This weekend: Party with 50,000 mollusk maniacs

You've probably heard of couchsurfing.com, a network of travelers looking to crash for free on strangers' sofas. Now we learn that an entrepreneur has taken the idea a step further and created Airbedandbreakfast.com, a site that enables anyone with an airbed (or couch or bed) to rent it out for the night. What makes AirBed & Breakfast.com different from couchsurfing.com (and craigslist.org, too) is that it allows you to make reservations online and pay for your stay with a credit card (or via PayPal). The site charges guests a 5 to 12 percent service fee (above the nightly rate, depending on the type of lodging). If you're hosting a guest, you receive the full rate you advertise. Skeptical of the trend? Don't be. Time reported this spring that Couch Surfing has nearly 470,000 users—up 56 percent since last year. On the plus side, AirBed & Breakfast makes it much more convenient for folks to try a cheaper—and far more culturally authentic—alternative to a hotel. On the downside, this website manages to lower the standard for acceptable cheap lodging to something even lower than a couch: the plastic inflatable airbed. Plus, it introduces an annoying new acronym into the language: "AB&B.;" Perhaps none of the above websites are as truly bargain basement as the long-standing one that makes guests work for their beds: helpx.net Trade five hours of manual labor for a place to crash. Have you tried any of these services? Would you? [Story broken by TechCrunch and picked up by HotelChatter and Travel Weekly in the UK.]

Reid Bramblett was recently on CNN, talking about his BT cover story on medieval and romantic Italy. Reid knows Italy like few other writers do. He learned Italian on a Roman playground when he was 12 years old, he says, and has kept returning nearly every year since. He's written Frommer's regional guide, Tuscany & Umbria and nine other guidebooks, including Frommer's Italy From $90 a Day, Europe for Dummies, and DK's Eyewitness Top 10 Milan & The Lakes. (He also self-publishes free info at ReidsGuides.com.) So what are some of Reid's top tips on making Italy affordable? Look for other lodging besides hotels. "I recently returned from Europe where I stayed in a campground in Venice for $23 and a monastery in Tuscany for $78 a night including all meals. And on another recent trip I stayed in a 13th-century castle on the Rhine River for $125 a night when the hotel in town was charging about $150 for a small room without a river view. Find listings at beyondhotels.net, with info on farmstays, villas, and apartments--and not just in Italy." Renting a car? "Check out all your options on a meta search engine like Kayak.com. But then compare prices with AutoEurope.com, which is a consolidator, meaning they buy rates in bulk from the major rental car chains and then pass along volume discounts to customers like you. You prepay your reservation and then pick up your car at a major brand chain, such as Hertz or Avis, overseas. They'll also arrange for short-term leases which, if you're traveling for about two weeks or more, is the best value." Try an ancient Italian village. Some are being turned into a new kind of hotel, where the rooms are spread out across town and you share the streets with residents. "The National Association of Diffuse Hotels' website (alberghidiffusi.it) is only in Italian, but it has links to 23 so-called alberghi diffusi in the frame labeled Alberghi Diffusi aderenti." MORE FROM BT A Village Is Reborn.

From the September 2008 issue of Budget Travel: Starwood's first Aloft and Element hotels are opening this summer, sporting a trendy design and amenities such as self-service check-in kiosks and a touch-screen concierge. Aloft hotels are in about a dozen cities [Montreal was the first one]; Element is currently only in Lexington, Mass.

Despite the spike in gas prices leisure travelers are renting more cars. Or, more precisely, they're renting more cars from the largest rental car company in North America, Enterprise Rent-A-Car, which targets the leisure travel market more than any other rental car company. In a recent interview, Steve Short, vice president of leisure business development, gave a quick explanation. Rentals have increased both in number and dollar volume over last year for the Enterprise brand. The number of rentals just in the leisure segment of the home city market is up more than 500,000. Rentals have increased this year in our home city business— meaning all non-airport locations—due to several factors: Leisure travelers— the group that represents the core readers of Budget Travel— are renting cars, vans and SUVs for family trips and special occasions. Enterprise has more than 6,000 neighborhood locations, we are within 15 minutes of 90 percent of the U.S. population. We pioneered the home city segment of the rental car business, along with pickup service. Customers who want fuel-efficient options find we have the largest fleet of fuel-efficient vehicles. When you think beyond the Enterprise brand and include our other brands, National and Alamo, we offer more than 440,000 cars combined. This fleet averages at least 28 miles per gallon. Currently, there are more than 4,000 hybrids in this fleet and we expect that number to increase significantly this fall. Have high gas prices changed your use of rental cars at all?