Mobissimo

New Year's resolutions are a time tested tradition.  Here are some geared for the travel set, take a look, read more here via Gadling.

The year is almost over, so after looking back at some of the best and worst the year had to offer, it is now time to look forward at the new year.

I've collected ten ways that can help you make the best of your trips, and may even help you collect some extra miles on the way there.

When the checks already in the mail, it's not easy to get money back, but here you go, some airlines are refunding some, read more here via Gadling.

Just when you thought that airlines were nickel-and-diming us ruthlessly, (Let me check. Yep, they still are.) we get news to give us a sliver of hope.

An article in USA Today tells us that if the price of a non-refundable airline ticket that you've already bought goes down, you can ask for a refund. It just needs to be requested before the scheduled flight.

Simply book the Stay to Fly Rate at participating hotels and stay anytime now through December 31, 2008 and you qualify to get a flight voucher good for a $198 round-trip ticket to one of 198 select U.S. destinations or $298 round-trip to Canada and Mexico. There’s a $99 discount offered off current airfares to/from Alaska or Hawaii.

Best yet, you have three months to book your travel and can travel anytime within six months of booking. So, there’s plenty of time to getaway. Hit the slopes for a weekend. Head to the beach for some sun. Or travel to see your favorite team play.

The next time your travel, stay with Holiday Inn and Holiday Inn Express. Because the more you stay, the more places you can go.

Book your stay today and get your ticket to fly away.

Simply book the Stay to Fly Rate at participating hotels and stay anytime now through December 31, 2008 and you qualify to get a flight voucher good for a $198 round-trip ticket to one of 198 select U.S. destinations or $298 round-trip to Canada and Mexico. There’s a $99 discount offered off current airfares to/from Alaska or Hawaii.

Best yet, you have three months to book your travel and can travel anytime within six months of booking. So, there’s plenty of time to getaway. Hit the slopes for a weekend. Head to the beach for some sun. Or travel to see your favorite team play.

The next time your travel, stay with Holiday Inn and Holiday Inn Express. Because the more you stay, the more places you can go.

Book your stay today and get your ticket to fly away.

Since when is nature a tough sell?  A new artificial beach has sprung up only 300 meters from an actual beach which is apparently pretty decent, read more here via Gadling.

There's an absolutely amazing beach in Japan, filled with white sand, blue water, and a lapping wave. But this beach did not exist before 1993. It's known as the Ocean Dome, the most popular artificial beach in an arena that's quickly becoming fashionable. There's now artificial beaches in Monaco, Paris, Rotterdam, Toronto, Hong Kong, and Singapore.

You always want to blend in while traveling, experience what the locals experience, get a true feeling for the place you're visiting.  But what happens when this goes awry?  Here's a list of insults around the world via the Guardian.

George Bush was on the receiving end of the worst of all Middle Eastern insults at the weekend when an Iraqi journalist threw his shoes at the outgoing US president at a press conference in Baghdad. Throwing a shoe at a person's head isn't, of course, considered insulting in only the Islamic world, though it does carry a particularly degrading symbolism (showing the sole of your shoes is considered deeply offensive; when the statue of Saddam Hussein was toppled in Baghdad in 2003, Iraqis beat it with their shoes). Bush steps down in January, but this surely won't be the last offensive gesture he encounters on his travels. Here, then, is our handy guide.

True, Prague has probably seen its day, it has been more than a decade since I went, and I was probably a decade late to the party.  However, not all is lost, Eva Prichlikova is still there somewhere, here's a list of new places to check out via Globorati.

How do you know that Prague’s hit the big time? The city just scored its first members-only club, LS — a swanky Old Town lounge catering to barons and billionaires (plus their guests, if you’re lucky). The club has also lured top chef Paul Day (of Michelin-starred Nobu London) to whip up some haute Asian cuisine. If you’re counting, that gives Prague two British phenoms — Ramsay was the first celeb-chef to crack Eastern European when he opened an outpost of Maze at the renovated Hilton Old Town last year.

Simply book the Stay to Fly Rate at participating hotels and stay anytime now through December 31, 2008 and you qualify to get a flight voucher good for a $198 round-trip ticket to one of 198 select U.S. destinations or $298 round-trip to Canada and Mexico. There’s a $99 discount offered off current airfares to/from Alaska or Hawaii.

