Traditionally when we go on holidays, we used to go to a travel agency where they could either help us build a trip with their limited options, or sell us a package (something still interesting).
Now the biggest travel agency is Internet. We we create our custom trip, filter options like dates, type of travel and get listings of suitable options.
At the same time we can check for reviews of either the website we are using, the hotels they suggest or even the destinations.
The idea of the is post is to give you some of the tools I use and stress the idea that we don’t need to book expensive hotels anymore, that a new bree of websites where you can rent apartments wherever you are planning to, could threaten hotels in the future.
Flights
Kayak will let you search for the cheapest dates to go to your desired destination or suggest you cheap destinations for your selected dates. Kayak has an incredible iPhone app and a pretty good iPad app.
Kayak will give suggest you hotels, and it uses the most notable hotel booking sites such as expedia, booking.com, etc…
If you want Cheap Hostels and Bed and Breakfasts, the we use: HostelWorld, it is great for that.
A cool resource for knowing if the hotel you are about to book is OK with tons of reviews, is: tripadvisor (also for iPhone and iPad).
Another cool tool for hotels (specially for the US) is room77 a website where they show you the best rooms for a specific hotel, with the views and so.
but… who want hotels?
Who wants to book a hotel when you can find a great located and flat or a room shared at an incredible spot…
We went to Paris booking an apartment with hometown, luxury apartments for a fraction of what you pay for a hotel, located at the heart of Paris (highly recommended). I also used Isabel’s apartments in a couple of occasions, also great apartments, even if the website is not that nice.
Here is where I want to go: big websites covering apartments all around the globe.
The most notable:
Airbnb (my favorite): this one is the more professional website, the one with more investment in it. It is incredible the choice you can find there, apartments, rooms, everywhere!
Homelidays: this one is strong in Europe. You can find a nice house in the beach, with swiming pool for a fraction of what you would pay for a hotel…
Now if you want to sleep for free, then you have to use couchsurfing: a huge network of people all around the globe that will let you use their couch to sleep for free.
3 guys, 44 days, 11 countries, 18 flights, 38 thousand miles, an exploding volcano, 2 cameras and almost a terabyte of footage… all to turn 3 ambitious linear concepts based on movement, learning and food ….into 3 beautiful and hopefully compelling short films…..
= a trip of a lifetime.
move, eat, learn
Rick Mereki : Director, producer, additional camera and editing
Tim White : DOP, producer, primary editing, sound
Andrew Lees : Actor, mover, groover
Colour Grade : Edel Rafferty and Roslyn Di Sisto
Online Edit : Peter Mirecki
Assistance in titles and production design : Lee Gingold, Jason Milden, Rohan Newman
Big Ups to Michelle, Kiri, Renee, Hana, Andre, Ross, Bernie & Julie for your patience and support and awesomeness…..
Huge Thanks to :
Marco, Juliana and Julio at GAP Argentina and Peru
Ariana Cardenas, Toni Figuera and cooltra scooters in Barcelona,
Abete Zanetti Glass blowing school, Murano, Venice (abatezanetti.it)
Annabel, Rosario and Carolina (Pitu) in France
Juane and Andrea from the Princeca Insolenta hostel in Chile
Thank you all for your kind words and encouragement. The response has been phenomenal and overwhelming. We never thought this little project would reach out to so many people
A new travel site called Rome2Rio launches today, the brainchild of two ex-Microsoftemployees, Michael Cameron and Bernard Tschirren. The site’s main innovation? It’s vehicle agnostic, in a way–you tell it you want to go from A to B, and it’ll tell you what combination of car, plane, train, or ferry you need to take.
In that way, it’s more like the “how to get there” in a Lonely Planet guide, points out VentureBeat in its story on the site today. Rather than piece together information from here and there, Rome2Rio aims for the all-inclusive experience of simply reading a paragraph in a guidebook.
And it goes further than that, too–to be truly useful, any travel site needs to let you book flights. Rome2Rio does that, presenting Kayak airfares, which you can click through to purchase flights.
Cameron and Tschirren told VentureBeat that the site is probably most useful in Europe, where the train systems are complicated and have varied pricing. “Hours of travel time and hundred or even thousands of dollars” could be saved, goes the claim.
