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With travel prices soaring, every saved penny counts. And industry analysts say airfares will keep rising for 2013, according to USA Today. Passengers can be expected to pay more add-on fees. The airlines, which are cutting flights, are making money from these additional costs. According to the newspaper, airlines collected $924 million in baggage fees alone in the third quarter of last year. They made another $652 million from fees to change reservations.

It is not just airfare, car rental agencies, hotels, and cruise lines  are adding new fees. But there are actually ways to get a few free things the next time you travel. We lay out a few of the opportunities.

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Traveling internationally can be fun and exciting, but also scary and intimidating.  You are in a foreign land unsure of the customs and lifestyle and the worry over causing some sort of international incident by committing a cultural faux pas can be intense. But there are a few things you can do to ensure you international jaunt goes great.

From BlackVoices

The experience of a vacation with your closest girlfriends is an unforgettable one. It gives you the chance to reinforce the bonds that you have and allows you to form new memories. To make the most out of your girlfriends getaway trip, read our tips below:

PLANNING

• Determine who’s traveling, select a destination, and set a date. Inform the essential parties (boss and co-workers, spouse, family, babysitter) and organize yourself well in advance so that everyone is prepared for your departure.
• Share in the duties of planning by dividing up the responsibilities so that each girlfriend takes ownership of the logistics: airfare, hotel, rental car, restaurants and attractions
• Bring recent photos to visually update each other on your lives

Get the rest of the travel-planning tips on BlackVoices.com.

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Aaaahhhh…. summer vacation. So nice to have a little time off to travel. Until you come back, look at your credit card statement, and see that you’ll be working overtime for the next six months to pay for that week away.

Even if you manage to get a great deal on the airfare and hotel, you can still end up spending a whole wad of cash once you’re actually on your trip. Unfortunately, we can’t all afford four-star everything. So how can you have a blast and still (kind of) keep out of the poorhouse? We’ve got tips for that.

(Black Enterprise) — Taking a vacation can be more stressful than restful. From the cost to the tedious details of planning to finding your way through foreign cities—traveling can be intimidating—especially for the novice adventurer. Despite the hassle, getting “out there” is an invaluable asset to both your personal and professional life, raising your awareness about cultures outside of your own and giving you the opportunity to become more worldly.  That’s why a growing number of black travel bloggers are stressing the importance of travel, especially for African Americans.

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(New York Times) — No matter where your comfort zone lies, though, to be a successful frugal traveler you may have to shed your preconceived notions surrounding six areas. Once you do so, the rewards of seeing the world exceed the inconvenience of going without a plush terry-cloth robe.  The degree to which you feel at ease around strangers from both strange and utterly normal lands is a major factor that determines your frugal journey. How willing are you to share a dorm room, say, with a helicopter pilot in training in Lafayette, La.? (I was, and wish we were still in touch.) Can you tolerate a thin-walled room in a guest house with a next door neighbor who coughs all night, as recently happened to me in London? No? O.K., then, settle into your hotel. But you’ll have to make up for it by traveling via bus rather than rental cars, or subway over taxi, or eating at the counter at a place like Guerrin in Buenos Aires, where that’ll get you 30 percent off on your slices compared to table service.  Lack of privacy can be intolerable, even for me, as when a young guy with a teeth-grinding issue moved into my hostel dorm room in Los Angeles. The sound from his bed was so piercingly rhythmically torturous it was as if a cricket was chirping inside my pillowcase.

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