….Nothing, except they all made our list of travel news items for the day:

In the New York Times, Joe Sharkey laments the return of the Saturday night stay rule, designed to discourage business travelers from booking the lowest airfares.

At the same time a hated old rule may be coming back, a well-loved new airline has launched its latest new route. Virgin America began flights between Seattle-Tac and Los Angeles International today.

Moving on from planes flying high in the sky, we land on news of a visa crack down in China. Chinese authorities have reportedly begun limiting visas in Hong Kong, which is popular entry point for travelers to the vast nation. The changes are reportedly in response to security concerns expected to come with the influx of tourists visiting the country before, during and after the Olympics.

Back in the States, we learned that the FAA has responded to increased criticism and scrutiny of its airline safety inspection practices by reassigning (but not firing) its top inspection official to a pencil-pushing administrative position instead.

And that’s not the only travel-related spring cleaning that’s going on today. Gizmodo highlights an airplane cabin for sale on eBay. Wondering what one would do with an intact airplane cabin? The seller has plenty of creative, if not practical, ideas.

If you’re looking for more creative ideas, you’ll find plenty among the 2008 Webby Award nominees, which were announced today. We weren’t surprised to see our parent company, Kayak.com, on the list.

And speaking of awards, here are some for all the four-legged travelers in the house: Animal Fair magazine has announced its 2008 Cesar Five Dog Bone Awards for best pet-friendly companies. Continental won out among airlines, while Austin’s The Driskill Hotel prevailed in the hotel category. The Fairmont Scottsdale Princess scored highest in the resort category.

As you can see from the Getty image here, the newly opened Beijing Terminal 3 is one gargantuan structure. Built in a mere four years, the terminal required entire villages to be relocated for its construction. Terminal architects even claim that it’s the largest building in the world. Period. We have no idea if that’s true, but it sure sounds impressive.

Beijing’s New Air Terminal

If you’re going to be in New York this weekend and you love travel, consider checking out the New York Times Travel Show, a veritable smorgasbord of travel information from resorts, hotels, spas, cruise lines, tour operators, tourist agencies and adventure travel companies from around the world. Along with vendor booths and live entertainment performances representing a vast array of cultures, the show features a Taste of the World Pavilion filled with international cuisine and cooking demonstrations, a Spa Pavilion offering sample treatments and discounted packages at spa resorts, travel author appearances and special travel deals offered to folks brave enough to book their next vacation on the spot. And with travel experts Rick Steves, Arthur Frommer, Ian Wright and Stephanie Abrams - among many others - leading seminars, the show offers a rare chance for face-to-face learning from leading peeps in the industry. Cost: $15.

Yeah, last minute travel can be cool. But it can also leave you cash poor, especially when you’re talking high-season travel in major vacation destinations. But as with most things in life, a just little edumuhcation can go a long way. Case in point: Kayak.com’s Fare Alerts.

Create a Fare Alert (or 12) on Kayak.com or SideStep.com for the summer getaway(s) currently sequestered in your noggin by clicking on the “Get fare alerts for this trip” link on the top right-hand corner of the flight results page. You can track fares for specific dates, a flexible span of time (e.g. summer weekends or, say, the month of June) or an entire region (e.g. Europe). When your daily or weekly Fare Alert (you choose how often it arrives) touches down in your email inbox, you’ll be able to make informed travel decisions.

Depending on what you ask it to track (specific dates, flexible span of time or even top cities in a region), each Fare Alert can show you:

- How much the fare for specific dates has increased or decreased in dollars since the last alert

- The airfare history for your trip dates based on searches made by Kayakers over the past 90 days

- A snapshot of prices in Kayak.com’s matrix view, so you can quickly compare prices by carrier and number of stops

- The lowest fare available during a specific span of time (e.g. the next four weekends)

- The best fares available for popular destination cities in a region you want to visit (e.g. Africa)

Who knows, maybe you’ll still pay craptons to travel to the most expensive resort on the hottest island right in the middle of the high season. After all, it’s high season for a reason. But at least you’ll be pimping it out with full knowledge of your unbridled American excess. Just remember the wisdom of G.I. Joe.

(**Editor’s note: Yeah, Kayak.com owns us. You wanna make something of it? I’ll have you know I was surreptitiously using Fare Alerts to aid in making my personal travel plans long before Kayak.com bought our parent company SideStep.com in December. Nepotism, bias, blah, blah, blah. Fare Alerts just make good travel sense.)

With two weeks of the year under our belts, we’ve taken stock of the current travel landscape, checked our trend gauges and looked into our crystal balls to come up with our favorite travel trends for 2008.

Flight Flux

Just about the only thing frequent air travelers can count on this year is more change in the friendly skies. Just as the Open Skies agreement ushers in myriad new options for passengers traveling between the United States and Europe when it goes into effect on March 28, the U.S. Department of transportation is considering changes to the rules that govern how airports charge airlines for landing privileges. Instead of basing fees on airplane weight, a recently announced proposal to charge more for flights landing during peak times has the potential to free up airspace, ease airport congestion and encourage airlines to use add flight routes at regional airports. At the same time, the old-guard U.S. carriers (United Airlines, Delta, Northwest, etc.) are considering mergers and threatening to cut the number of flights they offer to offset the now-hideous cost of fuel.

What does all this mean for travelers? Expect frequent changes in flight schedules, available routes and ticket fares in the months to come.

