Pack one outfit for every two days of travel.
For instance, if you’re traveling for seven days, you only need to pack three outfits; you’ll actually be wearing a fourth outfit … that can be worn again.
You may also want to consider choosing to wear (or pack) a jacket that you can use with some of your other outfits, to help give them a “fresh” look.
Make the road trip as memorable as the destination itself.
Although car rides with the family can be a great experience, the road trip was designed for great friends to get away and escape everyday life. While traveling with friends, keep the radio off. Try playing a game like, “Top Five Celebrities I Want to Date.” Not only will games like this make the miles pass quicker, you can learn an awful lot about your friends. (Sometimes too much!)
Bonus Tip: Make frequent stops along the way for sightseeing, dinner, etc. This will provide the opportunity for new experiences and encounters.
Whether this is your first time at a hotel or you are a regular, you should always be a member of the chain’s loyalty program.
There isn’t a charge to join and – with your very first stay – you start gaining points. Points can be used for free nights and other perks. Some programs (like Hilton Honors) will even let you exchange points for miles in airline programs.
Members of the hotel’s loyalty program also have a better chance of getting upgrades, so make it a habit to join the program.
Locals are always the best resource for local information, naturally. But an answer is only as good as the question. Don’t just ask where the best steak house is, or the best sea food place. Ask something like, “Where would you go for steak if it were your birthday?” or “Where was the most romantic dinner you ever had in this town?”
You’ll get something other than the canned answer, and you may get a really great story in the bargain.
Normally, I’d think that a website inviting hotels to beg for bid on the insane and detailed requests of travelers would be a nonstarter. But, we’re in the middle of a brutal travel market recession. And, this decade has been awful for airlines and hoteliers alike. So, if the industry is going to learn any lessons from this turbulent decade known as [well, nobody really figured that out what to call it], the first should be that it needs to make a regular practice of going every extra inch to pull in a new guest.
So, the success of new business LetMeGo.com, which will create a marketplace in which travelers can indicate the specific amenities they want – from bunny slippers to cheese plates – will depend on whether the travel and hospitality industry has figured out that it will always be prey to a fickle economy. If the service providers in the hotel business realize this, they will understand that the extra effort is necessary, even when the travel market is on fire.
Using LetMeGo.com’s website, which is still in beta, companies peddling hotel rooms, vacation homes and other forms of lodging will be able to view the itineraries posted by prospective guests. They can bid for the affections and dollars of these travelers, with this data being used by the traveler to make a decision. The process is completely transparent to the participants – every bidder can see each other’s bids, and the user, of course, can sell all bids on his itinerary. But, it isn’t open to the public, as nobody needs to know what you’re looking to spend on your vacation. Since everyone can see each other’s offer, there’s incentive to cut further to attract your interest cash.
According to VentureBeat, “a good number” of lodging companies have signed up for the service and there’s already an affiliate program in place to drive traffic to the site. Could this be the future of the hospitality business? I can think of worse. If the site takes off, it will be easier for hotels to identify exactly what their guests want, deliver on it and use it as a way to differentiate themselves in an increasingly competitive market.
So, the future of winning online travel cash will involve head-to-head competition, with everything out in the open. If I were one of the competitors, I wouldn’t be thrilled about this, but there’s no better experience for travel buyers: it’s designed to help us win.