The site joins the trend of creating technology that would make classic movie plots based on missed connections and poor communication–such as Planes, Trains, and Automobiles–obsolete.
BARGAIN hunters will need to be craftier when booking a trip if they want to get the best prices this year. It’s no secret that airfares are up and added fees for everything from checked bags to exit-row seats are pushing the cost of flying higher. On top of that, hotel bargains are expected to be harder to come by as business travelers begin to return, diminishing the need for hotels to discount rooms in major cities.
But that doesn’t mean a year in front of your television. There are still plenty of ways to cut costs. Here are 11 strategies — and some useful Web sites — to help you save on travel this year.
1. SHOP “PRIVATE SALES” A growing number of Web sites, including SniqueAway.com, TabletHotels.comand Jetsetter.com have flash sales of 20 to 60 percent off hotel packages to travelers on an invitation-only basis. Jetsetter, for example, recently offered a Friday night in January at the Angler’s, a boutique hotel in Miami, for $255 a night, down from the $359 offered at the hotel’s site. Another site, TripAlertz.com, works like Groupon for travel, meaning that the more people who book a deal, the lower the rate. For example, a four-night, all-inclusive stay at the Hilton Papagayo Costa Rica Resort & Spa was initially offered to members for $1,496, or 15 percent off, last month. After 55 bookings, the price dropped to $1,220. At TripAlertz and LivingSocial.com, which offers last-minute getaways, all you have to do is create an account to access the deals. A Google search for “Snique Away invite” turned up a registration form for SniqueAway.com that got me in.
2. BUY ON TUESDAY Most airlines begin sales on Monday evenings, and by the following day other airlines have usually matched the lowered fares on the same routes, said Anne McDermott, editor at Farecompare.com, which tracks price trends. Last month, for example, Virgin America had a sale on Dec. 13, with one-way fares as low as $79 on some routes, according to Farecompare. The next day, there were sales from AirTran, Southwest and American, with one-way fares from $59. Because sales are hard to predict, travelers looking for the best deal should start their searches three to four months in advance, when airlines begin to look closely at which routes may need a sale to fill seats.
3. SEARCH FOR COUPON CODES Practically every travel site includes a box at checkout for a promotional discount code. Sites like PromotionalCodes.com orCouponWinner.com organize such codes into categories so that you can search specifically for airline, car rental or hotel deals. A recent search turned up codes for deals like $94 flights between New York and New Orleans, 15 percent discounts on Avis weekly car rentals and $75 off of three-night Westin Hotels packages.
4. ASK FOR A REFUND Many airlines will refund the difference in price if the fare drops after you purchase a ticket (minus a change fee). Yapta.com helps get you that refund by tracking the price of your ticket and sending you an e-mail or Tweet when the price drops so that you can call the airline to claim the credit. A new site, Autoslash.com, offers a similar service for car rentals.
5. AVOID ROAMING CHARGESSkype and Truphone offer free apps for making cheap international calls using Wi-Fi, with rates that start at pennies per minute. You can pay as you go or sign up for monthly plans to make unlimited calls in certain countries for a flat fee: $13.99 a month for Skype calls to land lines and mobile phones in more than 40 countries, or $12.95 a month for Tru calls in 38 countries with TruUnlimited. Another option: the Vonage Mobile app for Facebook allows travelers to make free international calls over Wi-Fi to Facebook friends who also download the app.
6. CHANGE YOUR CREDIT CARD Most American banks charge currency conversion fees, typically up to 3 percent when you use your credit or debit card outside the United States. But there are some exceptions. Capital One does not charge foreign transaction fees, and Chase recently began waiving the fees on its British Airways Visa Signature Card, its Hyatt Card and the Priority Club Select Visa.
7. SAVE ON PARKING YOUR CARBestparking.com steers drivers toward the cheapest parking at off-airport lots near 79 North American airports. Rates are updated frequently, and sold-out lots are highlighted. A recent search for parking near Newark Liberty International Airport offered a snapshot of rates and locations on a map. The Renaissance Hotel lot was among the cheapest at $12 for 24 hours. There is also a free app for iPhone, Android or BlackBerry users.
