About Those Other Faraway Places

It's winter in the Southern Hemisphere, so that means somewhat lower fares to Australia, New Zealand, South America, and Africa. But since there's so little seat capacity compared to European destinations, prices will still be disagreeably high for bargain hunters. And unless you're looking to travel to Japan, where travel has declined sharply since March's devastating earthquake, the same goes for flights to Asia. Bargains will be hard to find.

Homes Away from Home

If you're looking to cut the price of summer accommodations, the solution is to book away from traditional hotels. During the summer, colleges and universities around the globe routinely allow transients to reserve space in their dorms for a comparative pittance. The best way to do it is checking the website of any college in the area where you're expecting to travel or by consulting the boards operated by travel sites such as Frommers.com. And if you're into Spartan lodgings, convents and monasteries will take you in too.

But anyone who has followed the financial markets knows that there's a better and more stylish alternative: renting someone's home or apartment for a vacation stay. The IPO for HomeAway and the buzz surrounding AirBnB have recently introduced this concept to many travelers, but savvy vacationers have been doing it for decades. (Yes, I do it all the time and love it, and Portfolio.com editor J. Jennings Moss is headed to Amsterdam later this month for an apartment he booked at AirBnB.com. He’s spending slightly more for three nights in a stylish, huge one-bedroom apartment than he is for one night at the new W Hotel in London.)

A few words of advice if you're headed the vacation-rental route. You're not booking a hotel, so there won't be things like room service and laundry/dry cleaning. You'll probably have to leave the building for spa and fitness facilities. (I always travel with my own coffee, water, and bathroom basics, so I don't have to run out and shop for the basics immediately.) And please remember: Accommodations vary dramatically, and you can't expect some pictures on a website to tell the full story. For better or worse, vacation rentals always require a leap of faith.

Lodging Loopholes

About 45 percent of the nation's traditional hotel rooms are empty on an average night. But that's just an average. Lots of luck finding a reasonably priced beachfront hotel on a summer weekend or a room in San Diego County later this month during the massive Comic-Con. On the other hand, a recent report from Hotwire.com says room rates continue to fall even in some popular vacation destinations such as Williamsburg, Virginia, San Antonio, Texas, and Fort Myers, Florida.

Regardless of whether your chosen spot is crowded or empty, however, there are always opportunities to cut your nightly rate. AAA members can often score 10 percent to 20 percent discounts at major chains. Ditto for members of AARP. And if you're planning on a Great American Summer Roadtrip and don't mind booking as you go, services such as Roomsaver, Travel Coupons, and Hotel Coupons are just the ticket. They offer discounts on "walk-up" rates at thousands of properties along the way.

Avoid the Annoyances

Finally, a tip that has served me well over the years: Don't let the annoying ups and extras ruin your holiday. The airline business is currently enamored with a la carte pricing, so it seems intent on charging you extra for everything: checked bags, seat assignments, boarding passes, and, in some cases, for the right to use a website to make reservations. Before booking, make sure you understand exactly what is included in the price.

Same for lodgings. Too many resorts have a "mandatory" resort fee that they somehow forget to tell you about at the time of reservation. Make sure to ask. If you're headed for a city hotel, inquire about the price of parking since that could add as much as $75 a night to your price.

And car rentals are all about extras. They can double or even triple the advertised daily or weekly rate. Before booking, make sure your personal car and home insurance covers rentals and then resolutely refuse all of the overpriced "insurance" products that the counter clerks try to sell you. And make sure to have a fuel-finder app for your smartphone. It's imperative that you fuel up before returning a vehicle since some car-rental firms now charge as much as $9 a gallon for the "refueling service."

The Fine Print…

If you want to stay connected to the cloud when you travel, you should have a Boingo account. For prices as low as $7.95 a month, you'll get unlimited free access to hundreds of thousands of WiFi hotspots. Boingo accounts are also valid for Gogo Inflight, a WiFi service available on more than 1,000 domestic jets. Inflight service is an add-on charge, however.

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Joe Brancatelli writes Portfolio.com’s business travel column, Seat 2B. Brancatelli is the former executive editor of Frequent Flyer magazine and operates the membership site JoeSentMe.com. You can reach him at jbrancatelli@portfolio.com.