Plan well in advance for holiday travel

If you're planning any travel over the main holidays - Thanksgiving weekend or the longer Christmas-New Year's break - don't wait until the last minute to make sure you're ready and organized. Here's a checklist of the most important items.

If you don't already have air or hotel reservations, you're probably facing some serious sticker shock at the airlines' and hotels' asking prices. To be sure, you've seen promotions for great fall prices, but those deals disappear for both the peak periods. If you want to avoid paying top dollar, I suggest:

Go opaque. I've been writing about the big "opaque" travel buying sites - Hotwire and Priceline - for a long time now. Those are the sites where you buy "blind," without knowing the name of the hotel, airline or car rental company until you've made a nonrefundable purchase. I've recommended them highly for hotels and rental cars, and they're still the best single strategy for finding good accommodations deals.

But I did not favor them for airfares, mainly because you have no control over schedules. Now, however, airfares on many routes are up some 25 to 40 percent above last year's, and the opaque model might make a bit more sense than before.

Choose a low-cost day to fly. The obvious and well-worn "be flexible" advice is a cliche by now, but it's still valid.

Priceline used to put out a press release about this time of the year indicating the holiday season days with the best airfares. Instead, it now posts an ongoing list on its Web site, updated in accordance with changes in the marketplace. Chances are you'll find yourself traveling on a major holiday day or in the middle of the holiday period rather than the weekend before or after the main holidays.

Resorts and family hotels are apt to be full, but big-city business hotels are usually hungry for holiday guests.

Keep up with the last-minute deals. Dozens of online travel sites feature last-minute deals - typically that means anywhere from a month to a week before departure. You find lots of deals for air/land packages, tours, and cruises, fewer for straight airfares. Many of those online sites provide some sort of "fare drop" notification programs, and I suggest you sign up for several. Also, sign up for the weekly deal newsletters from SmarterTravel.com.

If you're planning a trip anywhere outside the United States for the holidays, make sure you have a passport (or one of those new passport cards for Canada, the Caribbean or Mexico). I've heard several recent horror stories about long waits for passport processing, so if you don't have one yet - or you have one that will expire within six months of your planned trip - don't wait any longer. If you're leaving soon, consider using one of those passport services: They're expensive, but better than not getting your passport in time.

Make sure your frequent-flier programs are up to date. As far as I can tell, none of them operates on a calendar year basis, but several have shortened the shelf life of accrued credit: The maximum time to retain your credit with no activity in your account is now 18 months on American, United and America West; 24 months on Alaska and Delta.

Fortunately, you can "reset the meter" easily: If you don't add any miles through your credit card or other nonairline purchase, you can still keep your account current by requesting an award, transferring a few miles or buying a few miles. But you have to keep track.

Continental and Northwest don't specify a maximum validity time with no activity, but I suggest you do something with your account at least every 18 months.

Make sure your credit cards are ready for any trip you're planning. That means an adequate reserve to take care of everything you plan to charge. If you have more than one card and you're heading outside the United States, find out which adds the lowest surcharge for foreign purchases.

from sfgate.com: Plan well in advance for holiday travel