8. WAIT A WEEK Avoid the crowds and save by traveling the week after a major holiday. A five-night ski vacation in Breckenridge, Colo., during the last week of December was priced at $1,988 a person, including airfare from Chicago, at Orbitz.com. For the following week, the same trip was listed at $1,037 a person. Similarly, a vacation including airfare from New York and five nights at the Walt Disney World Dolphin Resort dropped from $821 to $580.
9. NEGOTIATE Though many hotels say that they offer their best rates online, it pays to ask the front desk for a lower rate. My colleague Seth Kugel regularly uses this tactic, as he pointed out in a column last summer: “I arrive with a solid reservation but then check out five or six other hotels and go back and forth between them in an attempt to set off a price war.” The strategy saved him $20 a night in León, Nicaragua. I have had similar successover the phone with reservation agents at New York hotels like the Ritz-Carlton New York and 60 Thompson.
10. TRAVEL LIKE A STUDENT Student travel agencies like STA Travel, StudentCity and StudentUniverse have begun to extend their low prices to nonstudents and older travelers. While some of the deepest discounts are offered only to travelers enrolled in an academic program, recent college graduates can often save 10 to 25 percent with “youth fares.” For example, a recent search for flights in March on STATravel.com, which limits certain deals to nonstudents under the age of 26, turned up seats for $926 round trip on V Australia Airlines. The best rates for the same dates on Kayak.com were $1,187. Though it is not common for older travelers to use student travel agencies, it is possible to do so. There were no age restrictions for a discounted four-day Inca Trail trek with STA Travel for $674 a person, down from $899.
11. DON’T PAY TO CHECK A BAG Checking bags can quickly add up, with airlines charging between $15 and $35 a bag. Delta’s SkyMiles-branded American Express card allows you and up to eight others on the same reservation to each check a bag at no cost. And American Express introduced a travel-rewards card — the Blue Sky Preferred Credit Card — that offers travelers an annual $100 allowance to cover checked baggage, in-flight meals, entertainment or Wi-Fi purchases, and other fees, on any airline.
Those of you who know me, know that I love traveling and that I am a technofreak.
I would like to share with you some tips in order to have a great trip diary, using the latest techonologies.
Checklist
Option A
When I travel I pack my nikon d300 with a 10-20mm and a 18-200 lenses. My nikon has a 16Gb memory card. Unfortunately most DSLR do not have GPS unlike the iPhone or other smart phones, but there is a work around. Keep reading.
I also pack my GPS (Garmin Oregon 300), rechargeable batteries and the charger sure. If you don’t have a GPS you should consider getting one, and they are now very cheap. You don’t need a fancy GPS, you just need a GPS logger. No bluetooth even. No screen, just a GPS logger, that when you switch it on it starts recording your trail, and once back home or with your laptop, you just plug it in and extract the .gpx file. I will explain what to do with it. You can but very cheap GPS at Dealextreme a Hong Kong based online shop full of gadgets at ridiculous prices… and shipping anywhere int the world is free. You can have a GPS for $35.
Now if you travel to remote places you can consider a good GPS with SOS function such as the SPOT.
Also if you don’t want to take the gpx file from the gps and use one of the ways I described further down there is a GPS logger (ATP Photo finder) that you sync the time with your camera, insert the SD card, and it tags them automatically. Not for Compact Flash and not for RAW images though…
If it is going to be a long trip, and I plan to blog properly, then I take my old sony vaio t series (10 inch screen) and an external 2.5inches Hard Disk.
Option B
Just your iPhone 3gs or 4. (Has a decent camera and GPS).
Option C
Both. Option A for more elaborated blogging, Option B for quick on the spot.
In addition to have a 5Mpx camera and shoot HD videos, the new smart phones have GPS so videos and photos are geotagged, and programs such as picasa (for Mac, PC and Linux) or iPhoto (for Mac) plot all your photos in a map which is great.
If you really like photography then you choose to take your DSLR with you, so then you have to take a laptop (and an external HD if it is an old laptop like mine) so you can take the photos out of the camera and put the in your blog, site or community. Or just to empty your camera.
