We hope you’re enjoying Labor Day 2007 whether you’re traveling, grilling or sitting on your bum enjoy the rare day off. Things will be quiet around here today, but check back tomorrow for your regular dose of travel news, tips and advice from around the web.

SideStep, our parent company, acquired TripUp earlier this week. TripUp is the place to go if you’re young, traveling and looking for excellent advice and friends along the way. Join the site for access to Trip Gurus who offer candid, bs-free tips on specific destinations, while the Locate a Mate feature lets you search for fellow travel junkies you can meet up when you’re on the road. Site members also upload photos and videos of their adventures and write reviews of hotels and other venues located around the world.

You’ve probably already heard about our parent company SideStep’s new Trips feature on Facebook, which just about every college kid in America uses these days, but just in case you haven’t, I’m here with the news. Facebook members, of which I am proud to be one (though I have like one friend), can now list upcoming travel plans and travel hopes and dreams on their profile pages. Members can search for those with like-minded travel aspirations, find advice from travelers who’ve already been to the destinations they hope to visit and rendezvous with other travelers who will be in the same destination at the same time.

You may have noticed a helpful little post last week called Ask George. Well, we’re quite pleased to announce that Ask George, a column by travel writer and expert George Hobica, is now a regular feature on the TravelPost.com Insider. Each week, George will answer a pressing travel question with his years of expertise and experience in the biz. You’ll also be able to find all our Ask George columns archived in the Ask George category over on the right. We’re grateful to have George aboard the Insider and hope you be will, too!

If there are two things one can say about carbon offsetting programs, it’s that they are attracting lots of attention and sparking debate among environmental experts, frequent travelers and earth-conscious consumers.

I’m all for the idea behind carbon offsets, but I’m waiting for more transparency and proof that the environmental projects supported by the funds from offsets are working before spending a lot on them. In the meantime, I’m trying to stay conscious of the other things travelers can do to reduce damage to the earth while traveling it.

Here are five easy, cost-effective ways any traveler can reduce his or her carbon footprint:

Five Ways Travelers Can Reduce Carbon Footprints Without Spending a Dime

We’re trying something new over here at TravelPost.com (just like any good travelers are apt to want to do). We’re putting together weekly stories on some of our favorite travel topics. New this week:

The Best Quick Escapes from San Francisco

Have a certain destination you want us to feature in the future? Maybe you’re heading somewhere and need a little help with the research. Let us be your travel guide. Leave suggestions in the comment boxes, and we may use your idea for an upcoming feature.

Oh yeah, you think you’re an expert on Disney and Orlando’s many other fab attractions? But, quick, can you tell us what time each day can you see Shamu at Sea World? Or when to catch EPCOT’s Illuminations Light Show? What about the amount of time you’ll need to tour the NASA Kennedy Space Center?

Instead of hunting around through lots of individual web sites or toting around paper brochures, you can get all of this info, including opening and closing times and visitor info for 14 of Orlando’s top attractions with our brand new Definitive Guide to Orlando Attraction Hours and Event Times. This easy-to-navigate quick reference guide has everything you need to hit up Orlando’s top tourist spots - there’s even a cool chart that maps out everything for you.

We like it, and we’re pretty darn sure you will, too. Here’s that chart we were talking about:

If there’s one thing the world could use more of, it’s great hotel deals. TravelPost.com’s latest feature brings you just that. On TravelPost.com’s Hotel Deals page, you’ll be able to find a sweet selection of deals, including last minute offers on both luxury and inexpensive accommodations, in major vacation destinations like New York, Las Vegas, California and Mexico. You’ll find the best deals on hotels from around the web right on one page where you can compare prices. If you’re a serious deal hunter, you’ll want to bookmark this page and check back frequently. New deals pop-up all the time. Some examples of recent offers:

Special $339 Rate at 5-Star Puerto Rico Resort and Spa

$79 - All Inclusive Holiday Inn Cancun Arenas (50% Off)