Tech Boom at 30,000 feet

While airlines from JetBlue to American Airlines test in-flight Internet services like web browsing and others usher in the era of mile-high mobile phoning (Emirates, Air France, Qantas), and some are even hard at work on both (Norwegian Air), carriers like 2007’s much-talked about newcomer Virgin Atlantic are spending big bucks to outfit main cabins with high-tech amenities like in-seat chat messaging and myriad personal media options.

We expect this trend to continue as passengers cry for more in-flight services, just as airlines are dying for more ways to make a buck. After all, we may balk at paying for a half-dead turkey sandwich, but many of us would cheerily fork over cash for on-demand movies, in-flight web access and other high-tech perks that make our lives easier and provide much-need distraction from uncomfortable seats, runway delays and annoying seatmates.

Business Lodging Goes Boutique

Once upon at time, boutique hotels were the provenance of moneyed leisure travelers seeking alternatives to business-oriented hotels in destination cities. But now the tables have turned. New brands like NYLO, InterContinental’s Hotel Indigo and Starwood’s Aloft are betting business and frequent travelers will respond to the combination of hip interiors, high-tech business amenities and conveniences like 24-hour and to-go dining options. Thus far, these business boutique properties have flocked not to business hubs like New York and Los Angeles, but to airport locations and nearby secondary cities like Plano, Schaumberg and Nashville.

Looking Beyond Europe

With the both the Euro and the British Pound kicking the dollar’s sorry arse these days, expect fewer Americans to choose Europe as a vacation destination. Instead, more stateside travelers will opt for places where their hard-earned dollars stretch a bit farther. As more flights between North America and Asian countries appear in the coming year, Americans will have increased options for visiting countries like China, Vietnam and Thailand. At the same time, Latin and South American countries also continue to promise a good value for U.S. travelers, many of whom have been trading Paris, Rome and Madrid for places like Buenos Aires, Cusco and Santiago.

Amped-Up Airports

As passengers become more accustomed to delays, flight cancellations and the general uncertainty of modern-day travel, airports around the United States are realizing that, now more than ever, travelers stuck in terminals are veritable cash cows. Along with the airport quick-spas, souped-up luxury lounges for elite travelers and premium retail shops that have been popping up in terminals over the last two years, evermore diversions for travelers are on their way. In the coming year, it will not be unusual for a traveler to sample local vintages at an airport wine bar before settling into a branded high-tech lounge to check email or surf the web before catching a table massage (not just the chair variety) prior to boarding. Increases in practical amenities like cell phone parking lots, universal charging stations, product vending machines and airport pharmacies are also part of this trend, which aims to make airports more than just places to wait.

Maturing Metasearch

We predict that metasearch tools will continue to attract more travelers seeking an efficient way to find airline fares, hotel rates and relevant destination information. With Kayak.com’s recent acquisition of SideStep (parent company of TravelPost.com) and newcomers like Kango busting onto the scene with a ton of buzz, sites that search hundreds of sources for fares and travel information are poised to mature from tools used by the savviest travelers to tools used by everyone.

Freelance writer Lorraine Sanders has been editing the TravelPost.com Insider blog since 2005. You can reach her at news (at) lorrainesanders (dot) com.

Heading to China? Should you be planning to tote a Lonely Planet China guidebook along on the trip, now would be a good time to start fashioning a book cover for the volume, which has apparently been banned by the Chinese government for a map that makes Taiwan appear to be a separate country from China. Talk about a quick way to piss off the Chinese. We read about the ban over yonder at World Hum, but you can check out the original story in the Age.

Delta, delta, delta, can I help ya, help ya, help ya? The answer to that question - should you be calling the airline (and not the sorority) in search of an easier way to reach China from the East Coast - would be a resounding yes. In what’s big news for Delta. The U.S. Department of Transportation today announced that Delta has won approval to fly non-stop between Atlanta Hartsfield International Airport and Shanghai, China beginning in March 2008.

Delta Cleared for China Route

Don’t plan on visiting the Ritz Carlton Hong Kong next year. The venerable property will close its doors on Jan. 1, 2008. The owners will turn the space into high-rise office buildings, but are also planning two new Ritz Carlton properties. The first is scheduled to open in Macau in 2009, and the second is planned for Kowloon’s International Commerce Center. When it opens in 2010, it will be the tallest hotel property in the world.

The Ritz-Carlton, Hong Kong Closing

If you like your travel advice with a healthy dose of news and business-minded tips, then you shouldn’t miss The Economist’s City Guides. In addition to current events happening in your destination city, you’ll find extras like Cheat Sheets, which offer insider tips on basics like hotels and restaurants, as well as topics like taxis and bank holidays. In Dubai, for example, you don’t want to schedule meetings on Fridays, the country’s day of rest. In Hong Kong, business cards are a must for meetings. When you get to Mexico City, you don’t need to tip your taxi driver, but you should tip 10 percent or more at a good restaurant.

United Airlines has been given permission by the feds to fly nonstop from Washington, DC to China. United is the first U.S. airline to be granted such permission, though competing airlines Northwest, American and Continental had also applied for the privilege. Nonstop flights from Dulles International Airport to Beijing are scheduled to begin on March 25, 2007, pending final approval by the U.S. government.

United Airlines Wins Contract For Nonstop Washington/Beijing Flight