With the ongoing credit crisis, rising inflation and a weakening dollar, taking that much-deserved vacation might seem tough to do this year. But fear not! For discerning travelers, there are still some great deals to be had and plenty of ways to stretch your dollar. Here are the top 10 tips for getting the most out of your vacation buck in 2008.

1. Seek out off-peak periods. The best deals tend to fall right after Labor Day. Yes, the kids will miss some school, but you’ll save a ton of dough.

2. If you plan to travel internationally, seek out places where the dollar is still comparatively strong. Argentina, South Africa, Thailand, and Costa Rica are a few of the places where the greenback still has a lot of power.

3. Buy a vacation package. Combining hotel and air reservations often yields a lower price than a la carte purchases.

4. Travel with another family. Sharing the cost of gas, food and rental car is a great way to keep expenses in check.

5. Rent a house and cook your meals. Dining out every day can quickly add up to what you paid for your flight or more! If you rent a home or condo, you can prepare many of your own meals—and you get a ton of other benefits like more space and more privacy, often at a fraction of the cost of a luxury hotel. Sites like Rooster.com are great places to find vacation rentals.

6. Go abroad at Thanksgiving. When everyone else is jockeying to get to Aunt Rose’s place in Milwaukee, you can avoid the madness and find some great deals overseas.

7. When exchanging currency, use a bank instead of your hotel. Hotels charge some of the highest processing fees of any institution.

8. On road trips, make sure your tires are properly inflated and get a tune up before you go. You’ll get better gas mileage with tires that are properly inflated and you reduce the risk of emergency repairs if you have your car serviced in advance.

9. Consider voluntourism or a service trip. These trips are very affordable since a good portion of your cost is covered in exchange for the service you provide. The Sierra Club has been running service trips for decades—leading groups of people into some of the world’s most beautiful places, while giving back to the planet at the same time.

10. Book now. If you know you’re going to travel this summer or fall, you should lock in rates as soon as possible. With fuel costs expected to rise throughout the summer, air fare and hotel rates are likely to increase as well.

And always keep an eye out for deals. TravelMuse works to uncover great vacation bargains each week. You can read about them in our Travel News section. By registering at TravelMuse.com, you will automatically receive our weekly newsletter.

Having voted in the recent Webby Awards, I was excited to view the Webby’s Winners Gallery last week. I checked out the nominated companies that some friends are involved with, including Trullia, and Zannel, but I was naturally drawn to the travel section.

Congratulations to Farecast who won the Webby for Travel and to Kayak who won the people’s choice for Travel. (When I worked at SideStep, we were excited to be named as an Official Honoree a few times, so it was great to see the people’s vote go to Kayak—who recently acquired SideStep.)

Farecast predicts fare trends for air and hotel and Kayak is the leading provider of metasearch (the ability to simultaneously search many travel sites and suppliers to find the best flight, hotel, car or package option based on factors such as price, availability and schedule).

It was only two years ago that Expedia scooped up the Webby award for the Travel category. This year, none of the major online travel companies were even nominated. In this fast-changing world, Expedia and the major online travel agencies (OTAs) have become household names, reached maturity and now newer sites are lauded for their innovation.

So if metasearch comes after the OTAs, what comes after that?

Here at TravelMuse, we believe it’s the upstream research and planning process personalized to you that offers the next great opportunity. I’m excited to watch how the landscape changes over the next 12 months and to see what comes next after metasearch.

It will come as no surprise to many readers that surveys, as far back as 2001, have been chronicling the precipitous drop of passive television viewing due to the lure of the Internet’s interactive immediacy. For example, the results of one recent study, released in August 2007 by IBM, revealed that the Internet now rivals television as the primary medium of choice for people around the world.

For many, the Internet represents a form of entertainment and relaxation- playing video games with team members and opponents located around the world or joining the growing trend of watching television programs originating in foreign countries are just two examples. Others are captivated by the ability to connect and instantly communicate with friends that they’ve come to know but have never physically met- being part of people’s daily life on another continent can be an extremely compelling and rewarding experience. But, certainly one facet of the online experience that transcends all others is the Internet’s ability to present vast quantities of relevant information, pictures, music and videos regarding any subject through the use of search engines such as Google or Yahoo.

Without leaving the comfort of a familiar chair, you can peruse what is rapidly becoming the sum total of human knowledge-a capability that would have exceeded the most unbridled imagination of science fiction writers only a few decades earlier. Need information about tomorrow’s weather? Want to know the distance from Earth to the Moon? Curious about the latest financial news? Answers to all of these questions and an infinite variety of other topics are as close as the distance from your fingertips to a keyboard. More saliently, the Internet’s search capabilities have also shrunk the space that separates you from journeying to any place on the globe!

To the delight of many and the chagrin of some, the Web has enabled (or based on your perspective, compelled) every traveler to become their own travel agent and forced each of us to be proficient at finding information that’s relevant to the trip we want or need to plan. Given the Internet’s ever-growing amount of information, searching for reliable, relevant facts and advice can be daunting. Of course, it should not go unmentioned that, while their population is steadily dropping, travel agents offering traditional assistance still abound. However, instead of being a free service, travel agents charge a fee for their activities. These fees are, far more often than not, worth every penny they cost. Making use of their experience can be a remarkable resource.

Of course, for simple travel requirements, dozens of nearly ubiquitous airline booking systems exist. These are fine if you are traveling on business, are returning to a previously visited destination or are making a quick trip. However, for those who want the journey to be remembered as a milestone that is regaled over time with family and friends, organizing travel by leveraging the Web’s warehouse of knowledge can be similar to taking a sip from an open fire hydrant.

This is why TravelMuse was created. Our team of writers offers information based on firsthand experience and unbiased opinion combined with research that has been independently vetted. TravelMuse also provides unique tools that enable the collection and organization of information sourced from within the TravelMuse library or from any Web site. In essence, TravelMuse makes you a better personal travel agent in this electronic age!