Before You Board

• Get some rest: It’s tempting to stay up late in hopes of sleeping through a flight but crowded cabins are hardly a peaceful oasis. Get a full night’s rest before your flight and you’ll still have plenty of energy for business or pleasure when you land.
• Carry-on snacks: Stay healthy by packing your own snacks, such as a string cheese and nuts, along with an apple or banana. The combination of protein and high-fiber will keep you fuller longer and help you avoid the 1000-calorie airport combo later.

At the Airport

• Get a healthy start: No time for breakfast at home? At the airport, look for healthy options such as a whole-wheat bagel, yogurt or fresh fruit. For a heartier option, try an egg sandwich on an english-muffin, but make sure to skip add-ons like bacon or cheese.
• Eat lightly: If lunchtime coincides with your flight, avoid indulging in a cheeseburger or buffalo wings. Although these familiar favorites may seem like a good way to alleviate stress, they could actually make you feel worse. Look for lighter, low-calorie options such as a salad with fat-free dressing or a simple sub.

During the Flight

• Move around: Long hours in cramped airplane seats can wreak havoc on the body. Avoid crossing your legs and be sure to move around the cabin. Simple calf stretches can help blood circulation and reduce your chance of a blood clot.
• Hydrate: Don’t let a pressurized cabin and low humidity levels get the best of you. Drink water and avoid caffeine and alcoholic beverages. Stay hydrated by purchasing a water bottle. For a greener option, pack a stainless steel water bottle and fill it up at an airport coffee shop once you pass through security.

This post is based on an article written for our customer newsletter. Join the mailing list here.
For more ways to stay healthy and improve your next flight, check out tugo’s Top 10 Travel Tips.

Sources:
EHow: Healthy Airplane Snacks
Associated Content: Keep Healthy While Flying
WebMD: Keep Healthy While Flying

• Tip Pick for Packing- Find out what amenities the hotel already has, i.e., robes, hairdryers, shampoo, and don’t pack those items. This information is usually listed on the hotel’s website, and can potentially save you a lot of space in your luggage. The Ultimate Guide to Packing Light: 45 Tips to Lighten Your Load from Go Green Travel Green is pretty long, but has some good ideas and a valuable list of resources if you are prepping for a major trip and want to do it right.
• Tip Pick for Travel with Pal- Evelyn Hannon, blogging and tweeting as Journeywoman, suggests: Travelling with a pal? Carry 50% of her things in UR bag + vice versa. If 1 bag is lost, UR both still OK.
• Tip Pick for Business Travel- Share Contact Info: There’s nothing worse than flying into a city only to find your host has had to leave town unexpectedly. Minimize your chances of disappointment by sharing your phone numbers (definitely your mobile) with your host, clients and any assistants who may keep their schedule. From Business Trips: Make the Most of Every Minute on Forbes.com.
• Tip Pick to Get an Upgrade- If a flight is oversold and you are traveling alone, then dress in business / casual business attire and sit off on your own, but in the sight line of the airline agent at the gate. Sometimes we need to upgrade a passenger or two at the very last minute, and a well-dressed, solo traveler is easier to upgrade than one wearing sweatpants and sneakers. From Top 10 Ways to Get Upgraded on a Flight on About.com: Air Travel.
• Another Tip Pick to Get an Upgrade- The following has worked for me in the past: A smile goes a long way. If you are nice as possible to the check-in and gate agents then sometimes if a flight is oversold and you just happen to be one of the nicest passengers that a check-in agent meets that day, they may put a comment on your passenger record such as “nice passenger if you need to upgrade.” From Top 10 Ways to Get Upgraded on a Flight on About.com: Air Travel.

• Tip Pick for Your Hotel- From Evelyn Hannon, Journeywoman: Carry a biz card from ur hotel when exploring a new destination.a taxi can get you home. Also: Carry UR hotel’s business card with U. In an emergency U can call their front desk 4 help/advice.
• Tip Pick for Travel with Kids- A fun idea from Journeywoman: Allow kids 2 buy+write 1 postcard per day. Save. Makes gr8 show+tell travel album for family records.
• Tip Pick for Safety- This piece on Safe Travel Tips reminded me of a story I had heard previously from Rand McNally on the Road about what was dubbed the “Twitter Burglar.” Someone tweeted about going on vacation, and his home was then burglarized during the trip. While it is unconfirmed that there really was a connection between these events, it is a good reminder not to get too comfortable with the illusion of privacy these types of sites can give. Let everyone know what a great trip you just had, not are having, so you don’t unknowingly share that your home is unoccupied with someone that may take advantage of the fact. There is more information on the Twitter Burglar in the article from CNET News.
• Tip Pick for Foreign Travel- More from Evelyn Hannon, Journeywoman: Looking for a bathroom? Use the word ‘toilet’. That’s the term likely 2 B understood by most people in most places.
• Tip Pick for Remembering Your Trip- Another from Journeywoman: Always cc: yourself when emailing on the road. These notes become your journal at trip’s end.

