While some travelers head to the beach, just as many are opting for active vacations this summer – and not just to burn calories. Hiking and biking trips are all the more popular this year among travelers looking to save on car rental and gas costs, yet still explore a new destination. Not surprisingly, hotel packages catering to cyclists are popping up at hotels across the country. Here are three:

Hotel Monaco Portland (pictured): Bike enthusiasts head to this Pacific Northwest hotel for the complimentary guest bikes, as well as a “Carless vacation” package that includes a three-hour guided bike tour of downtown Portland.

Oceano Half Moon Bay: The bike package at this Northern California hotel includes a four-hour guided tour along wilderness trails to local historic sites such as the Montara Lighthouse. Overnight accommodations, breakfast in the morning, use of bikes and refreshments during the tour are included.

Hotel Sierra Alpharetta: The Big Creek Greenway Mountain Bike package at this moderately-priced hotel is just one of the many summer bike packages offered by hotels in Alpharetta, GA. Described as one of the “best kept secrets” in the area by a TravelPost reviewer who’s visited, the hotel will outfit you with a mountain bike for exploring the new Roswell mountain bike trail nearby.

This month’s Health magazine lists the lifestyle publication’s picks for America’s Healthiest Hotels. The editors and judges ranked chains rather than individual properties, but did include some specific hotel mentions that caught our eye. Below, we run down the chains they chose and the healthy benefits of a stay in one of their properties. Click through to the feature above for more details, as well as deals for summer 2009 travel from each featured chain.

Here’s what Health magazine deemed “healthiest” and why:

Fairmont: Property-specific offerings like dog-walking the resident pooch at the Fairmont Copley Plaza Boston (pictured), hand massages for BlackBerry users, anti-allergy pillows on the pillow menu and a Fairmont Fit program that offers athletic gear and a loaded MP3 player on loan for $10.

Four Seasons: Topnotch spas, fitness equipment, exercise classes and personal trainers. Also, an emphasis on local, fresh produce and ingredients at many hotels.

Kimpton: Free-to-watch meditation and pilates programming on demand, onsite workout facilities, minibars featuring organic snacks and healthy beverages.

Hilton: An Eat Right Menu that features low-fat, low-calorie options, as well as environmentally-sound rooms available at such properties as the Hilton Chicago O’Hare.

Hyatt Regency: The StayFit@Hyatt program, 24-hour fitness concierges, GPS armbands for runner guests and healthy meal options on its menus.

Ritz-Carlton: Hypoallergenic bedding, great spas, signature features that vary by location such as hikes with the resident yellow lab at the Ritz-Carlton Bachelor Gulch.

Westin: Fitness magazine and DVDs available in the rooms, guided running tours, Wii consoles in some fitness centers.

Cambria Suites: Menus devoid of deep-fried foods, organic tea in guest rooms, fitness centers – all at moderate rates.

Loews: Unique fitness offerings at the chain’s hotels, including belly-dancing and children’s yoga classes at Loews Coronado Bay.

The Peninsula: Top notch spas, meditation CDs, recently renovated fitness centers and huge (by hotel standards) swimming pools.

Love lists? Keep reading the TravelPost Insider for more Top 10 Travel roundups….

For all fun and adventure traveling entails, those who do it frequently know how difficult it is to eat healthy meals when you’re dining out day after day – and often grabbing whatever is within arm’s reach between flights at airport kiosks and eateries. When you’re on vacation, what you eat may not matter as much. After all, you’ll be back home and on your normal routine again all too soon. But for business travelers, the challenges of eating on the road can easily lead to a 10 lb weight increase over the course of a year, warns personal trainer Annette Lang in her recent post on Peter Greenberg’s site.

To combat unintended traveler’s tummy, Lang recommends spending some time trying to identify the times when you overeat so you can be on the alert and act differently in the future. She also suggests taking time to prep before meals during a trip by checking menus for healthy items in advance online, staying away from the bread basket, watching alcohol intake, halving large portions and bringing your own sandwich to snack on.

Perhaps Lang’s best advice, though, is to think of eating healthy much like you’d think about work by creating a strategy that works for you, planning ahead and focusing on one change at a time in order to reach your goals.

[Source: Gulliver]

[Photo: Fir0002/Flagstaffotos]

At 8:30 p.m. this Saturday night, March 28, some 1 billion people around the globe are expected to experience Earth Hour 2009, an initiative that seeks to raise awareness about climate change by encouraging individuals and businesses to flip off the switches for sixty minutes. So which hotels and landmarks around the world are participating in the event?

Some that might surprise you are the Empire State Building, Golden Gate Bridge, Eiffel Tower, Sydney Opera House (pictured above with lights off during Earth Hour 2008), Niagara Falls, Sears Tower, Stockholm Castle and the entire Las Vegas Strip (now that’s a lot of lights).

There are thousands of individual hotels and inns participating in the symbolic event, but these companies have made Earth Hour a plan across all properties:

Langham Hotels

Four Seasons Hotels

Parkroyal Hotels

Fairmont Hotels

Pan Pacific Hotels and Resorts

Loews Hotels

Starwood Hotels

But don’t worry, just because the lights are off doesn’t mean Saturday night will be a dud. In fact, many restaurants and hotels are jumping on the event as an excuse to offer something cool to patrons. For Earth Hour events and promotions near you, check out the official site and locate your city or town on the map.

While some travelers are claiming green travel is officially dead (don’t worry, it’s not what you think), Travelocity aims to make it easier for travelers seeking green hotels and resorts with the recently launched Travelocity Green Directory.

