Earn up to 20,000 miles through United Vacations
United Vacations is offering vacationers up to 20,000 bonus Mileage Plus miles when booking and traveling on multiple vacation packages to any United Vacations destination (including Canada, the Caribbean, Europe, Mexico and more).
Each vacation package must include either flight and hotel or flight, hotel and car. When you book two packages, you'll receive 7,500 miles; 12,500 miles when you book three packages; and you'll receive the full 20,000 miles when you book four or more trips.
To receive the bonus miles, you must book and complete your travel before March 31. Be sure to enter promotion code TRAVELUV when making your reservation. This promotion cannot be combined with other promotions.
For more information or for complete rules and restrictions, visit www.unitedvacations.com or call (888) 854-3899.
Earn 9,999 miles on Continental
From now through Jan. 31, Continental Airlines OnePass members can earn 9,999 miles when renting a car at Budget for five consecutive days or more. This offer is valid on all car groups at any participating Budget airport location in the U.S.
Be sure to enter U072506 in the Discount Code (BCD) box when making the reservation.
To receive this offer, reservations must be made at www.continental.com at least 24 hours in advance and members must provide their OnePass number at time of rental or check in. You'll also get a 20 percent discount off normal rates.
For more deals like this, visit Continental's site and look under the OnePass Frequent Flyer tab and then "News and offers."
Check Lufthansa's student airfare site
Students thinking ahead to spring break should check out www.generationfly.com, a Web site by Lufthansa that claims to offer college students low fares with "flexible terms and conditions not found on most other travel sites."
Only those with a valid college e-mail address may register for promotions. It is currently running a Spring Break Special through Feb. 21 for travel Feb. 1 through March 20.
Top 10 unique tours for 2008 named
If you ever have a hankering for a non-typical vacation, be sure to check out VoyageTrek Travel, a company with a large and diverse directory of active and adventure travel companies worldwide.
Its Web site, www.voyagetrek.com, is an excellent resource for finding unique, adventurous, educational and fun vacations and tours all over the world.
The editors of VoyageTrek recently chose the top 10 off-beat and innovative travel tours for 2008: a nine-day Arctic Dog Sled Odyssey Tour in Canada that's led by Inuit guides; an eight-day canoe paddling tour through the Amazon rain forest in Ecuador; caving and hiking for eight days in the Romanian Mountains; storm chasing through the American Midwest for 14 days; traveling throughout Egypt for 16 days visiting famous archeological sites and sailing up the Nile River; 22-day horseback riding excursion with the Tsaatan people in Mongolia; a nine-day visit to Camp Leakey in the jungles of Indonesia where you'll learn about orangutans and other wildlife from experts in wildlife conservation; a nine-day visit to China, starting in Lhasa, Tibet, and ending in Beijing; a Masai tour of Kenya, where vacationers will have 12 days to hot air balloon over the Masai Mara plains, visit Samburu and Masai tribes, and horseback through game reserves; and sailing for 28 days to the end of the world in Antarctica on the S/Y Sarah W. Vorwerk steel sailing yacht.
T+L's 500 best hotels revealed
Travelers who wondered which were the best hotels in the world can now find out with the January issue of Travel + Leisure and on www.travelandleisure.com/tl500.
In this sixth annual T+L 500 guide, Travel + Leisure editors and reporters identify what differentiates each hotel from its competitors, recommend the best rooms to book and more.
And if you're wondering how the staff came to this conclusion, the complete survey methodology is available on www.travelandleisure.com/worldsbest.
Among the best hotels listed are: Hay-Adams in Washington, D.C.; Marquesa Hotel in the Florida Keys; the Bellagio in Las Vegas; the Milestone Hotel in London; Relais Il Falconiere in Cortona, Italy; and the Bora Bora Lagoon Resort & Spa in French Polynesia.
Correction to online airfares tip
In our Dec. 16 column, we discussed how airline Web sites are increasingly offering their best deals on their own sites and not online travel agencies, or OTAs. We mentioned that www.Orbitz.com does not list JetBlue airfares, which was correct at the time of our writing. However, Orbitz now carries JetBlue fares on its site, an addition that started on Nov. 26.
Reach George Hobica athobica@gmail.com, Kim LiangTan at KimLiangTan@aol.comor log on to www.airfarewatchdog.com.