Lurklotgd.net

Mark Gesture asked:


When you walk into your vacation home do you feel like its home or more like a hotel? Owning a vacation home can be a lot of work and cost some serious money. You should therefore want to spend most of your time there. Make your vacation house a second home by decorating in the taste and style that reflects your lifestyle. If your vacation home lies near the beach and you enjoy spending most of your time in the sand, colors and wall paintings should reflect the beaches’ color palettes.

I am a big believer in bringing activities you enjoy on vacation into your vacation home. The best way to decorate any home is to add your personal touch. In your vacation home make sure your personal touch includes the vacation activities you love. If you own a vacation home dedicated to enjoying the quite of the woods near a pristine lake, you may want to bring paintings inside of what you like about the lake.

Interesting enough, I don’t believe you can overdo this technique when decorating your vacation home. Make sure you make your vacation house or cabin as comfortable as your main home.

If you rent out your vacation home for part of the year, the people renting it out will definitely appreciate the personal touch because it makes it feel like a home and not a hotel. People can easily stay for a week at a hotel room or suite for their vacation. They chose to rent out a vacation house or cabin because they want to feel completely relaxed like they are at “home”.

You can also take this design tip home. Keep your mind on vacation while you’re sitting at home by bringing your vacation activities home with you. Your spouse will appreciate the beach painting, or moose head on the wall in your home. Personal touches in your house or vacation home make sure he/she will remember every minute of a stress free vacation when coming home from a hard days work.

Discover your unique style while on vacation by finding a piece of art that only you and your family would enjoy. Unique pieces of drift wood, or sand dollars can add that personal touch that is so difficult to find. Make sure you clean any product of nature that you do bring inside your vacation home. You never know what bugs, or creatures still live inside.

A special creative hobby that you enjoy to do on your free time can also serve as inspiration for your vacation home’s décor. If you enjoy arts and crafts, place your latest work of art on the coffee table or wall. If you enjoy placing ships into a bottle this can be a great addition to side table. Enjoy spending some time either creating or finding that additional item that will truly make your vacation home unique. Take your time with this process, make it a family event, or a romantic activity for the two of you.

Francis Lua asked:


A Caribbean travel vacation cruise has much to offer to sophisticated travelers who recognize the great value in traveling to the island. If you want a vacation that is rich with culture galore, quaint architecture, seas to explore, fantastic swimming and snorkeling, then the Caribbean has it and more.

Here, you will find some great Caribbean vacation travel cruise offers that are guaranteed to give you the best value in cruise traveling.

A Seven Night Dream

Dreams become reality when you find yourself floating through warm, welcoming water of the on one of several vacations travel cruise ships. Enjoy the sun, sand, and surf of a picture perfect island during brief land excursion in any one of your ports of call and spend the day indulging in duty free shopping, diving in clear blue water, or exploring Mayan ruin.

With the coming of the cold month, the Royal Caribbean, one of the leading cruise lines on the islands, is offering many fantastic vacation travel cruise offers to its visitors who opt to book early. One of these is the seven night dream travel beginning at four hundred dollar per person, the cruise and featuring fabulous inside cabins where you can get excellent views of the dazzling ocean.

The Mariner of the Seas, which departs from Port Canaveral, Florida and takes you to four different ports of call where you can go on brief land excursions Labadee, Hispaniola, Ocho Rios, Jamaica; George Town, Grand Cayman; Cozumel and Mexico before you cruise back to Port Canaveral in Florida.

The Voyager of the Seas lets you start your travel cruise fun in Miami, Florida, and making brief stops in Hispaniola, Jamaica, Grand Cayman, and Mexico. The ship offers you four kinds of room accommodations, ranging from five hundred dollar to two thousand plus dollar.

Other midsize ships mean a more spacious and comfortable vacation cruise, with all the service and amenities you had expect, but no waiting in long lines for meals or port of calls.

