Travel tips that you can't miss!

Kelly Merritt, Johnny Jet, George Hobica, Mary Forgione

Let's say you have unused airline voucher, it's going to expire soon and you don't have any travel plan in the near future. What are you going to do? Throw it away like you never had it? Or get a ticket immediately, make yourself a last minute weekend get away trip?

Or, as suggested by George Hobica of airfarewatchdog, you can use that voucher to purchase a full price, fully refundable ticket, and then cancel the ticket, get all your money back. Waalaa... problem solved! How cool is that?

Hobica was joined by Johnny Jet, Kelly Merritt and Mary Forgione at a panel discussion, titled "Cents and Sensibility - Practical Tips to Save Money with Online Travel" at the LA Times Travel and Adventure Show.

Together the panelists shared some really good tips and good deals (websites) for airfares, hotels, travel packages, cruises. Here are a summary/highlights of them:

• Airfare - sign up for frequent fliers program/e-mail list, this is where you usually get the discount coupons or special price alerts. Some good websites include hotwire, priceline, airfare, yapta, airfarewatchdog. Myth~ good deals start on Tuesday? No, the good deals can come out anytime of the week, so check your email, or follow them on twitter for latest and first hand information.
• Hotel - other than hotwire and priceline, hotel.com, jetsetter.com, sniqueway.com can be your good sources. For apartment or vacation house, flipkey.com, homeexchange.com are recommended. If you plan to bid for hotel room but not familiar with the whole process, get some insider and useful tips from biddingfortravel.com.
• Travel Package - some good deals can be found on lastminute.com, lastminutetravel.com. Some of the travel packages are cheaper than your airfare alone, even if you're not going to use the hotel included in your package, it helps save some money for your airline ticket.
• Cruise - cruisecritic.com, cruisedeals.com. After 911, cruises no longer accept walk-in customer.
• Luggage - try not to check in any bags. If you have big and over weight luggage, try to ship it with FedEx instead of paying overweight penalty, and chances of missing luggage are lower. Many domestic airlines have started charging for check-in luggage.
• Travel Insurance - do not get the one offer by your airlines or cruise operators, get a third party insurance services which offer better coverages.