I take both.
iPhone apps and Everytrail
When I first bought my first GPS (Garmin Vista) it was quite a job to be able to do something with the tracks you save. You needed a windows computer, nothing for mac, and the software that came with it was pretty bad.
Then Google Earth would allow you to import the tracks (.gpx files). It was great. It is still great!
Everytrail
Now there is a website that I love and I use as a main stop for GPS logging: Everytrail.
Everytrail is free. You can upload your .gpx file even directly from your gps, and there you can have all your tracks store, that you can tag, put some text, add waypoints with explanations, and edit them!! yes. You can make them public or private. Very very powerful tool.
Everytrail also gives you an embed code that you can put in your blog, where you see the trail you have uploaded, the waypoints you have inserted, stats of time, altitude, speed… and more.
Geotag your photos with Everytrail
Once I have written about my photography workflow. Now when I upload them to flickr, make sure you create a set for those photos in the same GPS track. So if you go out switch on your GPS logger, then all the fotos you take until you switch it off should be in the same set.
With Everytrail, you can select the flickr (or picasa, or uploading manually) set and it will import it. As the camera has a clock it will know when they were take it, and plotted into your trail map. Great.
Now you have to fine tune that. There might be a bit of missmatch between the time in the GPS, the timezone and the camera clock. You take one photo you know exactly where it was taken, drag it to the right place and , then click on “update offset based on this picture” and the rest will follow. Magical!!
Now you have your trail uploaded into Everytrail, you have corrected it, you have added notes as waypoints, and you have uploaded the fotos from flicker that have been geo tagged in Everytrail.
With Everytrail alone you have already a good blog for your trip, because you have a space to write, to give tips and to have the track an dall the photos along it.
In addition to this you can have the embed code and put it into you blog.
Everytrail in your iPhone
Everytrail is available for the iPhone. They have two apps, a free one and a paid one. They are not very good. There is a free app, though, that uses Everytrail as a back end which is absolutly great!
Trailhead iPhone app (from the north face)
Last August the north face released an iphone app (free) that uses everytrail track. This app is just awesome. When you start it you have two main options, start tracking (and it is reasonable on what you use of battery) or see nearby trails. You can track even if you don’t have GPRS or 3G. In this case you don’t see the maps (in the pro app for everytrail you can download offline maps).
Then when tracking, at any given point you can add a photo or a note (not a video yet).
So in summary, with the iphone alone you do what I explained before without the need of a camara, a gps, a computer and a website.
Blogging tools
When traveling often you don’t have internet. Blogging everyday is therefore difficult.
For that reason you should use an offline blogging tool. The best one out there is Windows Live Writer. For the mac you have Ecto or MarsEdit, but Live Writer is much better.
The advantage of using one of this offline tools is that you can write every day, add your photos and so, and when you have internet, then you upload everything.
If you are planning to use GPS info with everytrail, you should do it online though.
This offline tools are good for blogs such as wordpress, blogger etc…
I use wordpress and there is a great plugin called mappress for having a google map where you can easily add a waypoint with html code in it if you wish. It is handy if you want to show your readers where you are sleeping, or what to visit for instance.
Alternatively you can simply go to google maps, log in and under my maps, create a map. It is very easy. Then you can copy the embed code and past it into your blog.
Blogging sites
If you don’t have a blog, and you don’t blog regularly, they you can use one of the dedicated free blogs for travelers. My favorites are:
Travelpod is a great place full of good tips and travelers. You have maps, you can upload photos, … it is a tailored blog for travelers.
Mapvivo is more of a travel diary. It is based on having a map and putting what you do in it.
Geotagging your photos at home
To geo tag the photos using everytrail is OK, but you will probably would love to have your photos in your PC/Mac geotagged as well.
Well there is a way to do it too, even if you camera has no GPS. As I mentioned with a GPS logger, and a normal camera you can.
Select the photos you took within the period of geotagging. Then use one of these programs:
The best one is GeoSetter (just for PC unfortunately)
GeoSetter (free) allows you to take your photos, the log file of the GPS and geo tag the photos automatically. You can easily take one that you know exactly where it was taken, position it and the rest will follow. GeoSetter will write in the EXIF header of the file, so if you now import them to Picasa, iPhoto, Flickr, etc… they will have GPS information.
