Here’s a chance to in a year of free travel from JetBlue:

being a fan of the brand on Facebook could net you either free round-trip tickets, comped airfare and a vacation for you and three friends for five days and four nights, or even unlimited free travel on JetBlue for a year.

Social Media Consulting » Excellent use of social media by JetBlue

Technorati Tags: jetblue, travel, flight, contest, sweepstakes, win, free travel

Great startup review from Mashable’s Spark of Genius series:

Name: Kijubi

Quick Pitch: Kijubi is a new type of travel planning site that helps you discover “What Kijubi Doing” on your next vacation.

Genius Idea: Thanks to the Internet, planning trips online has become much, much easier. Not only can you book your flight, hotel and car rentals online, you can compare prices and features.

The one aspect of trip planning that hasn’t come completely online though is that of local activities. Plenty of places have online sites, but coagulating that information during the planning stages of your trip still isn’t as easy as it could be. That’s what Kijubi aims to do — help you find and plan the stuff you want to while you are on vacation.

Right now, Kijubi covers California, Florida and Nevada and catalogs more than 80 different types of activities from snorkeling, to water-skiing, to hot-air ballooning (if you want to have a “Balloon Boy” adventure of your own — you know, minus the huge media hoax).

You can search by price, whether or not children are allowed (or encouraged), and check for user reviews and booking coupons.

Read the rest: Kijubi Helps Find “What Could You Be Doing” on Vacation

Technorati Tags: kijubi, startup, mashable, web site, travel, trip, holiday

Skyscanner is a really great site to search for flights on. The speed of the search is amazing and it returns your results to you in a two-paned window, one for your departure flight and one for your return:

It also offers a myriad of helpful filters displayed in a very unique way. I absolutely love searching for flights with Skyscanner.

Technorati Tags: skyscanner, cheap flights, flight search, travel, flights, fly, booking

Roomatlas Makes Finding Hotels a Breeze

Name: Roomatlas

Quick Pitch: RoomAtlas simplifies hotel booking, showing live availability, pricing, reviews, landmarks and pictures on a rich interactive map.

Genius Idea: Remember when mashups were all the rage? Lately, they’re rarely mentioned, but that doesn’t mean a good mashup can’t be a fantastic service, even one that can replace several others.

A mashup called Roomatlas ended up in our inbox, with a fairly simple description: it combines Google Maps (Google Maps) with Expedia’s database of hotels and TripAdvisor’s reviews. Add to that the fact that RoomAtlas reduces the number of steps you need to take to get the information you need, and you get a great, simple way to find and book hotels.

Technorati Tags: roomatlas, travel, hotel, stay, booking

A hamster-themed hotel in Nantes, France, offers rooms and layouts inspired by hamster-cages. Rooms have hamster wheels, the food is all grains and seeds, the water comes out of hamster bottles, etc.

Hamster Hotel lets you live like a rodent – Boing Boing

Technorati Tags: hamster, rodent, hotel, france, travel

Mashable has written up a profile of the new web site fidofactor.com which allows you to find dog friendly locations in the city you’re in. It includes restaurants, bars, parks, hotels, attractions and a lot more. This can make your next trip with Fido a lot easier.

Name: Fido Factor

Quick Pitch: Fido Factor is a dog-specific local search and review site and iPhone app built for dog owners. It’s a “Yelp (Yelp) for dogs.”

Genius Idea: We dog owners love our canines: it’s really that simple. We raise them, feed them, play with them, sleep with them, and fall in love with them. We want to take them almost everywhere we go too, but that’s where you start running into problems.

The problem is also simple: there aren’t a lot of places where you can take your dog. It’s only appropriate to bring your pup to certain restaurants, parks, and hotels, but it’s practically impossible to know which places are OK for your loyal companion.

Read the rest here: Fido Factor Finds Dog-Friendly Places in Your City

Technorati Tags: dogs, pets, animals, travel, hotels, restraunts, bars, attractions

routeRANK is a handy new tool for travelers in Europe that searches not just flight information, but public transit and road network to find you the fastest and cheapest route to where you are going. You can book through the site and it also has the capability of telling you which route is the most environmentally friendly. Totally brilliant, go check it out: http://www.routerank.com/

Technorati Tags: routerank, startups, web apps, travel, europe, booking engine, trip, route

Airlines that charge fees lost more money than airlines that didn’t – Boing Boing

The US airlines that created the largest, most redonkulous and abusive fees this year lost the most money last quarter. Airlines with low or no fees lost the least.

Accountants have rigged the system. They create a stream to track the ancillary revenue from fees and they look like heroes when they can report they earned the airline millions of dollars of “new” revenue. But ask them if they can track the revenue we lose because passengers booked away or chose not to fly and they look at you like you have nine heads…

To celebrate the victory of fees over profit, several airlines used their first-quarter reporting to add still more ancillary revenue initiatives:

+ Delta Air Lines, which lost $693 million in the first quarter and suffered a 15 percent decline in revenue, will now charge you $50 if you check a second bag on an international flight.

+ Alaska Airlines will charge a first-bag fee of $15 on domestic flights.

+ US Airways is raising its checked-bag fees by $5 each if you don’t prepay on the Web.

Technorati Tags: travel, airline, fees, flight

TripSay Brings Travel Recommendations From People Like You

Every travel destination has its fans – people that say, “You should go!” What if the person that says you should go just loves to sit in a pool and drink all day? (not that that’s a bad thing!)

But, let’s say it’s not your thing. Where can you find travel recommendations from people like you? Sure you could ask your friends, yet their travel experiences will be somewhat limited. What about having a site that matches your travel tastes with other people with similar interests?

tripsay_logoThat’s the niche the Finland-based TripSay is going after. I’d say they’re doing a pretty darn good job of it. I found this site using StumbleUpon, since I seldom travel or look at travel sites. The design intrigued me. It’s clean, kind of Web 2.0 with nice controls and a super intuitive interface.

Technorati Tags: travel, tripsay, social media