And finally, not a tip but a quote: Focus on the journey, not the destination. Joy is found not in finishing an activity but in doing it. – Greg Anderson. From Twenty Great Travel Quotes on Taking off Travel Blog.

We hope that with these tips and resources you can enjoy your journey to its fullest.

Ben is a frequent blogger with a great sense of humor and is a contestant in the Ultimate Thailand Explorers Contest, which looks pretty fabulous. Please check it out and support him!

Photo by Caribb via Flickr

We have so much fun finding links to news items, interesting articles and great blog posts to share. Here are some of our recent favorites.

New Vigilance Over Traveler IDs This helpful Q&A from the New York Time traveler blog explains the changes required by the Transportation Security Administration’s Secure Flight program. For now, most travelers will only notice that they’ll need to include their name and birth date when booking travel. However, it may be important if the names in which you book travel and appear on your government issued ID are different.

Seven Trends of Business Travel The always savvy Gulliver, the Economist’s travel blog, share seven business travel trends. We found the most interesting that businesses are considering the triple bottom line in travel – it’s not just about profit, but people and planet, too. Also, did you know that seven in ten travelers carry a smart phone? Mobile phones are playing a more important role in organizing travel. Check out the other five, too. Do you see these trends in your travel these days?

10 Reasons to Travel Solo After 50 This list from Solo Traveler may be geared toward the over 50, but plenty of reasons to travel solo are ageless. Take this tip (number 7 on the list) as an example.

Is money tight? Solo travel can be inexpensive. It’s much easier to book hostels, hospitality stays, great deals, cheap flights… when you travel alone.

The Top 14 Things Likely to Happen to You on Vacation A humorous look from Boldy Go Solo with some ways to know if you’ve really been on vacation (as opposed to a staycation). The whole list is great, but our favorite is toward the bottom of the list in the “how to know that you’re NOT on vacation”

You ran into people you know on the street and you didn’t shriek,”Omigod, what are YOU doing here? It’s a small world, isn’t it?”

This last one isn’t an article, but a tweet. @jenleo says: Travel is the best education there is. To become a global citizen in our world – you need to travel. We couldn’t agree more!

Socotra Island, Yemen

“Anyone who grew up on ‘The Cat In The Hat’ and ‘Green Eggs and Ham‘ remembers the illustrations of one Mr. Theodor Geisel, aka Dr. Seuss. Trees with elongated trucks or with improbable collections of limbs, stark and scraggily landscapes with oddly balanced rocks and unlikely geometric shapes, buildings with unusual protrusions, awkward angles and with no two windows exactly the same—these were some of the hallmarks of the world Dr. Seuss illustrated in his 60 children’s books.”

Check out Spot Cool Stuff: Travel’s post “One Fish, Two Fish, Places That Look Dr. Seuss-ish” and get a complete look at some places on Planet Earth—places you can visit on your next vacation—that resemble scenes from a Dr. Seuss illustration…

10 Travel Accessories Essential for Any Overseas Trip: Matador Travel offers its suggestions for 10 essential travel accessories. I don’t know that I’d classify them all as “essential,” but some pretty interesting things to consider for your next trip. Some of the essentials on the list assume travel to Europe or other “wired” country. I suppose that I’d consider the ability to stay connected through the Web and my phone would be essential. However, regardless of the power of your dongle, out of the way places and developing countries aren’t likely to have a 3G network to which you can connect. In that case, your “essentials” list might change a bit.

It’s Official: Business Travel Broadens the Mind: Mark Mortensen of the MIT Sloan School of Management and Tsedal Beyene of Harvard Business School have published a paper that concludes face-to-face business meetings have tremendous value over video conferences or conference calls. Cultural and business insights are vital for developing relationships. From the paper:

Most important, visiting people at their locales and gaining awareness of their point of view help you understand how you and your operations are perceived – what we call ‘reflected knowledge.’ In other words, you develop knowledge about you through the eyes of the other. This knowledge helps you adapt your own work processes and behaviors, which in turn, fosters mutual trust and reduces work misunderstandings.

Planning Summer Travels? Now’s the Time to Buy as Fares Point Higher: Wall Street Journal’s “The Middle Seat” blog offers some tips for planning summer travel, arguing that travel fares have likely bottomed out. The videos toward the end offer lots of helpful “power travel” tips, too.

10 Easy Tips for Becoming a Carry-On Traveler: I always wonder how short the trip would need to be for me to really feel like I could be a carry-on traveler. I’m not sure these tips answer that question for me, but they do provide some help for packing light. (However, the author says he can pack for a 10-day trip in a 20-inch carry-on… that’s hardcore.) An important tip is that you can do laundry on your trip – even having it done at the hotel is likely less expensive than paying for a checked bag these days.

Photo credit: Caribb via Flickr

TravelWithYourKids.com has a ton of great tips and resources for, well… traveling with your kids. Everything from packing to how to pick your seat on a plane and how to pick the most kid-friendly destination and even tips on moving abroad.

