Win a trip to Hawaii with 52 Perfect Days

by Katie Hammel on

Have a great sustainable travel story? Travel website 52 Perfect Days is looking for submissions for their 2009 travel writing contest, which has a theme of sustainable tourism, ecotourism, agrotourism and voluntoursim.

The first place prize is a three-day vacation in Kauai, Hawaii, including accommodations, tours and activities (but not airfare). The second place winner will receive a custom-designed website and third place gets a Kelty Day Pack.

Submissions should be less than 1000 words of original, unpublished work. The contest is open to residents of North America who are 18 years of age and older and there’s no fee to enter. Entrants will be judged on how well they convey a sense of place and engage the reader while telling a story that relates to the theme.

Entries are due by Saturday, October 31 and winners will be announced by December 31.

Sign up for flash-sale alerts with Jetsetter.com

by Katie Hammel on

Want to be in the know about deep discounts and deals on luxury travel packages and top-tier hotels? Well then you need to wrangle yourself an invite to the Jetsetter.com email list (or just surf on over to Wendy Perrin’s post and use her “exclusive link” for readers).

According to Perrin, Jetsetter is a “flash-sale site that negotiates with noteworthy hotels, cruise lines, and other luxe travel suppliers to offer slashed rates unavailable to the general public.” Those who get on the email list will receive a notice of the next days’ sales each night at 8pm. Each sale lasts just two days, or until the availability runs out.

Sounds pretty cool, right? I used Perrin’s link to sign and up and browse some of the current….um, sales, and found that there are some deep discounts offered here. But remember, this is a luxury travel site. Half off of $800 is still way out of my price range. Budget travelers may have a harder time finding a deal they can afford….but it’s not impossible. One deal currently being offered is a Superior Queen Guestroom at the West Hollywood Sunset Tower for $129 (as opposed to the usual $225-$275). The discounted, but still $650 a night, Asia cruise is probably a little less affordable for most people.

Perrin was able to offer the exclusive sign-up link through Conde Nast’s new partnership with Jetsetter, which is a member of the Gilt Groupe. Each month, Jetsetter will offer special deals on products and services sold by some of the magazines advertisers.

Cast your vote in Trazzler’s big summer contest

by Katie Hammel on

Trazzler, a website that provides travel inspiration through destination descriptions submitted by users and freelance writers, runs a monthly contest that usually offers a prize of $250, and a contract to write 10 trips for the website. For their summer contest however, the team at Trazzler decided to up the ante.

They’ve teamed up with NYCgo, AKA Hotels, and jetBlue to offer one lucky winner an amazing prize – a 2-week writer-in-residence contract in New York City (including free flight and accommodations), and $10,000 to write 30 trips about his or her experiences in the city. Over 800 entries fitting the theme “oasis” were submitted. 200 moved on to the semi-final round, in which the public can vote on their favorite. The ten trips with the most votes when the voting ends (Monday at 7:59pm Eastern time), will move on to round three, where a panel of judges will choose the grand prize winner.

I entered the contest, and have made it to the semi-finals, where I’m fighting to stay in the top ten. You can vote* for my trip, check out the others in the top ten, or “trazzle” through the site to find your perfect travel inspiration.

*To vote, you need to register for the website, which is easy to do if you sign up with Facebook. Then just click “wishlist” under the trip to vote. You can only vote once per trip, but you can vote for multiple submissions.

Travelers put JetBlue all-you-can-fly deal to the test

by Katie Hammel on

When JetBlue announced its All-You-Can-Jet Pass in August, many frequent flyers scrambled to purchase one before the airline pulled the plug on the popular promotion. Those who didn’t have much flying planned let the deal pass them by. And others decided to view the offer as a challenge – a reason to fly as much as they possibly could over the course of the month for which the Pass was valid.

Two of those travelers are Clark Dever and Joe Dinardo, who will take 49 flights in the 31 days between September 8 and October 8. They’ll visit 29 cities – spending 12 hours each in city – sleeping on planes, showering at the gym, and relying on friends to meet them in New York with fresh clothes every few days. They’ll also be blogging about their adventures at Twelve Hours in a City.

Jennifer Milano also took advantage of the Pass, and created a website to help other All-You-Can-Jetters connect, share their stories, and help each other out with places to stay and travel advice. Another traveler, Greg Krause, is using his Pass to help raise money for a charity. He’ll be visiting 24 cities and collecting money for a school in Zambia that his parents created. The money will be used to fund the purchase of a vehicle that will bring supplies to the school. Krause is documenting his travels and accepting donations on his website, 30 Days on JetBlue

If you weren’t able to drop everything to see how much you can fly in 31 days, at least you can follow along with the adventures of these non-stop flyers as they push the limits of the All-You-Can-Jet offer.

[via CNN]

Nominees for Planeta.com’s Ecotourism Spotlight Award announced

by Katie Hammel on

Planeta.com, a website dedicated to ecotourism and encouraging environmental conservation through tourism, has announced the nominees for its Ecotourism Spotlight Award. The Award honors the tourism boards that promote ecotourism through their websites, both by highlighting their own efforts and by helping travelers connect to independent tour providers who operate using sustainable practices.

The award was created in 2007 to encourage National Tourism Boards to promote ecotourism within their countries and to reward those who were doing so effectively. The winner in both 2007 and 2008 was Ecotourism Laos and the site is nominated again this year, along with Quito Visitors’ Bureau, Responsible Tourism Guide to the Mekong, and Failte Ireland.

The voting is open to the public on Planeta’s website and will continue through August 31. The winner will be announced on September 27, World Tourism Day. So cast your vote, and check out the sites to see what each is doing to promote ecotourism in its country.