No Online Booking Fee? Turns Out That's Only Sometimes True

The best known location-based service may be Foursquare, a mobile app that broadcasts your whereabouts and makes "mayors" out of frequent visitors to cafés and other spots. But rival tool Gowalla is more useful for the average traveler—especially in light of its full redesign in late September. Now aiming to be "a social atlas to the world," the free Gowalla website and apps for Android iPhone/iPad now include guides to 60 major cities, parks, and regions across the globe. The guides are based on the recommendations of users, "check-in" popularity, and input from guest experts. Click on the London guide, for instance, and you'll see photos of the destinations most recommended by Gowalla users and contributors, plus helpful lists such as Top Ten Things To Do for Under £10 (with touring the British Museum coming in number one on that list). You can also create little "stories" to share publicly, based on what you did at particular places. Tag photos of other users (with the permission of your friends or family members), and let the world know of the good time you had at a particular attraction. You don't have to share information publicly to benefit from the guides, though. You don't even have to sign up for the site to see them. Take a look online at Gowalla.com risk-free. The hurdle with Gowalla faces is the same one any social-networking site must leap: It's only as helpful as the number of users who have uploaded news and opinions about a location. Copenhagen, for instance, is a destination that woefully lacks help travel tips in Gowalla. On the bright side, the tool is based on opinions from real people, whose past reviews and travels can be independently verified by their geo-location data. So you're less likely to see bogus anonymous reviews as you see on sometimes see on other mass-opinion websites, such as TripAdvisor. Now if Google bought Gowalla to complement its recent purchase of restaurant survey database Zagat, the tool could become really powerful. (Psst! Sergey! Listen up!) What are your favorite social networking tools for travel? Sound off in the comments. MORE FROM BUDGET TRAVEL: 10 Most Useful Travel Websites The Ultimate Guide to Travel Apps Airport Survival Guide—We Want Your Tips!

Paris. Shanghai. LAX? Airports may not usually be listed among the world’s most exotic locales, but they can still be destinations in themselves. Unfortunately, they can also be confusing and time-consuming: searching out a café for a quick coffee before a flight or finding the correct baggage claim upon touchdown can make one’s airport experience more stressful than it needs to be. With the new, free Airport Maps tool for its Bing search engine, Microsoft plans to change that. Users can now scour online maps for 42 airports in the United States, plotting out snack stops, ATM locations, terminals and restrooms. The tool offers more than just static maps. Bing users can benefit from several useful features:Seamless integration into Bing Maps. Just search for the name of an airport—or its city or code—and then zoom and drag to your heart’s content. Clickable destinations. Want to check out a menu before you decide on your lunch? Just find a restaurant within the airport, click its color-coded location, and Bing will serve up additional information—including company websites, if available. Mobile functionality. Bing allows you to send airport information to your mobile phone, so you’ll stay informed even away from your desktop. Microsoft might be the latest company to release an airport travel tool, but related applications for smart phones have been gaining steam for some time. Mobile travelers can check out the following tools for a smoother experience at the airport: FLYsmart. Served up for free by Clear Channel and Geodelic Systems, FLYsmart offers airport maps and directories just like Bing, but it also provides convenient real-time flight information. Instead of rushing out to the terminal to check your flight’s status, sit back in an airport bar and enjoy a drink, knowing that up-to-the-minute information is right in your pocket. FlightView. Planespotters will love FlightView, which provides nationwide flight tracking and weather delay maps. And that’s just the free version; the $3.99 FlightView Elite app also offers arrival and departure boards and weather conditions at airports across the country. B4YOUBOARD. A free app from Airside Mobile and travel-food experts HMSHost, B4YOUBOARD allows hungry travelers to order food delivered straight to their departure gate. Currently the program is limited to selected terminals at the Minneapolis–St. Paul and JFK airports. Apps and online tools can be helpful, but nothing beats experience. What are some of your strategies for making airports more navigable, interesting, or even—yes—fun? — Ryan Murphy MORE FROM BUDGET TRAVEL: 10 Most Useful Travel Websites The Ultimate Guide to Travel Apps Airport Survival Guide—We Want Your Tips!

