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If you’ve been weathering the long winter, as I have, you’re probably ready for a warm escape and some fun in the sun. Today, Bing Travel issued its 2010 spring break forecast, and thankfully, we’ve found some deals for spring travel. However, there are fewer deals for airfare than there are on hotel rates.

According to our data, spring break airfare (between Feb. 28 and March 31) is up 9% from 2009, and is creeping back up to 2008 levels. Airfare for spring break averages $349, but premium domestic hotel rates are averaging $173 per night, a 15% decrease from 2009 that offsets higher airfares and reduces your total trip cost. Why are hotel prices down this year? Decreases in demand and occupancy levels have led hotels to slash rates to fill their empty rooms. We expect that this trend will continue for spring travel and potentially beyond, which is great news for budget-conscious travelers.

As in previous years, you can also save money by avoiding the most popular travel dates. For example, by traveling in early March, as opposed to the week of March 22, travelers will save an average of $65 on airfare. In addition, Tuesdays and Wednesdays are great days to travel this year. A seven-night Tuesday to Tuesday or Wednesday to Wednesday flight will save you $86 on average; that’s about 22% less than flying on a Friday, Saturday or Sunday.

We’ve highlighted a few warm destinations where travelers will get more for their money this year, including Las Vegas, Maui, Orlando and Puerto Vallarta. Check out the full press release to learn why we chose these destinations, read highlights of each location and find details on airfare and hotels in the area.

As always, we recommend using Bing Travel’s Price Predictor to help determine the best time to buy airfare. If you know specifically when you need to travel, you can also set up a Fare Alert to monitor predictions for your trip. Both of these tools can help you make more informed travel decisions for all of your flights.

Wherever you’re off to, we hope you have happy and safe travels. Be sure to send me a tweet with your spring break travel updates and questions!

ce hobby traveling

Some places around the world are easily associated with one iconic activity or another. England has its afternoon tea rituals; Argentina, its sultry tango; and Hawaii, the sport of surfing, a gift from the islands’ first inhabitants. A new Bing Travel slide show depicts some of these legendary experiences around the world. These are must-do activities — such as enjoying the beach in Los Angeles, quieting the mind in a Japanese garden, or making a pilgrimage to the Statue of Liberty in New York City — that should be sampled by any visitor who wants to get a feel for the places they travel to. Call it the global travel buff’s lifetime checklist

We think the best of these distinctive experiences are the ones that aren’t limited primarily to tourists. When an activity is enjoyed equally by locals and visitors alike, that’s when it’s a real icon of its homeland.

Which of these essential travel experiences are on your own life list, and which ones have we left out? Share your thoughts with other travelers in the comments section.

cew lagi nunggu

The U.S. hockey team’s “Miracle on Ice” in Lake Placid. Michael Phelps’ slew of swimming records in Beijing. Nadia Comaneci’s groundbreaking gymnastics routine in Montreal. The Jamaican bobsledders’ display of heart and sportsmanship in Calgary.

With the Olympics just about upon us again, a new Bing Travel slide show takes a look back at sites from previous Olympiads, where medals were won and records were broken — as well as a look into the future, at the venues under way for the next few Olympiads.

I’m an Olympics junkie, and viewing this slide show is like looking at hallowed ground for me. Looking at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum gets my soul stirring with memories of Carl Lewis flying down the track. The sight of Barcelona’s Olympic Tower instantly transports me to Spain and Greg Louganis’ mastery of the dive. I’m excited to see what new highlights will unfold at the Olympics in Vancouver and beyond.

What Olympic sites and venues stand out for you? Have you been to the Olympics and seen them personally? Or do you have plans to go to Vancouver — and if so, what are you planning to see? Share your thoughts, memories and dreams with fellow travelers in the comments section

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Thank goodness for the equator. Its humid climate, regular rainfall and good soil are the perfect recipe for growing theobroma cacao, also known as the cacao tree. Its fruit is the precursor to Toblerone bars, Baci chocolate kisses, Lindt truffles, Hershey’s chocolate bars, Cadbury Crème eggs, Fran’s salted caramels, Ghirardelli squares and all other manifestations of chocolate goodness that are found in abundance this Valentine’s month.

In a new slide show on Bing Travel, discover how traveling to the equator can yield a rich taste of chocolate history. The Cotton Tree Lodge in Belize offers tours to cacao farms and dedicated chocolate weeks in March and May where you craft your own bars. Kona, Hawaii, hosts a chocolate festival that gathers Big Island chefs for a night filled with chocolate decadence. The Grenada Chocolate Company on Grenada in the Caribbean offers tours of its small cooperative, which makes organic dark chocolate from bean to bar.