Dallas - Fort Worth - 4-star - from $69/night

$109 All Inclusive 4 Star Los Cabos Beach Resort & Spa + Kids Stay Free

San Diego Hotel Deals - Stay in Downtown - Rates from $120

$89 & up - Sea World & the Beach - Save Big on San Diego Hotels

$94.95 - Luxury 4-Star Union Square Hotel in San Francisco

$94.95 - San Francisco 4 Star Luxury Union Square Hotel

Barbary Coast in the Heart of the Strip - $73/Nt

Luxor Casino Rates from $80/night

$35 & up - Last Minute Deals to Hot Vegas Hotels

Las Vegas Hotels on Sale - Rates from $29/Night

Play in Las Vegas & Stay at the Circus Circus Hotel & Casino $32/Nt

TravelPost.com Hotel Deals

Charter your own private jet with SideStep

Imagine your next business trip. Now imagine it without airport shuttles, overnight airport parking fees, crowded ticket lines and security headaches. What if your next trip went exactly your way? A trip where your shoes stayed on your feet the entire time – unless, of course, you decided to kick them off to relax. A traveling experience without airport terminals the size of small cities, overbooked flights, uncomfortable seats, yucky food, banned liquids and lengthy layovers. We know what you’re thinking. You’d have to hire a private jet to get perks like that.

Precisely our point. With SideStep’s new Charter Flights Service, we’ll automatically search our extensive network of private jets and air taxis when you search for business and first class airfares on SideStep. We’ve added this new service to give travelers even more options and a greater variety of choices for air travel, flight schedules and competitive pricing. It all fits in with SideStep’s overall mission: to help you get where you want to go quickly and cheaply.

Chartering private air travel used to be a luxury enjoyed exclusively by the extremely wealthy. But private air charter services, also known as on-demand or air taxi travel, are increasingly practical choices for business travelers and leisure travelers, especially those facing demanding schedules or over an hour’s drive to and from major airports.

Why choose a private jet service over commercial airline travel?

That’s easy. Unparalleled convenience. When you book a private jet, you set the schedule and determine the number of passengers. Many private jet services can be ready in a matter of hours.

Private jet passengers can arrive much closer to scheduled departure times than those flying commercial flights. And because you determine who flies with you, time-consuming security screening is unnecessary.

In addition to major airports, private jets can arrive and depart from over 12,000 airports in smaller communities. That means less time getting to and from the airport and more time for business, your family, yourself.

When your meeting ends, you can easily fly home or on to your next destination instead of spending time and money on hotel accommodations, employee per diems, food costs, parking fees and all those other expenses that crop up when you’re just killing time until the next commercially available flight.

But I can’t afford a private jet! Or can I?

These days, the cost of chartering a private jet is increasingly reasonable, especially for groups of travelers. With several people flying, the per-person cost of a private jet or air taxi service can be surprisingly close to the cost of a full-fare business or first class ticket on a major commercial airline. And when you consider the added convenience that comes with chartered air transportation, even paying slightly more for private jet service yields big time-savings and far fewer hassles that make it preferable to conventional air travel.

For more information on SideStep’s Chartered Flight Service, visit SideStep searches Chartered Flights on Private Jets.

Pardon the non-travel interlude. I read Scott Kirsner’s Bloggers’ Choice: Free Agents or Infomercials yesterday and wanted to comment for TravelPost.com Insider readers. Kirsner’s essay, in a nutshell, is about the ethics involved in blogging and whether bloggers should disclose the freebies and goodies they receive in exchange for posts. For anyone who regularly reads blogs or blogs themselves, the issues he raises are important ones to think about. The story made me want to be clear about the TravelPost.com Insider’s editorial policies:

1. None of the hotels, airlines, travel companies, products or destinations featured on the TravelPost.com Insider have paid or offered goods and services in exchange for placement, nor are we encouraged to blog about advertisers’ products and services. If it happens, it’s purely coincidence.

2. We try to maintain a positive perspective on travel and refrain from making negative or damaging comments about hotels, products or companies. We have enough opinionated TravelPosters posting their real thoughts on destinations around the world in our hotel reviews and travel blogs.

3. We spend very little time covering news and developments at companies who do exactly what we do. Basically, we’re convinced we offer a great source for relevant, unbiased hotel reviews and travel advice, and we leave it at that.

If you have any questions, suggestions or comments about what you see on the TravelPost.com Insider, always feel free to leave your rants and raves in the comment boxes following each post or contact us directly. We always respond, unless of course you spam us with irrelevant self-promotional drivel. In that case, we swiftly delete you.