being a business traveler during the recession...

Myself, I lnow how it feels to be a business traveler during this recession period and I can assure you all that it is pretty difficult to pay everything in time now that the businesses are still facing a financial downturn. Below you may read the future prospects for people like me on the msnbc.com article:

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NEW YORK - Airfare wars and room-rate promotions are usually aimed at vacationers, but airlines and hotels are resorting to similar tactics to regain their traditional cash cow — the business traveler.

Corporate travelers, who pay higher airfares when they sit in the front cabins of planes or book close to the date of travel, are flying coach more often — or not traveling at all during the recession. And their employers are booking fewer banquet halls and blocks of rooms, leaving many hotels pining for the sizable and reliable revenue that business meetings used to generate.

Partly as a result, several major airlines are expected to post losses for the April-June quarter when they report their earnings starting this week. And hotel revenue — which fell sharply in the first quarter from a year earlier — is not expected to show much improvement in the second quarter, either. Marriott International Inc.'s results are due Thursday.

Business travelers tend to generate a higher percentage of overall industry revenue than the percentage of total travelers they represent. Of the $641 billion spent by U.S. residents in 2007 on domestic travel and tourism, roughly 33 percent came from business travelers, according to the U.S. Travel Association. But the number of domestic business trips accounted for less than 25 percent of that year's 2 billion total domestic trips.

Boston-based aviation consultant Mark Kiefer of CRA International said the economy is keeping a lid on business travel this year.

"We have a case of certain sectors that were consumers of a lot of business travel, like banking and so forth," Kiefer said. "The other issue we are grappling with are expectations. There is a lot of uncertainty about when the economy will turn around and by how much."

Travel companies are using a range of strategies to lure business travelers. Hotels are offering bonus room nights, free snacks and drinks, and more flexibility on booking and cancellation policies. Airlines have been offering heavily discounted upgrades and business-oriented fare sales.

Discounts have helped lure some vacationers back onto the road. Deutsche Bank analyst Chris Woronka noted that, while U.S. revenue per available room, a key gauge of the hotel industry's performance, was still down by a double-digit percentage since late June, it has shown a marked improvement because summer leisure demand has picked up.

But in a recent survey of 285 senior finance executives around the world, 87 percent said their companies plan to spend less on business travel this year. The American Express/CFO Research Global Business & Spending Monitor found 44 percent of the executives expect their companies' travel to decline more than 10 percent.

The survey did find that most companies will continue to spend on travel that could generate revenue. Frank Schnur, of American Express' business travel group, predicts that clients will continue to expect a financial return on their investments in travel, even after the economic recovery.

For now, many companies are cutting back. Drew Ramsey, a 33-year-old information security manager in Phoenix who is a Southwest Airlines frequent flier, says his company has essentially shut down business travel.

"Any business travel has to be a necessity; otherwise people are being asked to use videoconferencing or teleconferences," Ramsey said.

Traffic in high-end airline seats fell 22 percent in April, compared with the same month a year earlier, according to the International Air Transport Association. Meanwhile, the number of travelers on coach tickets rose 0.3 percent.

With a shrinking pot of corporate travel dollars, airlines like Southwest are trying new strategies to get business travelers on board. Ramsey said Southwest offered to fast-track him to "A-List" status. That provides a year of reserved-boarding privileges to passengers who belong to the airline's frequent-flier program and take a certain number of flights within a given period.

Airlines also are giving business travelers things like Wi-Fi, satellite radio, advance seat assignments and priority boarding to lure them in.

In the hotel industry, all kinds of chains that rely on business travelers are feeling the pain. Extended Stay Hotels LLC — which caters to business travelers who need longer-term lodging at lower rates — has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, citing a heavy debtload and a sharp drop in business travel.

Starwood Hotels & Resorts Inc. is offering a 4 percent discount to business meeting planners who book an event for 10 or more room-nights at some of its brands, including the W, Westin and Sheraton chains. They also get a free snack break from PepsiCo Inc., through Aug. 31, and a hefty bonus of loyalty program points they can use for personal travel.