Working essentially like an eco-friendly search engine, the directory brings travelers an inventory of 200+ hotels deemed “green” by the site. So how do properties make the list? Each one has either been endorsed by “a leading green hotel certification provider” or demonstrated success in at least three of the four areas described by the United Nations Foundation’s sustainable tourism criteria initiative. Those areas include efforts to benefit local communities through tourism, cut harmful impact upon locations of cultural heritage, sustainability planning and reducing harm to the local environment.

Many of the hotels on the list are obvious picks like Wyoming’s Hotel Terra, a Jackson Hole destination that’s received a lot of hype in recent years for its eco-friendly efforts. But others making the green grade may surprise you. For example, in Orlando, 23 Walt Disney World hotels are recognized as environmentally-minded lodging options.

[Source: Travelocity Goes Green]

Where are The World’s Dirtiest Cities? Forbes recently came up with a list. The 25 cities deemed the world’s dirtiest won their places on the list with disease-infested water supplies, life-threatening air pollution, plentiful raw sewage and rank public sanitation problems. Drum roll, puh-lease. The cities are:

1. Baku, Azerbaijan (pictured)

2. Dhaka, Bangladesh

3. Antananarivo, Madagascar

4. Port au Prince, Haiti

5. Mexico City, Mexico

6. Addis Abada, Ethiopia

7. Mumbai, India

8. Baghdad, Iraq

9. Almaty, Kazakhstan

10. Brazzaville, Congo

11. Ndjamena, Chad

12. Dar es Salaam, Tanzania

13. Bangui, Central African Republic

14. Moscow, Russia

15. Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso

16. Bamako, Mali

17. Pointe Noire, Congo

18. Lome, Togo

19. Conakry, Guinea Republic

20. Nouakchott, Mauritania

21. Niamey, Niger

22. Luanda, Angola

23. Maputo, Mozambique

24. New Delhi, India

25. Port Harcourt, Nigeria

Speaking of the United Arab Emirates (see previous post), I’m tres, tres intrigued by this carbon neutral city I hear the country has in the works. Construction on Masdar City broke ground early last month, but the $22 billion initiative is not slated for completion until 2016.

Ultimately, the world’s first carbon-neutral city will house 50,000 residents and 1,500 businesses. It will not allow cars, but will require residents and visitors to reply on public transportation. The entirety of the city’s power will come from solar and wind energy sources, and the local water supply will be provided through a combination of desalinization and waste water purification.

The development may not be finished for another eight years, but it will be inhabitable by sometime next year.

It seems the placebo effect is alive and kicking. Thank you, Airborne, for proving this scientific wonder to the general populous once again. Yesterday, the well-known peddler of herbal supplements aimed at travelers made headlines when it agreed to pay a $23.3 million settlement in a class action lawsuit brought against the company for false advertising. While Airborne refuses to admit any wrongdoing or false claims, its willingness to drop megabucks to halt the lawsuit speaks volumes.

According to AP news reports:

“There’s no credible evidence that what’s in Airborne can prevent colds or protect you from a germy environment,” said CSPI Senior nutritionist David Schardt. “Airborne is basically on overpriced, run-of-the-mill vitamin pill that’s been cleverly, but deceptively, marketed.”

I’ll admit it. I was one of the suckers who thought these things actually worked. God knows how many of those things I’ve taken. But I’m looking on the bright side. No more narsty glasses of fizzing Airborne before hopping on the plane.

If you were similarly duped, you could be eligible to receive a refund for the Airborne products you purchased. You can find info at the link below:

Airborne Settlement Information

Smoke a butt at the Swissotel Chicago, and you might as well hand the hotel management a cool $250 when you check out. Fines for smoking in non-smoking rooms are nothing new. But Swissotel’s approach is. Instead of letting smokers run wild with abandon, the 632-room property has begun paying its housekeeping staff to rat offenders out. If a housekeeper enters your room to do her daily clean up and suspects you’ve been sucking down cancer sticks, you get fined. She gets $10. It’s not a lot, but the hotel is betting it’s enough to inspire a keen sense of smell in its employees.

The hotel is currently renovating all of its rooms and going for a green certification, so we can understand their anal ‘tude. After all, unlike hotel guests, smoke never really leaves a room.

The semi-funny part? The hotel has let two former guests escape from fines. Why? As the Chicago Tribune’s story The Smoke Patrol puts it:

To date, 22 guests have gotten socked with fines — with two granted amnesty because it turned out that friends did the smoking, according to hotel officials.

Riiight. That’s what I used to tell my parents. Glad to know it still works.

At the risk of sounding like a traveling germ-phobic nutjob, I’ll admit I rarely get anywhere near an airport, bus or means of public transportation without fishing my trusty hand sanitizer out of my bag. And while I sometimes find myself wondering what happened to the free-spirited traveling self who would most certainly scoff at the more uptight version that exists today, I can say this: once you hit 30, getting sick starts to suck more. Way more.

While most hand sanitizers kill germs right when you apply them to your skin, SkinWear claims to continue killing pesky germs for hours and moisturize your skin at the same time (good for use during flights, when my skin starts to feel nigh on reptilian). The product is also non-toxic, biodegradable and vegetable-based. Once applied correctly, which requires rubbing the product into the skin for 60 seconds, SkinWear will do its thing through four rinses at the sink.

Not being scary germs ourselves, we can’t personally vouch for the product’s effectiveness. But not getting sick is good enough for me.