Please be aware that I haven't checked all of the sites mentioned in this
article to guarantee that they are friendly to all web browsers.


Published Sunday, February 8, 1998, in thePhiladelphia Inquirer.
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The Online Traveler By Paul Grimes

Exploring the Internet for useful travel sites









Some of the best travel sites on the Internet aren't easy to find. They are
buried in an ever-changing, highly competitive electronic marketplace in
which travelers are easily overwhelmed and confused.

I spend four to five hours surfing the World Wide Web every working day,
trying to separate what's useful for travelers from a tidal wave of
commercial junk.

I'm a frequent target of e-mail, faxes, phone calls and snail mail
(delivered by the Postal Service) about travel developments on the Web.
Such online travel agencies as Microsoft's Expedia, Preview Travel,
bizTravel.com, the Internet Travel Network and Travelocity are spending
millions to get travelers to look to them for information and to book
flights, cruises, hotels and rental cars.

Many less-splashy sites, however, are helpful in particular areas. I came
across some through tips from friends, from computer magazines, or from
"Site of the Day or Week" e-mails from such services as NetGuide at
http://www.netguide.com/travel or Yahoo at http://www.yahoo.com/picks

I find others almost by accident: by clicking from link to link, deeper and
deeper into an electronic maze, and then suddenly finding that there are
golden needles in the haystack, after all. Some of those golden needles
are:


QuickAID http://www.quickaid.com offers extensive information about 65
airports in the United States and 31 abroad. A project of the QuickATM
Corp., which provides touch-screen information kiosks at airports, this
site has virtually all you need to know about terminal facilities,
airlines, ground transportation and nearby hotels. For example, it told me
what van service I could call, and its price ($25), to get between
Philadelphia International Airport and my home in Glenside. For O'Hare,
just about every respectable hotel in Chicago and suburbs is included, as
are annotated maps of the airport's terminal buildings.

BreezeNet's Guide to Airport Rental Cars http://www.bnm.com/rcar.htm leads
you to the online booking programs of major auto-rental companies at 52
airports in the United States, eight in Canada, and others in Sydney,
London, Rome, Paris, Frankfurt and Shannon, Ireland. This commercially
driven site omits most lower-price local companies, but the user is spared
a lot of clicking from site to site.

For discounted air fares, try TravelHUB
http://www.travelhub.com/consolidators This is a site for travel agencies
that contract with airlines to sell unsold seats, often at far below the
lines' published rates. Sometimes, however, the airlines' temporary
advertised specials may be better, such as several lines' recent $198
round-trips between New York and London. Consolidation can be a slippery
business, so consumers should tread cautiously. Twelve presumably reputable
travel agencies (they list their credentials online) who sell the tickets
of more than 500 consolidators can be reached through TravelHUB for booking
by telephone.

For even cheaper flights, check the Air Courier Association
http://www.aircourier.org

This nationwide organization provides all the important information about
traveling as an air courier, which means paying relatively little to
accompany a courier company's checked baggage rather than your own. Flights
aren't available everywhere or at all times, but this site will keep you up
to date about specials and tell you how to sign up.

To keep track of frequent-flyer accounts, go to the bizMiles program of
bizTravel.com http://www.biztravel.com

This site provides almost-instant information on your status in the
frequent-flier programs that you have registered with the site. For
example, I learned that in mid-January I had 33,913 miles in my Northwest
Airlines account, of which 21,693 would expire at the end of 1998.

For real-time flight tracking, visit TheTrip.com
http://www.thetrip.com/flightstatus

This amazing service of an online travel agency told me on a recent
afternoon that as of one minute earlier, Delta Flight 609, which had left
New York's La Guardia Airport at 12:08 p.m., was 10 miles north of Palm
Beach International Airport in Florida at 4,000 feet and was about to land.
(bizTravel.com has a similar service, under renovation at this writing, and
transmits flight and gate information to its customers by beeper.)

For nuts-and-bolts help for international travelers, there's the personal
site of Steve Kropla http://kropla.com of Kingwood, Texas. Kropla, a very
frequent traveler who works in the oil industry, organized this site to
help others learn how to cope with unfamiliar electric systems, television
standards and telephone dialing codes. There are useful links to other
sites, such as a directory to locate Internet cybercafes around the world
at http://cybercaptive.com
For cheap sleeps, there's the Internet Guide to Hosteling
http://www.hostels.com

Despite its sponsorship by hostels and related businesses, this site's
Worldwide Hostel Guide, supposedly the largest database of hostels
available anywhere, claims complete editorial freedom. There also are a
facts sheet on hostels, a bulletin board for exchanges of information, and
lots of advice about budget travel.

Transitions Abroad http://www.transabroad.com is the online version of a
bimonthly magazine that tells how and where you can live, work, study or
vacation abroad alongside the people there. The site is loaded with
practical information about overseas jobs for Americans teaching English,
study programs for students from high school up, and opportunities for
volunteers.

The more you surf the Net, the more golden needles you'll discover
yourself. If you're enthusiastic about any of them, pass the word on, and
I'll be happy to check them out.


Paul Grimes can be reached by e-mail at [log in to unmask] cq