No matter how well you plan those travel itineraries, or managed to get the best travel deals out there (you should after going through the tips and strategies in this site), one thing we personally experience is that you should never forget the essentials of those travelling accessories as they can make or break a well-planned trip, especially when one is thousands of miles away from the home land in a foreign country.

Here's are the travel essential sites that we personally use and recommend:

1) Cloncom 

One of the main reasons that can irk any travellers is the high cost of phone calls that they need to make back home or elsewhere when they are travelling overseas or abroad, and even to overseas from home if you are planning or booking your travel plans and tours yourself.

Most of time, the problems could actually be solved easily by buying a cheap phone call card before you leave your home land. We personally use Cloncom and highly recommend it because of its vast selection of cheap call cards to almost any major countries in the world.

Cloncom is basically an online supermarket of prepaid calling cards and it adds only the very best products at it site based on our experience. This guarantees that you are buying the cheapest and most reliable calling card for that particular country/market.

The site sells more than 110 different calling cards for usage in more than 150 countries. Never call from the hotels or airports or mobile or fixed line in other countries. Always use cheap call cards.

2. Ebags

Ebags is another luggage and travel accessories site that we love to visit because of its extensive range of products. The site is available both in the USA and UK. In fact, the site, which sells fashion and functional luggage, handbags, business cases, backpacks and accessories among others, recently won "Website of the Year" at the 2006 Multichannel Merchant Awards in the US. To top it all, eBags.com had previously won this “Website of the Year” awards in 2001, 2002, and 2004.

EBags features over 200 brands and 12,000 products from well-known names including Samsonite, kate spade, Victorinox, JanSport, and Nike. The company has also pioneered tools such as its Laptop Case Finder and the Airline Approved Carry-On Finder and has over 400,000 unbiased customer ratings and testimonials. We certainly recommend the site for its wide selection and innovative products selection.

3. Global bag tag

GlobalBagTag is a unique service which offers protection for your luggage and valuables worldwide whenever you travel. Its stylish heavy-duty luggage tags and security stickers are fixed securely to a traveller’s bag. Full details of the luggage, travel itinerary and contact details are stored on its secure database and can be updated at any time.

You can use the tags every time you travel and should you lose your baggage or valuables, they are traceable worldwide 24 hours a day via Globalbagtag website. This product is in our view, now even more crucial than ever given the latest new hand luggage rules, which requires most valuable items of travellers to be packed in the hold luggage instead of carried into cabin. We personally use global bag tags in our own travelling luggage.

4. Priority Pass

If you are a frequent international traveller, then probably the best membership program that you should have is Priority Pass. Priority Pass was launched in 1992 with the objective of providing frequent travelers with airport lounge access, irrespective of their class of travel, airline flown or existing membership in an airline loyalty program.

In just 14 years, it has become the world's largest independent airport lounge access program. In 1992, it started with just 55 lounges in only 49 airports. In 2006, its membership already allows travellers access to over 450 lounges in 245 cities, covering 80 countries in every continent of the world.

Its fees till today remain very much reasonable. Members are allowed to choose from three categories of memberships i.e.:

Standard Membership  

This low cost plan is for traveller who wants the security of access when needed with a low annual fee of just US$99. After a visit to a participating lounge a fee of just US$24 per person per visit is charged to the member’s designated payment card.

Standard Plus Membership  

This plan incorporates Standard Membership with 10 member lounge visits included - for an annual fee of just US$249. After the free visits have been used, each visit is charged at US$24 per visit to the member's designated payment card.

Prestige Membership  

This is for the frequent traveler who would prefer to make a one-off payment to gain access to lounges. It costs from US$399 for free access to all the participating lounges in the program and is available as often as required.

Again, calculate the worth of your membership by dividing the membership fees over the likely number of visits you are going to be doing a year. You can then decide which category of membership will be more beneficial to you. We highly recommend Priority Pass membership for those who travels frequently.

5. Points

Well, nowadays, you could get miles from purchasing merchandise and even dining out. However, a word on merchandise miles exchange for those cheap premium business or discount first class airfares/cheap first class airfare tickets - don’t overspent on unnecessary stuffs as the miles earned are quite small actually unlike the other methods.

Points is a great site that could really help you to either buy or exchange those airline miles (although it’s more for US customers only). They have free sign-up bonus so make sure you join immediately. We highly recommend it for their reliability and ease of use and extensive relationship with the US airlines.

6. Entertainment

One of Entertainment's (the company) key assets is its proprietary coupon database of 65,000 local merchants that offer "2-for-1," 50% off and other valuable discounts which appear in the company's savings books and online savings subscription (on entertainment.com).

These products comprise a membership savings package that offers consumers 50% savings on the things they do every day - from dining out to movies to grocery shopping to car repairs - and up to 70% off at more than 10,000 hotels worldwide. More than eight million memberships are sold annually.

We highly recommend the purchase of the entertainment coupon discount book (for US travellers), which is probably one of the best avenues to get those discount on airline tickets.

7. Maps

If you are more than the average traveller and love to go into the details of your vacation places, or just like to do research and know more about the exact locations of those exotic locations, look for those maps at maps.com. Believe us, detail maps are certainly handy if not crucial when you are in a foreign country, visiting some rural areas of interest or those off-beaten tracks or simply travelling or backpacking alone with small group of friends.

Well, looking into maps and trying to figure out where you are at exactly certainly lends a whiff of mystery and even suspense in the latter, don’t they?

Maps is certainly the largest online US map store that you can easily access worldwide. Its Map & Travel Store offers thousands of products including Wall Maps, Globes, Atlases, Online Mapping Tools and much more.

Note that the company has an affiliate network of over 3,000 web publishers, further extending Maps to websites worldwide. You will probably find more than what you require here, if it’s those detail maps that you are keen on. For us, we tend to use it more for research purposes on a particular locations or tours of interest.