to the Los Panchos chain of taco shops.

“Now, I won’t starve!” she exulted online.

Can you hear me cringing?

I’m no Michelin-class foodie, but if you’re traveling to the homes of the world’s great food cultures, why confine yourself to food you can get at home, anyway, right?

The way that our mega-corporations seem hell-bent on world domination can also be pretty annoying. Seeing a McDonald’s on practically every other block in Buenos Aires was enough to make me want to declare my own culinary jihad on the Golden Arches.

Lately, though, I’ve begun to reconsider a bit (I sure hope this isn’t a sign of mellowing through old age).

Often, international versions of American fast-food joints offer some regional dishes you can’t get in the States, or even on the US mainland, like the saimin noodles Mickey D’s serves in Hawai’i — and which some folks actually rave about.

Still, you can go off the regular food road in your international destinations without going the fast-food route, and still come away with some great meals and good times.

All of which brings to Monique Y. Wells. If you want to learn about Paris, especially the black side of Paris, you really need to get to know this lady.

Recently, she did a guest post on the Paris Movie Walks site answering this question: Where can you get good non-French food in Paris?

Sounds a bit like culinary sacrilege, n’est-ce pas?

But Monique manages to answer the question and make you hungry at the same time.

Even more than that, her recommended restos take you into sections of Paris often paid scant attention or even ignored outright by tour groups. In more ways than one, Monique’s recommendations give you a special taste of the City of Light.

And not a chain in sight.

As for Los Panchos, no disrespect, but any San Diegan will tell you: When Roberto’s lands in Tokyo — or anywhere else — it’s over.

And now, here’s this week’s Digest:

AIR
from the New York Times
Travel agents. Remember them, those folks we pretty much forgot about when things like Priceline and Kayak and CheapoAir came along? The recent spate of tough winter weather suggests it may be time to rethink that.

from USA Today
Will the nightmare ever end for Boeing’s problematic Dreamliner? The airlines are getting ever more restless.

LAND
from the New York Times
The Times dishes its list of 41 cool destinations for 2011. Among them are cities on the comeback, old haunts with new attractions and rediscovered charm, and some that just flaty wouldn’t have occured to us this time last year.

from A View to a Thrill
So you’d love to see Europe, but the thought of European hotel rates sends your wallet into spasms? The Old World has some intriguing alternatives. one of which is a convent. That’s right, I said it: A convent, or even a monastery. Clean, comfortable and often incredibly cheap. May be as close to Heaven as some of us ever get.

from OffTrack Planet
Are subways actually hip? These guys think so, and they offer up their list of the ten coolest around the planet.

from San Francisco City Guides
The only thing better about walking tours in the world’s great cities, is great walking tours that are free of charge, led by knowledgeable locals who are passionate about their city. San Francisco City Guides has an extensive schedule of free walking tours every day.

SEA
from the Daily Mail (UK)
Life, or something like, aboard Royal Caribbean’s newest mega-ship, Allure of the Seas.

AFRICA
from Associated Press
The voting is over in South Sudan and the ballot count is underway. The results will decide whether Sudan remains intact or whether the Christian/animist south will secede from the Muslim north. And while it may be early yet, it looks very much as if Africa is about to acquire her 54th sovereign nation.

from the Independent Online (South Africa)
Wine is already South Africa’s biggest export, and wine tourism is now becoming a major importer — of international visitors.

Meanwhile, if you’d like to get a taste of black-owned wines in South Africa, check out Khari and Selena Cuffe, who are hooking up with black-run wine estates.

AMERICAS/CARIBBEAN
from msnbc travel
Let’s get this straight America. In New Orleans, Mardi Gras is a day, but Carnival is the season it falls in.This year, that means more than two months’ worth of parades, cotillions, second lines and good times rolling. And it’s already started.

from the New York Times
If places like Mexican Pacific beach resorts like Ixtapa and Zihuatanejo have grown to be a bit too big and overblown for you, the little town of Troncones might be the alternative you’re looking for.

ASIA/PACIFIC
from Wikitravel
An all-in-one glance at Singapore, which may have more and a greater variety of attractions into a smaller space than anyplace else on Earth. the city that is a country and a state of being, all at once.

from The Economist (UK)
Nagasaki, the city known as the “other” atomic bomb victim in World War 2, is now becoming known for something else, a brain drain of young talent that has left Nagasaki in decline and decay. In one neighborhood, trees grow through the roofs of abandoned homes. Who thought we’d ever see this in Japan?

EUROPE
from The Economist (UK)
There’s a new Web site for travelers who want to arrange homestays in London homes while the owners are away. The cost of hotel rooms in London these days is reason enough to consider this. Experiencing a slice of real London life is another.

from the New York Times
If you’re serious about beer, one of the best places in the world to go for it is Belgium.But be warned: You may never go back to Bud. In size, strength and quality, these brews don’t play.