Hotels are not as agile because they typically negotiate corporate rates months or years in advance. So the rate cuts they're offering now could have a long term impact on revenue.

Continental Airlines CEO Larry Kellner said at a June investor conference that his airline is working its "business (traveler) side very hard because ... we could also see a recovery much more quicker if we could get the business traffic back on the airplanes."

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The best deals on eyeglasses

As a mother who really cares a lot about the education of the children, I would personally say that it is vital that we do our best in order to provide our children with the most important stuff that they need when they get back to school.

Keeping this in mind, and knowing that an increasing number of kids wear glasses, I would like to recommend everyone to have a look at these $ 8 Rx eyeglasses from Zenni Optical which is a company that is so famous and offers such great prices that you can even see Zenni Optical on TV!!! Furthermore, knowing that we often pay hundred dollars from prescription glasses and that you can pay just a few dollars on Zenni Optical, I am more than sure that next time your son breaks his glasses you won’t be so mad at him. Below you may see the eyeglasses that I have chosen for my daughter:

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Vital iPhone apps for travelers

When considering the fact that most travels have some less exciting moments where we just need to find something to do, the truth is that our gadgets will play an important role. In fact, it is also vital that we do our best in order to find the best apps for those gadgets which include iPhone, iPod, etc. Below is another msnbc.com article that shows you which are the most important apps for an iPhone:

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An iPhone app is like a potato chip. “You always want to have just one more,” says Chris Hall, editor in chief of 148Apps.com. His review Web site, named for the maximum number of apps an early iPhone user could own, tries to keep up with the influx of new programs, but with some 40,000 apps on sale and another 500 to 1,000 released each week, his team can’t help falling behind.

An app is simply a little application, or program, that’s designed to perform a specialized function. Many of them are a boon for travelers. Flashlight, for instance, illuminates your screen so you can fumble through a dark hotel room. Currency calculates exchange rates.

The world’s 22 million iPhone users—including those who’ve snared the new iPhone 3GS model, released June 19—can browse and download apps, some for free and some for a few bucks, at the built-in App Store. True, some of the most popular apps don’t do much more than simulate fishponds or Zippo lighters, but as the field matures, so do the offerings.

These apps aren’t perfect, and some have problems that are amplified when you’re traveling. So buyers have to be choosy.

Developers tend to write apps, including almost all of the language-translation ones, which can be expensive to run because they require a phone to draw lots of information from the network. That’s fine at home, but download just five megabytes of info when you’re abroad and you could be slammed with a $40 tab. A few other travel apps, such as ones that help find a taxi, don’t have data for international locations.

But a good iPhone app is like a tool in a toolbox, and when one works well, it’s transformative, doing a job that you probably never thought could be done so easily. For fliers, iFareFinder searches the major booking sites (Kayak, Orbitz, etc.) for airfare and then hands you over to the seller for reservations. Chris Hall’s personal app toolbox includes Yelp, a portal to the popular user-written Web site that reviews food and party spots around the world, and UrbanSpoon, a restaurant finder. “I was in Vegas last week,” he says, “and I had found about 30 restaurants nearby a minute after walking out of my hotel.”

Travel apps are improving by the month. The TomTom app, released in June at the same time as the 3GS (which shoots video), turns the unit into a GPS device, great for navigating a new town. Hall’s travel wish list includes an app for bringing Southwest’s Ding! discount fares to the gadget, since the airline refuses to allow anyone else to report its prices.

As more functional, practical travel-related apps come to the phone, the device becomes increasingly indispensable to people who know the right ones to download. Just remember when to say when.

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Customizing your car

Even considering the fact that I am a woman, the truth is that I love cars, trucks and bikes and that’s exactly why I tend to spend hundreds of dollars trying to make my truck look the best on the streets! As a matter of fact, I personally believe that customized rims are probably one of the most important features for any truck.

