Maybe you're old enough to have owned an SLR before everyone started buying these little point-and-shoot digital cameras. No matter how cheap the camera was, no matter how cheap the lens was, you'd put a filter on the lens to protect it, right? But now that you have this tiny little camera, with a tiny little lens that sticks way out, on a fragile little plastic gear, protecting the lens is more important than ever. At least with that old SLR, you had other lenses, but now, the photography on your whole trip depends on you not bumping that little fragile snout.
What you need is a filter adapter. These little metal tubes will enable you to put a filter in front of your lens. This will protect your lens from dust and scratches; it will protect your lens mechanism from dust and bumps; it will keep humidity out of your camera body; it will protect your camera when you forget to take the lens cap off and turn it on and ram the lens into the cap; and it will even make your pictures better if you put the right filter on.
There are a lot of options out there. Many cameras have threading and can take an add-on metal tube which holds filters, while others add threading to the body of the camera with a snap-on cradle. Many manufacturers make these filter adapters, and there are some after-market versions as well. Look for items called "Filter Adapters."
Not only do these filter adapters protect your lens, but they will also improve your photography if you get a good filter. Outdoors, a UV filter will cut haze and improve your landscapes. Around people (and some say for any subject) an 81a filter will warm up your images, particularly if you use much strobe light. And outdoors, a polarizing filter will remove glare from water surfaces, make your skies bluer by reducing scattered light, and make all your colors more saturated by removing some glare from any non-metallic surface.
One of my favorite filters is the Moose Filter, created by outdoor photographer Moose Peterson. It's a combined polarizer and 81a filter, I use it outside whenever the sun is out.
I prefer lens adapters with larger apertures; if you add a filter that is the same size as your lens, you may get some vignetting (darkening of the corners) because your lens is somewhat blocked by the filter. It's also nice to get an adapter with a more standard size; for my Olympus 5050, I could by an adapter that took 43mm filters or 52mm filters. The 52mm won't vignette, and it's a more standard size, so my UV filter was less expensive. They don't even make a 43mm Moose filter. On the other hand, I got the smaller adapter, too, since the Olympus telephoto adapter only came in a 43mm size. The smaller size also blocks less light from the strobe.
Brands of filter adapters include Olympus, Tiffen, and Raynox.
Here's a nice page on filters and adapters (though it
doesn't mention my favorite Raynox adapter which takes 52mm
filters): Lens
Adapters for the Olympus C-5050Z