About.com Family Vacations: About.com is always a great resource and this topic is no exception. The expert guide, Teresa Plowright, provides ideas for kid friendly travel destinations, along with travel tips.

Travel for Kids: Want to get some ideas about fun things to do with your kids in Germany? or how about Finland? Costa Rica?Ethiopia? This site has you covered! Lots of kid-centric tips and ideas.

Traveling with Kids from the TSA: Getting through security checks at the airport is challenging enough for a single adult, but add kids to the mix and a even a sane parent can get quickly flustered and frazzled. The TSA offers video tips on its Web site for making the process a little easier.

Spend some time planning and enjoy your vacation with your kids. They’re only young once!

Team tugo: L-R Myself, my mom Karen (the brainchild!), my stepdad Tom, and my aunt Doris

Seeing all the products available was quite entertaining; each time I took a trip to the coffee bar I took a different route to see all there was being offered at the show.

I didn’t need to go far for my favorite item by far, my new purse from MY oilcloth. Across the aisle, Michelle and Yvette (MY, get it?!) were from the Boston area and barely made it to the show because of the bad weather out east. They were extremely nice and gave us lots of tips and made us feel really comfortable. But best of all, the bags they sell are CUTE as well as WATERPROOF (I live in Oregon), being they are made of oilcloth.

Other fun goodies that I had to have:

• The FUMI (Fashionable Unique Multipurpose Innovation) can be a bracelet, a purse accessory, or a hanger for my
  

  "Can't hold your water? We'll hold it for you."

  MY bag that I can set over the lip of the table in the restaurant so that I don’t have to put my new purse on the floor.

• Spare Soles are basically fold-up, thin ballet slippers that you can stash anywhere. They recommended them as an alternative to bare feet for when you go out on the town and your shoes hurt so badly you can’t wear them anymore. My plan (as I don’t find myself in the former situation very often) is to keep them in the car for when I visit friends with hardwood floors to keep my feet warm.
• A waterbottle holder with carabiner clip from Boleo called “Hold Your Water” with a pretty darn cute logo (at right).
• For my sweetie: a clip-on, super-bright LED light from Pelican. He was thrilled and is already planning to get them for all his friends.

The majority of the booths featured luggage of all shapes and sizes. I wasn’t in the market for new luggage, as my budget for the trip consisted mainly of a small amount of cash for the slots the night after the show finished. I tried not to look too closely at the luggage, but if I could have I would have picked the Steamer Rolling Suitcase from Toss Designs at left. Darling!

Also good ideas:

• Ted, the licensed acupuncturist and herbalist, lived down the aisle from us and had his Jet Lag Formula on display. I didn’t try it, since Oregon is in the same time zone as Vegas, but I would certainly use it if I was going on a vacation to, say, Greece (my dream trip!).
• For wine aficionados, the wine travel bag from BottleWise makes a lot of sense. Since you can’t carry-on liquids anymore, this will help protect one or two bottles in your checked bag with the liquid-tight “Bot’lPaks.”
• In our neighboring booth, Devra and her company Miamica had a fun line of trendy travel accessories for the “art of packing.” A favorite were the tampon cases with clever sayings like “Don’t Cramp My Style” and “Gimme Sugar!”
• The Travel Nook inflatable pillow includes a cushion on either side of your head to prevent your head from lolling onto your neighbor’s shoulder. Because it has no padding behind the neck it eliminates the main complaint I have about typical travel pillows.

Who knew that there would be this much fun stuff?! I certainly didn’t expect it, but I’m already looking forward to seeing what they have next year.

At ATL, Pro-Airport Messages Embedded in Classic R&B: Hanging out in the ATL, you might hear some unique versions of your favorite classic R&B. “Shake Your Groove Thing” by Peaches and Herb, “Bustin’ Loose” by Chuck Brown and the Soul Searchers and “Fantastic Voyage” by Lakeside have all been remade by the original artists – new lyrics from Doug Strachan, Creative Innovations Manager from the City of Atlanta Department of Aviation. (Wait… the Department of Aviation has a Creative Innovations Manager? No wonder ATL travlers get to hear “Shake Your Groove Thing.”

Experiential Travel Can Enrich Our Lives and the Communities We Visit: Going beyond the typical tourist cities and activities when traveling the world can be tremendously rewarding. Experential travel lets you live the places you visit, rather than just look at them; these trips are often less expensive and allow travelers to give back to the communities in which they spend time.

Top 10 Most Disappointing Tourist Spots in the World: I don’t know, seems awfully cynical to think that any of these spectacular/historic/remarkable sites would be disappointing. I’m curious what the authors would find not-disappointing.

Twitter Tips From Oft-Tweeting Travelers: Want to share your travel adventures with your friends on Twitter? Take a look at these 25 tips that don’t include “standing in line at Starbucks” as things worth tweeting about.

Photo credit: Caribb via Flickr