For Mac there is a paid program which does pretty much the same: Geophoto. It is even nicer, but not as complete as the Geosetter.
Also GPS photo linker. (tags Raw and it is free). Take a look at the demo, for me is the winner.
With this I modify my photography workflow. The first thing to do is to geotagg the raw photos, then apply DxO for corrections and to create JPEGs.
Here an example of the embed code from a trip with photos in everytrail in Puerto Rico. If you mouse over the bottom you can see a link to the stats and to the slideshow. Also mousing over the spots of the photos. San Juan de Puerto Rico
Do you travel often? I do, and I always wonder how much is going to cost me the taxi from the airport to the hotel, always afraid if I would have the right amount or if the taxi is going to try to charge more.
Well take a look at world taxi meter website. It is not for everywhere but might be of help:
Condé Nast Digital Britain recently unveiled a series of apps for the iPhone and iPod touch, dubbed Condé Nast Traveller City Guides. There are four separate apps for Barcelona, New York, Paris and Rome priced at around $9.99 each.
The apps [iTunes link] are divided into six sections containing more than 500 searchable listings, complete with venue information, photos and editors’ reviews:
Neighbourhoods: Browse all listings in a single neighborhood
See & Do: Major sites, museums, parks, farmers markets and other attractions
Places to Stay: Organized according to location, price range, type (i.e. fashionable, family-friendly or classic), and a key feature (gym/spa, internet access, etc.)
Eat & Drink: Mainly high-end sit-down restaurants with some exceptions, like a well-known knishery and an East Village dumpling house
Shopping: Features an array of products, including apparel, home, records and electronics from high-end to outlets
Nightlife: Bars, music, dancing and other venues for late-night entertainment
Word of Mouth: Recommendations from celebrated New Yorkers like designers Oscar de la Renta and Paul Smith, nightclub owner Amy Sacco and architect Carlos Almadada
The list of venues is well-curated; there are enough to appeal to a relatively broad array of tastes without being overwhelming. Users can bookmark interesting listing by adding them to a to-do list and share them via Facebook, Twitter and e-mail.
What’s most impressive about the apps is their Augmented Reality functionality (pictured above). Simply point your phone in a direction and it will bring up images of nearby attractions, which you can narrow down by type. You can also use GPS to pull up venue locations on a map.
The apps contain a number of other neat little features as well, including a handful of guided audio tours and magazine articles, a travel journal, a Flickr-integrated personal photo log, a timeline of the city’s history and essential travel information about local customs, transportation and the location of tourist offices and so forth.
What’s more, Condé Nast Britain promises to update the apps’ content every four months free of charge.
The only major drawback are the prices, which are hard to justify when free apps like restaurant-finder Urbanspoon also come with many similar features (although Urbanspoon’s Augmented Reality functionality is admittedly more basic and many users would rather read a review from a food editor than from the guy next door). In all fairness, Zagat’s TO GO app [iTunes link] also costs $9.99, but then it has a key feature Condé Nast Traveller’s does not: the ability to make restaurant reservations. It also covers almost every major U.S. city in one app.
Stay.com turns travel planning into a fun and social activity. Have fun discovering some of the best attractions, restaurants and hotels around the world, collect places you find interesting in your own guide and share it with family and friends.
Forget about your already outdated travel books. Stay.com has updated information on thousands of places to visit for your next vacation or business trip.
Simply collect everything you find interesting in your own personal guide. This way you can bring along all the details you need. You can print your guide in a nice compact format which is easy to fold and put in your pocket.
In our last day in Miami, we packed and checked out. Had breakfast and put everything in the trunk of the car. Then we headed to Key Biscayne where we spent most of the day.
We went to the lighthouse and to the beach, then we went to Boaters Grill, where we had some seafood before taking the car and drive to the airport.
End of trip. We took the plane, of course Iberia did not give us the right seats, but there was a very nice lady who gave us hers, so we could put Kai in his little bed.
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