Best yet, you have three months to book your travel and can travel anytime within six months of booking. So, there’s plenty of time to getaway. Hit the slopes for a weekend. Head to the beach for some sun. Or travel to see your favorite team play.

The next time your travel, stay with Holiday Inn and Holiday Inn Express. Because the more you stay, the more places you can go.

Book your stay today and get your ticket to fly away.

Simply book the Stay to Fly Rate at participating hotels and stay anytime now through December 31, 2008 and you qualify to get a flight voucher good for a $198 round-trip ticket to one of 198 select U.S. destinations or $298 round-trip to Canada and Mexico. There’s a $99 discount offered off current airfares to/from Alaska or Hawaii.

Best yet, you have three months to book your travel and can travel anytime within six months of booking. So, there’s plenty of time to getaway. Hit the slopes for a weekend. Head to the beach for some sun. Or travel to see your favorite team play.

The next time your travel, stay with Holiday Inn and Holiday Inn Express. Because the more you stay, the more places you can go.

Book your stay today and get your ticket to fly away.

Finding a new, pristine destination is always the goal of travelers.  Read here for a new take on some new destinations, this via Budget Traveler.  Here's an island in Wales ready for you already.

WALES
Skomer Island
The secret is out about Skomer—among birds, anyway. Nearly half a million puffins, kittiwakes, fulmars, and razorbills build nests in the lichen-covered cliffs of the 721-acre nature reserve off mainland Wales. The birds far outnumber the dozen or so humans on Skomer, just a 15-minute ferry ride from the town of Martin's Haven (Dale Sailing, 011-44/1646-603-123, $18 round trip).

Simply book the Stay to Fly Rate at participating hotels and stay anytime now through December 31, 2008 and you qualify to get a flight voucher good for a $198 round-trip ticket to one of 198 select U.S. destinations or $298 round-trip to Canada and Mexico. There’s a $99 discount offered off current airfares to/from Alaska or Hawaii.

Best yet, you have three months to book your travel and can travel anytime within six months of booking. So, there’s plenty of time to getaway. Hit the slopes for a weekend. Head to the beach for some sun. Or travel to see your favorite team play.

The next time your travel, stay with Holiday Inn and Holiday Inn Express. Because the more you stay, the more places you can go.

Book your stay today and get your ticket to fly away.

You see them walking through the airport, cleanly, smartly dressed, laughing, having a great time, headed off to yet another exotic location, is the flight attendant life everything it appears to be?  Read more here about the Emirates crew via the WSJ.

The global economic slump is just now touching the glittering shores of the oil-rich Persian Gulf. But when it comes to the 10,000 flight attendants who work for Emirates, Dubai’s government-owned luxury airline, no one is cutting corners.

While the aviation industry elsewhere is facing headwinds, this city-state of man-made island developments, luxury resorts and an indoor ski slope has put some of the glamor back into air travel, the Wall Street Journal’s Farnaz Fassihi reports.

Simply book the Stay to Fly Rate at participating hotels and stay anytime now through December 31, 2008 and you qualify to get a flight voucher good for a $198 round-trip ticket to one of 198 select U.S. destinations or $298 round-trip to Canada and Mexico. There’s a $99 discount offered off current airfares to/from Alaska or Hawaii.

Best yet, you have three months to book your travel and can travel anytime within six months of booking. So, there’s plenty of time to getaway. Hit the slopes for a weekend. Head to the beach for some sun. Or travel to see your favorite team play.
   

The next time your travel, stay with Holiday Inn and Holiday Inn Express. Because the more you stay, the more places you can go.

Book your stay today and get your ticket to fly away.

Do you use the internet exclusively to research and book travel?  Do you comb forums to find information about a certain hotel you want to book?  Do you carry your laptop everywhere you travel and have an unlocked GSM phone?  Perhaps you're the next generation of traveler, read more here via USA Today.

Do you prefer to book travel on the Internet? Do you like to view hotel room photos and read reviews written by other travelers before making your selection? Do you use your cellphone to display maps when traveling? If you answered yes to these questions you may be among the growing ranks of Next Generation or "NEXTgen" travelers.

Less than a decade since the first trip was booked on the Internet, online travel bookings now surpass trips booked "the old fashioned way" by phone, travel agent, or other traditional channels according to PhoCusWright, Inc., a research firm concentrating on travel technology. The rapid growth in online adoption is driven by a new breed of high tech or "NEXTgen" travelers.