The 10 biggest travel myths

Do you want to book a trip as cheaply as possible? Then don't rely on last minute offers! Tour operators don't book more flights or hotel rooms than they can sell. Particularly cheap offers are available at short notice only if they miscalculate. To be on the safe side, book your vacation three to eight weeks in advance.

You've booked your holiday. Now you head for the solarium to prepare your skin for the beach. Unfortunately, that's useless. You actually risk underestimating the effects of the sun. Your skin tans on a sunbed, but it's exposed almost exclusively to UVA rays. That provides no protection against UVB rays, which cause sunburn and skin cancer. Be sure to pack or buy sunscreen!

Many passengers prefer to sit at the rear of an aircraft, because that's said to be the safest. In fact, it's hard to determine where the safest seats are. Plane crashes are so rare that there are no conclusive statistics. It depends more on whether the impact of the crash is at the front, rear, left or right. In each case, the seats in the area opposite are safest.

Before take-off, you'll be asked to switch your phone to flight mode. You obey - you don't want the plane to crash. You're acting properly, but even if you do forget, it won't lead to immediate disaster. Actually, electronic devices can cause interference with aircraft communications systems: Cellphones constantly search for a signal leave pilots with an annoying buzzing in their ears.

After flight attendants explain the emergency procedures, you might ask just why oxygen masks are necessary. One myth has been very persistent: that oxygen gets passengers high, so that they don't panic in case of a crash. That's just not true! They allow people to keep breathing, so they don't lose consciousness or become confused if the plane loses cabin pressure at high altitudes.

You haven't needed your oxygen mask and the plane has landed safely, but you're clearly suffering from jet lag. It must be from lack of sleep! Of course it's not. Instead, it's the shock to the body due to the disruption of its circadian rhythms. The body's biological clock is not yet synchronized to the new local time. Adjust to daily life at your destination as soon as possible.

You've checked into your hotel, but in glancing at the prices, you see to your annoyance that they're especially high this week. Aren't room prices always the same? Not necessarily. If there's an event or trade fair nearby, they rise accordingly. It's the law of supply and demand. Even the time you book can affect the price.

You go to your room, number 14, and as you open the door you notice the room next to it is numbered 12. Where's 13? Some hotels actually do leave out the number 13 in deference to superstitious guests, not only when it comes to rooms, but also as far as floors are concerned. In airplanes, there's often no 13th row. So what they say about the number 13 is true!

You may well have chosen your travel destination because of a superlative: the biggest pyramids, the highest waterfall. Sometimes that's done simply for publicity. Venice, for instance, definitely doesn't have the most bridges of any city in Europe. More than 400 of them crisscross the canals there, but Hamburg is arguably the winner of that competition, with 2,500 bridges.

This superlative also turns out to be a myth. Because of its salt concentration of more than 28%, you can lie on the Dead Sea and read a book, but it's not in a league of its own. Lake Assal in Djibouti, in the Horn of Africa, tops the 34% mark, Don Juan Pond in Antarctica has a salinity of well over 40%. So just enjoy your swim and don't worry too much about myth versus reality.