Mobissimo

Feel the need to stretch your legs and get the most out of OpenSkies, the newest and greatest across the Atlantic air service?  Check it out, prices from $550 in PREM+.  Click below for more details.

There are many ways to travel, sometimes the best is by bike.  While strenous, going by bike can be extremely rewarding, check out more here about biking around India via Globorati.

Far from the hordes that swarm the Taj Mahal, there’s a new way to catch a glimpse of Old India. Pedalers Pub & Grille — the Asia cycling specialists with the purposefully nutty name — embark on an inaugural journey, November 24, across the unsullied southern tip of the subcontinent. From temple-studded Tamil Nadu to the watery labyrinths of Kerala, the 12-day Royal Odyssey tour covers an epic 439 miles. But fear not for biker’s bum — they’ll be plenty of pit stops along the way, including the Periyar Wildlife Sanctuary (home to Project Tiger, aimed at rejuvenating the species), and the World-Heritage Shore Temple on the Bay of Bengal.

Spending more than 5 hours in an economy airline seat is not fun, nor healthy.  Here are some tips for making that long flight more pleasant, this via the Gadling.

All my life I have traveled Economy Class (only once did I get lucky and got an upgrade to Business Class). In my opinion, flights of up to 7 hours in Economy are tolerable, but more than that and the all the fidgeting and frustration starts getting to you.

Having lived in Australia for 3 years, I dreaded the 14 hour flights to and from Dubai (30 hours if you include transfers and waiting); that's when I realized how seemingly trivial things could drastically change the quality of your flight.

I'm a carry on type of guy, however, taking up half the cargo space of a 747 is a little much.  Apparently Mariah Carey needs 27 bags worth of stuff, read more here.

38-year-old pop diva Mariah Carey landed yesterday at London Heathrow Airport for an upcoming performance on the X Factor, bringing along 27 bags of luggage for a stay that is only expected to last three days.

Any thoughts that the recession is hitting China are, well partly true.  However, the Aloft chain of hotels doesn't seem to see this as a downtime and has opened up it's first property not in Japan, Vietnam, or India, but in China, seems like things aren't so bad.

Starwood has opened its first Asia-based Aloft hotel in the Haidan district of Beijing.

The Aloft Beijing, Haidian is the brand’s first venture outside of North America, and will be followed by a second China branch within the next two years.

The opening marks the beginning of the lifestyle brand’s worldwide expansion, with over 100 hotels planned by 2011 for India, the United Arab Emirates, Thailand, Belgium and China – as well as further North American openings.

Thanks to Holiday Inn and Holiday Inn Express, the places you have to go now earn you the places you want to go. That means you can turn your next drab business trip into a fab vacation. Plan your getaway here.

Simply book the Stay to Fly Rate at participating hotels and stay anytime now through December 31, 2008 and you qualify to get a flight voucher good for a $198 round-trip ticket to one of 198 select U.S. destinations or $298 round-trip to Canada and Mexico. There's a $99 discount offered off current airfares to/from Alaska or Hawaii.

Best yet, you have three months to book your travel and can travel anytime within six months of booking. So, there's plenty of time to getaway. Hit the slopes for a weekend. Head to the beach for some sun. Or travel to see your favorite team play.

The next time your travel, stay with Holiday Inn and Holiday Inn Express.
Because the more you stay, the more places you can go.

Book your stay today and a get your ticket to fly away.

A typical good news/bad news situation.  Alitalia is able to stay aloft a bit longer, but the workers won't ... work.  So what happens here.  Read more here.

One of Europe's most troubled major airlines, Alitalia, is in a good news, bad news kind of state at the moment. At one point, the beleaguered carrier was within hours of shutting down, unable to pay for fuel on more than a day to day basis. However, a new set of investors appeared that the Italian government could live with, and EU regulators approved the deal this week - with a nice little bonus. They ruled that the 300 million Euro bailout loan that the Italian government gave Alitalia was illegal and therefore doesn't have to be paid back by the new owners.

