Althought it is a lot of work, submission to directories pays in the long run. Especially if you get the backlinks to your site for free.

A great ressource is the list maintained by Dan at http://info.vilesilencer.com/
The list also has a section for niche directories. This comes in very handy for your travel site. Many of the directories in the list are still very new and have a low pagerank, but I can tell you from my experience with the directory at guiding-stars.com, this will soon change. This list drives a lot of traffic to directory sites and the consequence is a higher pagerank soon.

Another place to look is directorycritic. You will find free directories, a listing of niche directories and more.

More ressources:

webdirectory-index

Directory Tracker - here you can also keep track your submissions

Some paid directories are well worth submitting to if you need quality backlinks or want fast inclusion of your travel site into the major search engines like google, yahoo or MSN.

For me as a webmaster of several travel sites, the actual page rank in the travel category, not of the home page, matters. What good would a home page rank of 7 and a travel category page rank of 0 do my link building efforts. Especially if I look for fast inclusion into the search engines for a new site, it is important, that the page my link is on gets spidered by them often. And a page with page rank 0 might not even be included in the search results.

This list is ordered by page rank of the travel category. The homepage of these directories usually have even higher page rank. I will add new finding from time to time. So please check back from time to time or subscribe to our newsletter with all current information.

http://www.linkcabin.com/
Page Rank of Travel Category: 3
Featured links (5 additional links): $29.99 / One-time fee
Regular links (3 additional links): $4.99 / One-time fee

http://www.allthewebmasters.com
Page Rank of Travel Category: 4
Annual listing: $9.99
Litetime listing $19.95
They are part of a 15 Directories network. Listing for all 15 directories: $49.95
Discount for bulk submission available.

http://directory.v7n.com/
Page Rank of Travel Category: 4
One-time fee of $49.95

http://www.avivadirectory.com/
Page Rank of Travel Category: 5
Featured links: $74.95/year
Regular links: $49.95/year

http://botw.org/
Page Rank of Travel Category: 6
$69.95 / year
$199.95 one-time review fee

It has been very quiet around this site for the last few months. I decided to leave Thailand in September and needed time to settle in Germany, get back online again and start to work on my web sites again.

In the meantime, two of the servers where I host my sites got hacked. Not only that the sites were not available for a while, I also had to restore and maintain a few things. And while I was working on it I also decided to update the software I use and go i.e. for the latest version of wordpress for this blog.

I still have a lot to catch up with, but hope I will manage at least one post per week on this travel webmaster blog. I also work on three new niche travel directories at the moment.

While I miss the Thai food and the sunshine, I am happy to be around my friends and family again and not be bothered by mosquitoes every day.