Hoteliers can pack all the Jacuzzis, flat-screen TVs, and Frette linens they want into their guest rooms. But no amenity can quite provide what frequent (and picky) travelers prize: the feeling of being at home on the road.

More Americans will be taking trips this summer than ever before. The Travel Industry Association of America predicts a 1.4 percent increase in leisure travel over the same period last year, while a jump of 3 percent is forecast for business travel. And if most travelers are anything like Bernie Yee, they’ll be bringing along plenty of tech gadgets and luxury goods to help make their hotel rooms feel more like home.

“I’ve done a lot of business travel in my professional life,” says Yee, a 41-year-old vice president of international business development at Harmonix, an MTV-owned studio that produced the video game Guitar Hero. Yee, who travels to Boston on business twice a month, to the West Coast about every six weeks, and to Asia four or five times a year, says the toughest part is leaving his wife and almost five-year-old son, Max, at home in New York. So when he went on a recent two-week trip to Asia, among the items he packed was a small Web camera.

“On the one hand, it’s great to order room service—but it’s also tiring, and you miss your family,” Yee says. With a webcam costing less than $100 and a standard Skype subscription, which provides unlimited computer-to-computer calls, he was not only able to chat with Max but to give him a tour of the hotel room. “It makes being away a lot easier, and I think it takes a little pressure off my family at home. And I get to see them. There’s no substitute.”

Hotels are catching on, introducing new features to help customers like Yee feel more comfortable. “As more and more people have to be on the road, they’re doing anything they can to bring something that makes them feel like they’re not so far away,” says Vivian Deuschl, vice president of public relations for Ritz-Carlton hotels. “A lot of guests bring those digital alarm clocks that wake you with the voices of your children–‘Wake up, Daddy! Wake up, Mommy!’” Deuschl adds that, in an effort to make its properties more homey, Ritz-Carlton has added more comfort foods like meat loaf, mashed potatoes, and fried chicken to their room-service menus and swapped bedspreads for duvets in the guest rooms.

If leaving your entertainment system behind causes you angst, there are ways around that too. The sleek Slingbox Pro, allows you to tune into your favorite cable channels and DVR-recorded shows back home from your laptop, desktop, handheld computer, or cell phone. If you’re logging long hours in a car or on a plane, Hammacher Schlemmer’s DVD Complete Travel Pack allows you to play CDs or watch DVDs on a high-resolution screen. Two headphone jacks and two pairs of collapsible headphones are included in case you make friends with your seatmate.

If you aren’t careful, our eight ways to feel at home on the road may just leave you homesick for your hotel. (View slide show.)