From...

Let the Web be your travel guide

June 8, 1998
Web posted at: 5:30 p.m. EDT

by Peter Scisco

(IDG) -- Call me asphalt. As a younger man, I followed my traveling jones from New Orleans to New York with little more than a full tank of gas, a backpack stuffed with a change of clothes, and a coffee-stained map I picked up at a filling station along the way.

The demands of working for a living and raising a family have taken that spontaneity out of my traveling activities these days; but with some careful planning, I can still sprinkle some leisure into my business trips. Other things have changed, too: I don't carry just a road map anymore.

I have guidebooks. I have travel agents. And now I have the Web.

I was curious how the bevy of travel services on the Web would stack up against guidebooks and travel agents. An upcoming business trip out West gave me the perfect opportunity to find out.

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By the Book

My first stop was the travel section at my local Barnes & Noble. I wanted a guide to interesting sights along the way, and somewhere between Best Boston Balloon Rides and The World's Most Dangerous Places, I found it: the superb Fodor's USA 98. This 1070-page travel partner calls itself "the most up-to-date guide to the best of everything in all 50 states." It lives up to that billing with extensive descriptions of interesting American sights, backed up with details of where to stay, where to eat, and how to get there.

A good travel book has three big advantages over Web-based travel guides: It's portable, it doesn't require a computer to use, and it has an instant start-up feature called "turning the page." Even so, a book can take you only so far: Fodor's USA 98 couldn't arrange my transportation and accommodations. To get the ball rolling, I got a local travel agent on the horn. I needed an airline ticket -- the cheaper the better -- from Winston-Salem, North Carolina, to Salt Lake City, then on to Denver and finally back home. I also wanted a ticket for my oldest son to join me in Denver so we could check out some dinosaur digs and maybe even do some rafting. I needed to arrange for a car and hotel rooms for most of the trip.

The travel agent promised to get back to me that same day with the lowest fares. A few hours later, she called with a $642 flight that she said was a great deal. But there was a catch: I'd have to drive an hour-and-a-half to Charlotte to fly TWA. When I asked her about other trip details -- rental cars, hotels, sightseeing possibilities -- she said she'd get right on it. As it turned out, I waited a week and she never called back.

Hit the Web, Jack

That's when I consulted the Web. When the road calls, I get impatient. I suspected I could do the planning just as well as (and probably faster than) a travel agent. What I needed was a travel Web site I could count on for low plane fares, hotel rooms, a set of wheels, and if possible, some local color.

The three travel sites I liked the most -- Travelocity, Expedia.com, and Preview Travel -- deliver the goods and share some traits: easy-to-use trip planning, secure online ordering and electronic ticketing (e-tickets), personal profiles for storing travel preferences, and e-mail bulletins to alert me about especially cheap fares to favorite destinations. Better yet, they're free. Interestingly, all of the sites offered the same airfare (the total was $472--way below the $642 my travel agent had assured me was "a great deal").

Visiting the leisure-oriented Travelocity is like browsing a bookstore's travel aisle. Click a spot on the site's map, and the Destination Guide provides a quick summary of the people, the land, and the culture. The site also gives an excellent breakdown of vacation packages and a separate listing of bed-and-breakfast inns.

Travelocity handled all of my plane, car, and hotel reservations with an easy-to-understand planner. No surprise there -- it's operated by the Sabre Group, whose parent company, AMR, also owns American Airlines. But the Travelocity system lacks some basic features and intelligence that would make it more useful: It wouldn't let me save itineraries for review later, and I had to go back and forth between the booking screen and the airline selection screen to double-check my choices. For example, typing Delta wasn't enough--I had to choose between Delta and Delta Express on a second page, then return to the first page to enter the correct airline code. That small annoyance was offset by the ability to obtain a specific seat assignment (a new option available for most flights on Delta, American, and United Airlines).

Road Smarts

Microsoft's Expedia.com was a little smarter. The site's driving destination planner, with its accurate road directions, came in handy when I realized my son and I would want to do some sightseeing outside Denver. For my side trip to Dinosaur National Monument, I entered Denver as the origin and Dinosaur, Colorado, as the end point. Expedia.com gave me good directions and estimated the driving time. (Another reviewer had a less favorable opinion of Expedia.com's driving directions. See "Going Worldwide on the Web," page 134, in May.) It's too bad the site didn't also give me a door-to-door map (instead, I got an area map and a plug for Microsoft's travel-planning software). I ended up printing out the Web page and tucking it in my guidebook.

Flight, hotel, and car reservations were secure and easy to select. Expedia.com can save itineraries, allowing you to compare options or make changes before finalizing your reservations.

I liked the Fodor's USA 98 guidebook so much that I decided to check out its Web site. In addition to offering updated travel articles and tips, the site provides a link to Preview Travel, another Internet booking agent. Preview carries considerably more than the requisite vacation package guide and business traveler tips. As with the other booking sites, I logged on to a secure server; entered a destination, date, and time of travel; selected an airline; and waited while the system built a list of flights for each segment of my journey. A big bonus comes from the site's partnership with Fodor's: I chose Denver from the site's Destination Guides and was treated to an overview of the city as well as to great information about restaurants and nearby attractions.

After creating a flight itinerary, I repeated the process for hotels and rental cars. The other sites work roughly the same way, but Preview's Business Travel Center deserves high praise for its numerous links to travelers' services ranging from toll-free phone numbers for rental car agencies to currency converters and worldwide ATM locators.

Get Down to Business

If efficiency matters more than money, make Biztravel.com your point of departure. Unlike the other sites I looked at, Biztravel.com let me book reservations for flights, cars, and hotels in one step. The site also offers BizMiles, a feature that lets you track frequent flier points for all your accounts.

But Biztravel.com can throw you a curve if you don't take the time to fill out all the preferences on the introductory travel-planning pages. When I failed to select a carrier, Biztravel.com cited a fare of $1540 on United. (I wanted to fly on the plane, not buy a permanent seat.) I stepped back a page, specified Delta as my preferred carrier, and bingo--the price of my two-leg flight dropped to $472.

Next, I embarked on TheTrip. Like Biztravel.com, TheTrip caters to business travelers. I was able to make arrangements according to my personal preferences, but the site was also quick to suggest alternative itineraries at much lower fares. I also liked the detailed hotel descriptions and driving directions from the airport to my hotel, plus the brief, informal accounts of nearby points of interest.

A less impressive design greeted me at the globally linked Flifo. Like all of the other sites I looked at, it offered basic tools for booking airline tickets, hotel reservations, and car rentals. Getting the best airfare, however, involved a somewhat laborious two-step process. First, I had to lay out my itinerary and select my preferred airlines. After browsing the flight choices, I selected the ones that best fit my travel plans. Only then did Flifo start looking for the lowest fare. One plus, though: When my fare hit the screen at a whopping $1659, Flifo's "Fare Beater" immediately suggested a few economical alternatives. By moving my departure time from 8 p.m. to 10 p.m., Flifo sliced $1187 off the ticket price, yielding a much more affordable fare of $472 (the same price the other sites found right away).

Now that I have my itineraries in order, I'm ready to fly, but I won't give up my paper guidebooks just yet. (I can't say the same of my travel agent.) With low fares, 24-hour access, information on the local scene, and instant ticketing, Internet travel sites will be making my reservations from now on. Don't call me Asphalt anymore. Call me Wings.

Peter Scisco is a freelance writer living in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.