For corporate types who travel internationally, a big cellphone bill is just part of life. But if you're a leisure traveler, you really can't justify a phone bill that costs as much as your entire vacation.

Yet folks traveling internationally for pleasure need a way to phone home, too. For instance, a couple might need to check on their teenagers a few times or a student may want to call home every now and again.

Sure, there are plenty of options: adding an international cellphone plan to your current phone, renting a phone or using a calling card. We asked a few industry experts to give us their recommendations.

Calling convenience

Vela McClam-Mitchell, CEO of Georgia International Travel, an American Express Travel Services Representative, likes phone rental programs.

She and her team usually help to set up clients with one of their preferred vendors such as Vodafone, World Roam or Cellhire.

The advantage of going through a travel agency is that they have relationships with vendors and therefore can offer lower rates than if the traveler tried to rent a phone themselves.

"They would lease it for the time they're there and then drop it off at the airport or at their hotel," McClam-Mitchell said.

And you don't have to get a new number with extra digits and confusing country codes, she says.

"Say you're going Atlanta-Paris. Once you get to Paris, you pick up your phone and now you have all of your calls forwarded from your Atlanta cellphone number to your Paris cellphone number. You're paying French rates, not U.S. rates tacked on top of French rates," she said.

Before McClam-Mitchell started offering this service, she said she used to see $500-$600 phone bills (mostly from her business clients). Now she sees much lower bills and much happier clients.

Saving on air time

After working in the telecommunications industry in Europe and the United States for the past 18 years, Patrick Gentemann also understood the pain of eye-popping international phone bills.

"I realized when I talked to more people that a lot of people cannot get access to the same rate as the locals," he said.

That's why he decided to start Call in Europe (www.callineurope.com) a little over a year ago. He said the idea was "to create an offer specifically made for Americans that will allow them to take advantage of very low rates when they travel."

And although Call in Europe offers phone rentals, he normally steers people away from that route. Instead, Gentemann leverages his relationships with French-based telecommunications companies to get his customers preferred rates.

Here's how it works: Customers buy a SIM card for $29, insert that into their regular phone and pay for only the calls they make. Incoming calls are free, and outgoing calls are 39 cents per minute. While Call in Europe's rates are a little higher for European countries other than France, they're still only 69 cents per minute.

"Our product is really a product with a specificity for France because the numbers are French-based numbers," he said. "That's where we get a very good deal."

So if you were traveling to France and you wanted to talk on your phone for about 10 minutes a day, here's a breakdown of what your bill would look like from Call in Europe: $29 for the SIM card + $3.90 per day of air time x two weeks = $83.60

"Our solution works also if you travel only once a year. For the card to renew automatically after one year for free, you have to spend at least $60 within the year of calling. But if the person just goes for one trip, it's still fine because the rates are low," Gentemann said.

He adds that if your own phone can't use a SIM card (because it's not on the Global System for Mobile communication), you can buy a phone from Call in Europe for $19. "We sell a lot of packages that are phone plus SIM for $48," he said.

More solutions

Cameron Hewitt, a senior editor and co-author of travel guru Rick Steves' guide ooks, says that the plan you choose depends on the circumstances of your trip.

"For a short, brief trip where you're really going to be calling home two or three times, it's easiest and cheapest not to worry with the cellphone and instead buy a local phone card in Europe." He says you can get the kind that you insert into a pay phone and pay 50 cents to $1 a minute.

Another alternative is a PIN card purchased from a newsstand or tobacco shop for 5 to 10 euros. You use a pay phone or your hotel phone to call a toll-free number and punch in your PIN. "You can call internationally with even much cheaper rates; some are even 5 or 10 cents a minute," he said.

But if you're planning on taking a longer trip, Hewitt says a cellphone can be convenient. He uses his T-Mobile phone and just pays for his air time.

"The catch is you're not paying a monthly fee, but the per-minute fee is pretty high," he said, adding that it can be $1-$1.50 per minute.

If you call your cell phone company and learn that your phone can't roam in Europe, another option is to buy a cheap phone and SIM card once you get there.

Hewitt says most of the SIM cards you buy in Europe will come with pre-paid minutes. In Britain, for instance, he once bought a $6 card and paid $20 in order to get $14 in prepaid minutes. When you run out of minutes, you can add them by getting a voucher from a store or even using local ATM machines in some countries.