Three Night Enchantment or Four Night Excitement

Few places on earth are more conducive to relaxation than the island of the Caribbean. Perhaps, it is the light, tropical breezes that gently soothe the soul. Or the warm water and warm receptions tat await you on every shore. One thing is certain: aboard a Celebrity vacation travel cruise, a vacation offers something for everyone.

But if you want your vacation cruise to be brief but enchanting, the vacation cruise offers several short cruises for your pleasure. You will find short vacation cruises, just three nights long, out of San Juan, Puerto Rico, for as little as two hundred eighty nine dollar per person.

Or consider a bit longer, western vacation cruise, four nights starting at three hundred fifty dollar, on the Enchantment of the Seas. Take a four night Western vacation cruise aboard the Century for only three hundred thirty, starting from Miami, Florida. The cruise provides you with all the amenities you could ever wish from, from shipboard accommodation to ocean transportation, meals, beverages, and entertainment aboard the vessel.

Don Buynack asked:


Don’t make any travel plans until you read this!

Especially when we’re experiencing one of the worst global recessions that we’ve seen in decades, every dollar counts. And because travel is so expensive, many of us turn to well-known discount travel Web sites like Orbitz, Travelocity and Expedia.

When you book on these sites you think you’re getting the lowest prices available, right?

Wrong!

Why You Might Not Get the Best Deal When Booking Your Trip with Most Discount Travel Websites

In reality, you may actually be getting higher priced offers from airlines and hotels that are affiliated with the discount travel website you use to book your trip. Additionally, you’re doing all the work to research flights and hotels, yet the travel sites are still earning their full agency commissions.

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

Here Are 5 Travel Secrets Orbitz, Travelocity & Expedia Don’t Want You to Know

1. They charge service fees on every booking. Sometimes that fee is disclosed in the “final price” listed online. Sometimes it’s buried in the Terms & Conditions. Need to change your plans? Be prepared to pay service fees of up to $30 on every phone call for a change or re-issue. This does NOT count the $75 – $150 airline penalty. These travel websites actually hope for bad weather, because bad weather means altered plans, which means extra revenue for them.

2. The rate you see may not be the lowest rate available. That’s because large travel websites deal in bulk volume. As a result they concentrate on “national” and “public” rates. They don’t publish “private” fares, consolidator fares, or below-market fares because it’s not in their interest to do so. You can only get those fares from an experienced travel professional, who knows the system and where to find them.

3. Their definition of lowest price may not match yours. Have you ever entered the exact same search on 3 different travel websites and gotten wide-ranging results? That’s because travel websites have special arrangements with certain “partners” and may give these partners preferential treatment or placement bias. That’s how they make money. Consumers, however, are catching on. According to Travel Weekly, bookings on the “Big 3″ have fallen over 10% this year. People are turning to airline and hotel websites directly because that’s where they’re finding the lowest fares.

4. A confused customer is their best customer. In the last 12 months we’ve seen a spate of new surcharges assessed by airlines to offset rising costs—from $5 for some aisle seats to $15 for the first piece of checked luggage. Unfortunately, these costs are not reflected in the search results of most airfare comparison sites. Consumers are left to do the research and the math on their own. As a result, they’re confused. What looks to be the lowest price may not actually be the lowest “total” price when all applicable fees are factored in.

5. Once you hit that SEND button, you’re on your own. What happens when you book online and your flight is delayed or cancelled, or if you miss a connection? Ever tried to get a human being on the phone? You may be on hold for a long, long time. Or when you do finally get someone on the line, you find out he’s in Bangalore (and English isn’t his first language). Meanwhile, the last seat on the last flight out has just taken off. Travel has become more unpredictable than ever. Sadly, it’s not a question of if something will go wrong, but when. And when it does, do you want your fate to rest in the hands of the guy whose job it is to get you off the phone as fast as possible?

This article may seem harsh. But Travelocity, Orbitz and Expedia are keeping these secrets from you. And, you have to know these dirty little travel secrets if you want to hold onto more of your cash.