Keeping this in mind, I would like to recommend you to have a look at these truck rims tires because on this website there is an wide range of products like custom wheel, chrome wheels, chrome rims, truck wheels, car rims, custom rims, etc which means that you can find everything you need in order to make your truck or car get a better look on the website above.

Great travel secrets of war reporters that you can use!

Would you consider yourself skilled enough to take nice pictures wherever you go? Would you like to learn some new tricks that can really make the difference next time? If the answers to these questions are "Yes!" then you definitely need to read the msnbc.com article below and discover how war reporters do it:

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Even hardened, world-weary reporters like to tell jokes — especially ones about travel. Overheard at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club in Istanbul: “So, the journalist goes up to the baggage check and says, ‘I want to send this bag to Ulaanbaatar and the other one to Rio.’”

Airline employee: ‘We can’t do that!’

Journalist: ‘Why not? You did it last time!’

Travel savvy, a sense of humor, and the ability to talk your way into anything are practically job requirements for gonzo foreign correspondents, who are world-class authorities on everything from roadside bombs to lost luggage. If you’ve been covering wars, coups, and natural disasters for years — and not only stayed alive, but stayed on budget and filed on deadline — chances are you’re a pretty smart traveler.

But these journalists also know a lot of travel secrets that might come in handy even for those not planning on taking a bullet, like how to tip and how to bribe. (Keep your bribe money reachable and separate from your main stash.)

So Travel + Leisure asked some of the world’s most intrepid foreign correspondents for travel advice — what to pack, how to dress, how to meet people overseas, and how to stay out of trouble (or get into it) anywhere from Belarus to the Bahamas.

Their counsel ranges from always traveling with a roll of gaffer’s tape — which has literally hundreds of on-the-fly uses, from sealing air mattresses to keeping your coffee cup warm — to avoiding mishaps large and small on the road by making sure your driver really does speak English. (Newsweek magazine’s Owen Matthews recommends asking drivers what they had for breakfast as a test.)

Even something as small as knowing which side of the road people drive on is key. “Looking left and stepping out into traffic can get you killed in a left-hand-side-drive country,” says Adnan R. Khan, who knows something about dangerous activities — he’s interviewed militant leaders and witnessed fighting firsthand at Pakistan’s Red Mosque. “My trick is: left-right-left. ... right-left-right, and then make a run for it.”Their counsel ranges from always traveling with a roll of gaffer’s tape — which has literally hundreds of on-the-fly uses, from sealing air mattresses to keeping your coffee cup warm — to avoiding mishaps large and small on the road by making sure your driver really does speak English. (Newsweek magazine’s Owen Matthews recommends asking drivers what they had for breakfast as a test.)

Even something as small as knowing which side of the road people drive on is key. “Looking left and stepping out into traffic can get you killed in a left-hand-side-drive country,” says Adnan R. Khan, who knows something about dangerous activities — he’s interviewed militant leaders and witnessed fighting firsthand at Pakistan’s Red Mosque. “My trick is: left-right-left. ... right-left-right, and then make a run for it.”

Also, don’t stand up for lost causes — when you’re abroad, it’s not the time to take pride in the lewd slogans on your T-shirts or your tattoos. “Outside the U.S., people actually do care about how they dress,” says David Gross, who since 1999 has been documenting the aftermath of genocide from the Balkans to Iraq. “Scruffy jeans will lower your social status in much of the world.” Instead, look respectable, and always bring an outfit suitable for dining with an ambassador — you never know when you might get an invitation.

Above all, meet people. Never forget, says Daria Vaisman — who nearly contracted anthrax while investigating a secret biological weapons manufacturing facility in Kazakhstan — that travel is a romance.

“A good introduction is worth 10 guidebooks,” adds Hugh Pope, who has been covering the Middle East for the Wall Street Journal, the Independent, Reuters, and UPI for 30 years, and who once used a good introduction to escape being executed by al-Qaeda. “Remember that real travel is going with the flow, meeting new people and accepting their invitations, not retracing the exactly choreographed steps of 1,000 package tours.”

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