All too often, the surprises we encounter when traveling—particularly when we're trying to cut costs—are of the disappointing variety. Your foreign hotel's star rating doesn't mean what you thought it did, say, or a great car rental rate went through the roof after all the fees were tallied. On a quick trip to Austin last weekend, I had the exact opposite experience. My dirt-cheap hotel room at the Super 8 Airport South (with a pop-up booking discount on the hotel's site, it ran about $86 per night, including all taxes and fees) was a veritable cornucopia of pleasant surprises. First, there were the racks of loaner DVDs and books in the lobby (decent stuff, too—not just video rental closeout material), just across the way from the tray of free cookies set out nightly from 6pm-9pm. Then there was the mini-sauna (just big enough for two!) in the mini-gym, and the laundry hamper under the bathroom sink for carrying your sweaty duds to the guest laundry room down the hall—plus the welcome basket of free snacks and water waiting in each guest's room. Everywhere we turned, there was some little thoughtful extra that made it clear the hotel was run by real human beings with one objective in mind: winning over repeat guests. Have you ever had a chain-hotel experience that totally surpassed your expectations? What's the best surprise you've ever found in a budget accommodation? MORE FROM BUDGET TRAVEL: Quiz: Name That Hotel Chain Readers' Choice: What's the Best All-Inclusive Resort Chain? 25 Reasons We Love Austin

Hotel alarm clocks are surprisingly tough to use—especially when you're jet lagged. You can't be sure a clock will sound off at the correct time if you're not familiar with how to set it. Who wants to spend five minutes fumbling around with a strange gizmo when you're exhausted after a red-eye? Many hotel clocks require you to hold one button while pressing another. You won't find that "user experience" anymore on most of the clocks sold for Target and other home supply stores. But hotels continue to use clocks with this non-intuitive design, perhaps because they're cheap to make. Add buttons for a clock radio, and things can get complicated fast. And where are the volume controls? The last time a hotel chain unveiled a fresh model of alarm clock was in 2005, when Hilton rolled out a radio-controlled clock that always sets itself. On the bright side, this clock only asks you to set your wake-up time. But on the downside, many travelers complain that this model clock is often broken, and the only way to fix one is to call down to the front desk for a replacement, according to designer Don Norman. The best workaround is, of course, to pack your own alarm clock. Then be sure to unplug the hotel's alarm clock, eliminating the chance that an alarm set by a previous guest and never erased will accidentally wake you up. So: What are the BYOC (bring your own clock) options, including apps for smartphones? Any simple, small clock will do the trick, and you can set the clock by checking the local time at Onlineclock.net. But L.L. Bean has gotten rave reviews (meaning: 560 customers out of 716 would recommend) for its LED Nightfinder Alarm, introduced in 2009. It has a few perks: It has only a couple of buttons. It's lightweight and only is about the size of a pack of cards. It uses LED lighting, for longer battery life. The case flips back and doubles as a handy stand, with a nonslip surface. (recently $23, llbean.com).Bonus tip: If your alarm clock is battery powered, you can prevent the battery from running dry during non-use by simply taking the battery out, placing a Band-Aid down the length of each so its two terminals are covered, and replacing it in the clock. When you're ready to use the clock, peel off the Band-Aids to expose the terminals. Smart phone owners may want to try one of the alarm clock apps that has received more than a thousand 5-star reviews from Android users and was picked as an Apple App Store favorite: Alarm Clock The sound goes off even when the screen is locked or if your device is in silent mode. (free, Android and iPhone/iPad). SEE MORE FROM BUDGET TRAVEL: Which Travel Rewards Program Has the Most Valuable Points? Southwest Waters Down Its Rapid Rewards Program Expedia Reveals Rewards Program Details