Travel to non-equatorial areas can satisfy the chocoholic, too. Throughout Europe, chocolatiers provide generous samples, museums and factory tours. Paris hosts Le Salon du Chocolat, a traveling trade expo for chocolate. During its fashion show, you’ll catch models parading about in edible dresses.

Speaking of wearing chocolate, several destinations encourage you to slather it on. The Hotel Hershey in Hershey, Pa., has a designated chocolate spa where you can relax in a whipped cocoa bath. The Iguazú Grand Hotel’s spa in Puerto Iguazu City, Argentina, has a dedicated chocolate therapy menu including a chocolate facial mask.

If February truly is your month for romance, consider Canada to make your loved one melt with desire. A jeweler, a resort and the famed chocolatier Rogers' Chocolates in Victoria, British Columbia, have put together a weekend that includes a diamond ring and a feast of wine and chocolate.

Have you enjoyed a chocolate-infused vacation, or would you like to? Share your experiences and desires with other travelers in the comments section.

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Every year when Valentine’s Day rolls around, the media are brimming with delightful ideas about where to have a romantic vacation.

This year, Bing Travel is taking the contrarian viewpoint. In a new slide show, we offer up 14 incredible opportunities for a decidedly unromantic vacation. Some trips are universally awful for couples. Some are particularly unromantic for him; others are especially appalling for her. One thing is certain: They’re all guaranteed to make Cupid hide behind a shrub.

For example, what could be less romantic than snuggling on an iron bed in Karosta Prison in Liepaja, Latvia? Very little, we think, unless you are vacationing in Saudi Arabia, where men and women are not permitted to hold hands or embrace in public. A cruise to Antarctica is a fairly abysmal choice for Valentine’s Day, unless you are photographers in love, warm in the glow of shooting two-story waves and sharing a little bottle of motion-sickness pills.

Planning to take your hunky guy to the Hello Kitty Theme Park? Please proceed with caution. Your romance could die a slow, pink death. Thinking of slinking off to Sweden with your gorgeous gal pal for a night in the Ice Hotel? Be forewarned. Many women will tell you that the word “romantic” doesn’t marry well with the words “north of the Arctic Circle,” “darkest time of the year,” “long johns” and “blocks of ice.”

Have you endured an unromantic vacation? Tell other travelers about your ghastly experiences in the comments section.

CEWE PANTAI

I’m not sure there’s a setting more idyllic than a secluded tropical island, the kind where you feel your cares melt away as you lie on the perfect powdery beach, palm trees swaying gently overhead, azure waves lapping lightly on the shore as a soft breeze tickles your toes. The only place that might come close is a quiet and temperate island, where the forests and quaint towns run down to the sea, and you lean back in an old-fashioned rocking chair to watch the sun set in a riot of purple over the deep blue water.

My own secret island is Orcas Island, a hilly green retreat north of Puget Sound that doesn’t even have a stoplight. But I’ve always wanted to visit the tiny, quiet islands scattered throughout the Pacific, from the Marshall Islands to French Polynesia.

What are your favorite secluded islands — whether you’ve actually been there or you’re just dreaming about them? Tell your fellow travelers your secret in the comments section.

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Most hotels, no matter how trendy or elegant or luxurious they are, just look like hotels: There’s a standard boxy building, with a warren of rectangular guestrooms, a lobby and a restaurant. But a few hotels are something entirely different.

I haven’t stayed at any of these strange structures, but I’d especially like to check out Brazil’s Ariau Amazon Towers hotel, high up in the rain forest canopy. Have you stayed at a fantastical hotel, and if so, what was it like? Which strange hotels would you like to visit, and what odd lodgings have you heard of around the world? Share your thoughts with other travelers in the comments section.







A new Bing Travel slide show presents some of the strangest places you’ll find around the world to lay your head. Take the Quaker Square Inn in Ohio, which looks exactly like what it once was: a bunch of grain silos. Then there’s the Gamirasu Cave Hotel in Turkey, which was hewn out of rock and resembles an amorphous blob. And if you’re someone who has a hard time sleeping on planes, you might feel differently after spending a night at Jumbo Hostel, a 747-turned-hotel parked next to the Stockholm airport.

cewe bokingan

Is watching the Winter Olympics getting your adrenaline pumping? Want to get active but don’t know where to start? No worries. You can channel your inner Olympian without taking up aerial skiing, short-track skating or slalom.

A new slide show on Bing Travel shows off 15 adventure vacations even a couch potato could love. For example, why jump out of an airplane with a parachute when you can freefall in a vertical wind tunnel at locations throughout the U.S., Canada and Europe? Or consider Zorbing. In this wacky sport, you can roll downhill in a giant transparent plastic ball, channeling your inner hamster.