Travelling the world just got easier, cheaper and more fun!

WORDS ROSALYN PAGE

In this connected century, the internet, email and a slew of slick gadgets and gear are transforming the way we holiday: not only are we better informed and travelling with greater ease, we can record our adventures in ever more sophisticated ways. Here, we round up the latest must-have travel tools.

Get booking

Online booking is almost a given in these increasingly time-challenged days. Kick-start your holiday by booking the flight, accommodation and car hire on the internet any time of day or night. At www.jetstar.com, for instance, you can find and book airfares at different rates – Jetstar reveals that weekday flights are cheaper as well as less busy, and booking weeks in advance lands you a better rate. At jetstar.com you can also find accommodation at preferential rates at one of Jetstar’s 153 hotel partners, along with car hire, travel insurance and travel guides to the airline’s destinations.

The web offers an unprecedented amount of information on accommodation, too. As well as viewing pictures of a property and making reservations online, you can often check the location, room layout, availability, and sometimes even activities and menus – a boon for parents. Most hotels – even small ones – now have their own websites, and you can also check out hotel portals for specific regions. The internet is also the best place to find last-minute discount hotel bookings.

Get in the know

Make the most of your holiday by planning in advance – the internet is great for researching your destination and planning your itinerary. All countries, and even many cities, have their own tourism website packed with information. Other good sites for research include www.independenttraveler.com and www.travelsense.org. And if you’re going on a driving holiday, the distance calculator and directions on www.viamichelin.com can help you plan how far you can travel in a day and where you’ll need to stay.

Check up on the local currency and exchange rates, then plan your budget with sites like www.oanda.com, www.x-rates.com and www.fxtop.com.

If you fancy reading the local newspapers from your destination country to get an idea of weather and local events, sites like www..onlinenewspapers.com or www.thepaperboy. com are good places to start.

Worried about finding internet access when you’re travelling? Search through www.netcafes.com to check if there’s an internet café near your hotel.

Travel insurance can be purchased online at jetstar.com – useful if you’re travelling at the last minute and don’t have time to mail out forms. At http://projectvisa.com you can check if you’ll need a visa for the countries you’re travelling to. And while the internet won’t take the pain of vaccinations away, you can at least find out what shots you might need at www.tripprep.com.

Stay connected

The tech-savvy traveller’s carry-on wouldn’t be complete without a selection of shiny gadgets. A smartphone – perhaps the latest model from HTC, Dopod or O2 – will allow you to browse the internet, update your online travel blog and send email, among many other features.

If you’re taking a laptop or handheld computer, grab an electronic version of popular guidebooks, like Rough Guides Directions, Lonely Planet Guides, iFodor’s or Zagat To Go, complete with scrollable maps. Lonely Planet even has Passport to…, digital guidebooks specially designed for the Sony PlayStation Portable games console.

A GPS (global positioning system) device is an increasingly popular addition, giving you an interactive map and directions to the nearest points of interest using satellites to track your movements. For driving holidays, try the in-car models; TomTom, Mio, Nokia and Garmin have popular ones.

If you’re travelling with children on long plane or train trips, while away the boredom with some games. Littlies can learn while being entertained with the Leapfrog Leapster, the VideoNow video player or your own laptop loaded with games. Also check out gaming handhelds such as the Sony PlayStation Portable, Game Boy Advance and the Nintendo DS. Alternatively, when you’re flying with Jetstar you can purchase access to the video-on-demand inflight entertainment system on board, which features children’s movies, TV shows and games, and tune in to Jetstar’s audio entertainment or free-of-charge drop-down screen entertainment.

Lastly, don’t forget your MP3 player – enabling you to enjoy music, videos, podcasts and games. Look out for podcast travel guides to turn your iPod into your very own tour guide – they’re offered by many tourist portals as well as sites like Lonely Planet, www.pluggd.com or www.travel.thepodcastnetwork.com.

Megapixel memories

Once you’re on vacation with your digital camera in hand, you can post your favourite photos online and share your trip instantly with family and friends back home. The latest digital cameras have high resolution and greater storage capacity, but you’ll probably still want an external storage device to hold all your images. A portable hard drive like the Seagate FreeAgent Go is great for storing digital photos, music and video files while you’re travelling.

To share your travel memories with the world, create an online photo album using a site like www.imageevent.com, which even allows you to generate emails inviting friends and family to view your shots. And if you fancy yourself as something of a travel writer, why not create your own travel blog and put your travel experiences into words? Have a look at sites like www.travelpod.com or www.mytripjournal.com for ideas. You can even share your favourite travel videos (tripcasts) on the new Lonely Planet video-sharing site, www.lonelyplanet.tv.

Who knows where your travel blogger ramblings could lead… you could be the next Peter Mayle, Frances Mayes, Anthony Bourdain or Bill Bryson!