With the opening of a new W Hotel in the Besiktas area of Istanbul, the area has changed dramatically.  Once working class, now super chic, check it out, more here via NY Times, tickets from NYC to Istanbul are only $458, check those prices here on Mobissimo.

THE old Istanbul neighborhood of Besiktas, which runs along the European side of the Bosphorus, has long betrayed a blue-collar state of mind. Its bustling markets, schools and ferry stations have been home to fishermen, off-duty cabdrivers, teenage students and Besiktas soccer fans.

But suddenly the area, pockets of it at least, are going seriously cosmopolitan, with names like Marc Jacobs, Jimmy Choo and Jean-Georges Vongerichten now near cramped vegetable stands and rickety tobacco shops.

Dear MobiFans,
 
People's choice Mashable is giving people all over the world a chance to nominate their favorite web sites for the Open Web Awards, from now until November 15 at midnight.
 
Mobissimo (www.mobissimo.com) is the best, most comprehensive travel search site on the Web, and your vote will make sure the whole world knows it.  To nominate Mobissimo, click here.  Let's get Mobissimo on the ballot!  Please spread the word to your friends and other savvy travelers. Voting starts on November 19.

Very nice feature here, instead of having to print out a boarding pass, you can just use your mobile.  Read more here via MediaBistro.

British Airways this morning launched a new service that lets customers check in for their flights from any Web-enabled mobile device, across global markets in 11 different languages, which appears to be an industry first. (Not the mobile check-in part; that's been around for a while, but the 11-languages, global markets part.)

Gordan Ramsay, the foul-mouthed, impatient impresario of cuisine and television fame is opening up a new hotel.  Does that mean you'll be great with four letter words?  One can only hope.  More here via Globorati.

Gordon Ramsay got canned from the Connaught. And now he's out for revenge.
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If you like what Gordon Ramsay does in the kitchen, you might also like what he does in the bedroom. You can find out, now that Ramsay is a hotelier: His 10-room York & Albany has just opened in the leafier end of London’s Camden neighborhood.

Well oil is back into middle double digits, so the 150 a barrel days are a distant memory.  SAS is taking this to heart and passing the savings onto the customer, read more here.

SAS Group have decided to reduce surcharges by 3 Euros on domestic, intrascandinavian and European flights. On Intercontinental flights the surcharges will be reduced by 5 Euros.

Rugs can be a simple pleasure, but an expensive one.  Going to the source in Morocco, India, Nepal is one solution, but do you really know for what you're looking?  More here via The Travel Editor.

In the medinas of Morocco business is still conducted like it has been for centuries and an integral of part of that is bargaining. While a way of life in many cultures where price tags are non-existent, haggling can be intimidating for the uninitiated.

Upon entering any carpet shop in Morocco you will be offered a warm welcome and asked a series of questions, disguised as small talk. Your answers will be used to calculate how high the starting price will be. The carpet merchant, like any good salesman, is qualifying your spending potential. Here are some of the typical questions and a translation of their underlying meaning:

Where are you from? If you are from North America, Japan, Western Europe, the U.K. and Australia the starting price will be higher.

NY is going through a phase of super high end cocktails.  While the current NY economy may not support $30 drinks, beer is always cheap.  Here's a list of top beer (wallet friendly as always) places in NY.  This via Gridskipper.

Coffee and beer: the two most important beverages in the lives of New Yorkers. Coffee rules our days, and beer reigns after dark. No disrespect to juice, wine, and cocktails, but coffee and beer are the only two beverages you really need in this life, besides the occasional sip of seltzer. I've had my java for the day, so let's focus on beer, shall we?

Sometimes that flight can be bone-jarringly boring.  Or you just need to escape, here's yet another marketing idea from 1time, a South African carrier, read more here via Gadling.

South Africa-based 1time Airlines is a low cost carrier. In order to keep their prices low, they decided against adding any built-in in-flight entertainment in their fleet. Not really a problem, because most of the flights are not lengthy. The bulk of their air time is between their hub in Johannesburg and other South African cities like Durban and Cape Town.