In a CNNMoney article it was reported that half of Americans are surrendering eight or more days of vacation a year! This data was culled from records from the Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics by Universal Orlando Resort - so I doubt they’d be skewing the data in any way. Newark, NJ topped the list with the most surrendered days and Sacramento, CA with the least.
This is a tactic I’ve been using ever since I set foot in a hotel room - take the soaps, shampoos, and conditions from hotel rooms. Partially it’s my frugal nature, I’ve paid for it and it’s mine; partially I don’t want to waste it (especially when I’ve only stayed one night); and partially because I know that if I go on a trip where I’ll need travel sized toiletries it would be convenient to keep around. I don’t see the logic in going to a CVS or RiteAid and paying money for something that I would throw out any other day. So next time you stay in a hotel, just keep the toiletries and if you look in your closet and find a million bottles of shampoo… maybe it’s time you should take a vacation. 
What’s the best part about going to Vegas besides the shows, the gaming, the clubs, the women (and men), the thirty minute weddings, the bufetts, the freebies and the comps? The great hotel rooms! The common strategy for folks who travel to Vegas and intend on staying a week is to spend the weekend nights in an older, middle of the Strip, hotel and the weekday nights in the newer, end of the Strip, hotels. In a recent trip to Las Vegas, my party spent the weekends at Bally’s and the weekdays at Mandalay Bay - and when you’re spending a week there, you’ll find the weekdays are just as rowdy as the weekends in Las Vegas. This strategy is great except now you have to search for the best prices on hotels for the weekdays and then once again on the weekends - then book them both. This is where Travelaxe comes into play.
CNN ran a story in its travel section today giving readers some good tips on how to get into the most popular restaurants without getting a reservation four years in advance (well, really only two months). The article itself is a little basic and never talks about greasing any palms, which may be a relief for frugal people like myself.
What are CityPasses, Go Cards, and Connect cards? They’re all-in-one discount pass cards to local attractions within a certain city. In cities where attractions are closeby and easy to access, all-in-one passes are an incredible deal because they let you into places cheaper than if you paid for them individually. For many of them, they are valid for multiple days (some CityPasses are valid for up to a year after you first use them) and contain actual tickets so you can bypass the regular lines, which can get pretty big at popular destinations.
If you have ever used Priceline, you know that their process is a little tricky and if you aren’t careful - you could end up in a roach motel. Well, here is where BiddingForTravel will be an eternal lifesaver for all you Priceline addicts out there. Since Priceline isn’t about to give you a list of their four stars in each city and they aren’t going to tell you which lowball bids were accepted for what flights, you’ll need to rely on BiddingForTravel’s loyal users to provide this knowledge through their own experiences.
Silver Medallion is one of the levels in Delta’s Medallion program, part of Delta’s SkyMiles Frequent Flyer program. The silver medallion is the lowest of the three (Silver, Gold, Platinum) but still affords some nice benefits over regular passengers. These benefits are all yours until February 28th, 2006 if you take a flight out of one of 14 cities.
Everyone loves a blowout vacation - you drop a couple grand on a great vacation that’s a week or two (or three) to an exotic locale. You drink dozens of drinks with umbrellas in them and you sit on the beach… or you drink lots of electrolytes and climb mountains and hills. Whatever fancies you, a huge blowout vacation always de-stresses and lets you do what you’d love to do for the rest of your life. But those only come every few years (or more often if you’re lucky/rich), so what about the times in between? That’s when the mini-vacation comes in.
When I booked a cruise recently, Travelocity was offering a packet of dollar-off coupons as an incentive. These coupon codes come in the way of coupon promotion codes so I thought I’d share it with the loyal Ease of Travel readership. If you are interested in using them, all I ask is that you use an Ease of Travel link to Travelocity and throw a few bucks my way. Click on the full article below for the complete list of coupon codes. Cheers!
You may not know it, but that 5 euro espresso is actually going to cost you more than you anticipated. When you use a domestic credit card for a non-US Dollar purchase, the credit card company is going to charged you anywhere from one to three percent just to convert it into US Dollars. This is on top of whatever you’re getting screwed out of in terms of our horrible exchange rate now. What makes it worse is that when your credit card company is getting charged, it’s already been converted into US Dollars for them. It’s not like you’re paying them to convert euros to dollars, it’s already been done for them. Read on to find out what cards will screw you the least.