As you are probably already aware, the new US Passport requirements came into effect on Tuesday, January 23. The recent change required travelers to possess passports when they fly between the U.S. and Canada, Mexico, South America, Central America, and the Caribbean.

However, U.S. citizens still do not need a passport if they’re traveling to one of the numerous U.S. territories. These include Puerto Rico, Guam, U.S. Virgin Islands, American Samoa, Swains Island and the Northern Mariana Islands.

This new Passport requirement is actually the first of two phases of passport reforms. The changes are under the two part “Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative.” The second part of the Passport reform will require a passport, on January 1, 2008, for land and sea travel between the U.S. and Mexico, Canada, South America, Central America, and the Caribbean.

So most travelers will undoubtedly need a Passport, unless you plan on staying within US borders for the rest of your life (In which case, stop reading this blog). So to refresh, here are the guidelines from the State Department.

Travelers will have to apply in person for a passport if they…

• Have never had a passport.
• Have an expired U.S. passport more than fifteen years old.
• No longer have in possession their expired U.S. Passport
• Have a valid U.S. passport that has disappeared (lost).
• Possess a Passport that was issued when they were younger than 16 years old.

If you’ve had a passport before, hopefully you can it through the snail mail. You know if you can if you…

• Possess an undamaged, recent passport, issued within the last fifteen years.
• Received the Passport when you were older than sixteen.
• Have not legally changed your name since you got your Passport.

So make sure you have your passport up to date so you will not be blind sided by the new restrictions in your future travels.

[tags]Passport[/tags]

Hotels have recently fallen victim to the infamous norovirus that has been known to plague Cruise ship passengers for years.

The outbreaks began after Christmas, when 60 people in Madison, Wisconsin fell ill after attending a party at a hotel convention center.

Most recently, the Hilton Washington Dulles Airport hotel (long name I know..) was hit with the virus causing the hotel to shut down for a thorough cleaning. In this incident, 120 people became sick from the virus.

The best way to protect yourself from catching this disease is to never come in contact with other people. Since I’m hoping that’s not possible, the second best way is to just wash your hands and stay clean. This particular virus originates from infected food, then spreads through person to person contact. So wash your hands, avoid people, and don’t have bad luck and you’ll be fine staying in hotels.

Farecast just brought its flight Price guarantee service out of its testing stage, making it available for anyone to use on their website.

I wrote an entry summarizing how Fareguard works when Farecast first announced this new, revolutionary travel booking service. Basically, travelers can be protected against any rise in ticket prices for a week for a fee of $10. It’s pretty nifty, and shows that Farecast is serious about their price predictions. If nothing else, this brings legitimacy to the Farecast predictions.

To kick of the promotion of their Fareguard Flight price guarantee, they are offering this flight insurance for only $3 for a limited time.
If you’re still confused, I don’t blame you. Just read their really good explanation of the service in their blog post about it, or check it out Farecast.com.

The following is a paid review:

OTBeach.com is an authoritative British travel agency serving travelers who are looking to get On the Beach during the holidays. OTBeach has earned its status as a trusted online travel agency by being around over ten years, as it was founded in 1995. The agency is also part of the ABTA (Association of British Travel Agents)

OTbeach.com has all the travel features necessary to book a cheap holiday online. It offers hotels, flights, and car hires all for competitive rates, and offers a low price guarantee with online travel purchases. I will cover the prices later in the post.

Online Travel Booking Alternatives

If you don\’t have the time or desire to shop online for a vacation, OTbeach offers several alternatives. The first is their toll free number (0870 6 06 07 08) for customers to call to book a trip. Secondly, if you would prefer that OTbeach calls you, you can enter your own phone number for Otbeach to call you back at. Another alternative is to fill out an online form of the requirements you have for your trip, and they will contact you with trips that meet your needs.

Price Comparison

After a quick comparison to Expedia.co.uk, I found that OTbeach offered a better price on a week long getaway to Majorca, Spain. I spot checked one specific hotel, and I found that OTbeach had a rate 20% below the Expedia rate. I wouldn’t expect this disparity among all the rates, but this little experiment proves that otbeach is very competitive with its pricing.

OTbeach.com has proved itself to be a great online travel booking website, and if I happened to live across the pond in the UK, I’d be sure to use it myself while booking my own cheap holidays on the beach.

I don’t know how I’ve missed out on Travelistic.com and their wonderful travel videos over the past few months. As an web 2.0 junkie and travel enthusiast, I unfortunately ran across this wonderful website only recently.

Travelistic is a social video sharing site that is developing into the YouTube of online travel videos. Needless to say since I’m writing about it, I like this site a lot. Currently, they have 1700 videos created by 380 producers from all over the world.

What sets apart Travelistic is its niche and its standard of videos. First, no other site offers soely travel videos like Travelistic. Sure, YouTube has some, but its not their focus or speciality, like it is for Travelistic.

Secondly, most of the videos on Travelistic are professionally created by producers. This results in viewer friendly editing of helpful and factual information. There are no stupid home videos made by 12 year old kids on their web cam. They have helpful videos on subjects travelers are interested in.

In addition to the exemplary content, the video is of a high quality. One thing that I’ve been annoyed with YouTube about is their lack of video quality. Travelistic has some of the clearest and most pristine videos that I have seen offered online so far.

I’ll let the Travelistic video below prove for itself how good the quality is. This particular video is about Japan’s sake from the Thirsty Traveler.

All travel fans need to check out Travelistic because they’re video services are second to none, and the videos offer factual travel information that can be of use to all travel enthusiasts. Kudos to Travelistic, I give them two thumbs up.

[tags]travelistic[/tags]

Lifehacker had a great post awhile back warning travelers of the dangers posed from using free Wi-fi internet at airports around the nation. In JFK International’s Jet Blue terminal, Jet Blue is kind enough to set up a free Wi-fi network for its customers. Unfortunately, as in many other instances, this lead to someonesetting up their own rogue wireless networks using the free network to extract sensitive information from surfers.

When wi-fi users attempted to connect to the wireless connection in this particular Jet Blue terminal, there were two options available: “Default” and “JetBlue free hotspot.” It turned out, the dangerous, rogue network set up was the one cleverly labeled “JetBlue free hotspot.”

So while traveling, be very skeptical about the free wireless internet signals offered in airport terminals. If there’s any doubt in the security of the wi-fi, just don’t use it. These bogus networks set up by phishers evidently occur very often in free airport hot spots.

(On a sidenote, JFK also offers Wi-fi in Terminals 1, 8, and 9)