Buying Time: Shopping For Travel
by Richard Seltzer, seltzer@samizdat.com, www.samizdat.com
The following article is based on chapter 6 from Shop Online the Lazy Way, a book written by Richard Seltzer, which was published in August 1999 by Macmillan. It is available in paperback directly from the author or from Amazon.com. It is also available in a Braille edition from National Braille Press (www.nbp.org). This work is copyright 1999 by Richard Seltzer. All rights are reserved. Check the author's bio for a description of this book and why it was written.
Now that the rights have reverted to the author, he is free to update and revise this online version. Please send email to alert him of changes and interesting new sites that you have encountered.
Are you planning a trip? If so, your plans trigger a set of related needs: transportation, a hotel room, maybe a rental car, and probably information about local entertainment and other activities. Because anyone shopping primarily for one kind of travel service is likely to need others as well, the companies' providing these services tend to ally with one another (that is, when they don't directly compete).
In addition to wanting to catch your attention when you are thinking about travel, these companies have a lot in common. They sell time-contingent services, rather than products. The seats on planes, the rooms in hotels, the cars at the rental lots, even seats at a theater are all limited. You need to reserve the space in advance to be sure you'll have it when you need it. And if a given space is not taken for a given time slot, the vendor will get nothing for it.
A time slot is an asset before the time arrives. The value rises with the scarcity. Then once the time has passed, the asset simply disappears.
Hence the travel industry is subject to wild time-contingent shifts in supply and demand. The vendors would love to be able to change prices rapidly to take advantage of fierce competition for the last few seats, or to sell off remaining inventory with special offers before it becomes worthless.
"Travel" is a business model--the business of matching limited, time-dependent resources with customers, (as opposed to businesses where the availability is unlimited, such as pay-per-view TV). The short-term car rental business has more in common with the airline business than with a car sales/lease business. The time-share condo business and the vacation home rental business have more in common with the hotel business than the buying and selling real estate.
What matters is not the physical product, but how customers relate to the product in a time-limited way. The vendor sells the time slot, not the physical product. The vendor sells an intangible--"ownership of time," or "the experience of your life," whichever way you perceive it.
The Internet's ability to match remote buyers and sellers can help the vendors maximize their profits, while at the same time enable shoppers to find lower prices than they might ever before have imagined.
In the past, a major constraint on the ability of the market to operate efficiently was the difficulty involved in getting the right information and then making the necessary transactions. Especially with airlines, the information was so complex that only a limited set of trained specialists (travel agents) had access to the schedules and pricing of all vendors, along with the authority to make reservations and issue tickets. Now ordinary travel shoppers like you can access all that information in simple, easy-to-understand form, and can make reservations and buy tickets over the Web.
As more and more people realize that they have this direct power, travel agents need to redefine their role and provide services that today's travelers will be would to pay them for providing.
At the same time airlines and other travel service companies are scrambling to create alliances, including special package offers, and interlocking reward programs. These programs are aimed at repeat customers, and tied in with efforts to balance demand (like seasonal pricing) to avoid empty seats and rooms. Travel agencies may take the packaging to another level, including deals with resorts and entertainment events--for the Super Bowl or Disney World, or guided tours, or a scuba diving, golfing, or skiing vacations.
With travel, rewards programs not only encourage customers to come back to the same vendor to accumulate points, they also create opportunities to create different classes of service. Your repeat patronage can earn you gold or platinum membership which qualifies you for special privileges and also insulates you from the common hassles and inconveniences of travel. With the right membership, you'll get first shot at the best seats or rooms, you'll get to board your airplane first, and you'll even earn more points each time you return than the ordinary customer does. In the past, long lines, poor service at airports, and crowded coach compartments on planes might have prompted you to fly another airline the next time. Today, when airline conditions seem awful in general, the annoyances serve as an incentive to concentrate your travel on a single airline, or go out of your way to earn credits from their allies, and thereby earn the right to better service in the future.
As you enter into the world of online travel shopping, remember that every "deal" is also a temptation. Yes, if you planned to travel, shopping online can help you get the best prices, perhaps allow you to get the reservations you want at the time that you want, and arrive at your destination so armed with information that you needn't waste time on logistical nuisances. But by opening yourself up to all this information about opportunities you otherwise would never have heard of, you may well end up traveling more often and spending more (albeit more effectively) than ever before.
When you enter Microsoft's Expedia Travel expedia.msn.com, you are presented with three main choices: book a flight, reserve a room, or rent a car. To get full access to all of the site's features, you need to fill out a registration form, and get a user name and password. Then you can search for flights by lowest published airfare or by preferred travel times and airline. If you sign up for "fare tracker," this site will send you email messages about best price offers for specific trips that you are planning. Expedia's hotel lookup feature provides detailed information on over 38,000 hotels. The map area provides driving directions, as well as local maps. Expedia Magazine has travel-related articles. "Communicate" is an area where you can discuss matters of common interest with other travelers in forums (bulletin-board style), or live chat. The car rental section includes nine companies: Advantage, Alamo, Avis, Budget, Dollar, Hertz, National, Sears, and Thrifty.
In Expedia's "vacation shopping" area, you can check out vacation packages, cruises, resorts, sports and adventure, and special deals. But these sections could use more content. There are only five resorts and eight cruise lines. And the section labeled "trains, buses, and charters" actually has no buses, just Amtrak and AirCharterNet.
For information about local events and attractions, Expedia points you to Microsoft's Sidewalk City Guides expedia.msn.com/daily/sidewalk. These sites cover Boston, Denver, New York, San Francisco, Sydney, Chicago, Houston, San Diego, Seattle, Twin Cities, and Washington.
Travelocity www.travelocity.com claims its site provides "access to more travel providers than any other Internet site." This site includes the flights of over 700 airlines (400 bookable online), 50 car rental companies, and 40,000 hotels. Travelocity processes your airline reservations through SABRE, the same system used by 40,000 travel agents. When you buy a ticket, you have three delivery choices: electronic ticket (you just have to show your ID at the airport), postal mail, or travel agent.
Keep in mind that each of these major travel sites will have its own "special deals" section, with some overlap. So if deals are what you are looking for, you should keep checking rather than latching on to the first one you see.
Travelocity also has a destination guide with details about all countries and major cities. This site's bed and breakfast section profiles 19,000 individual Bed and Breakfasts and inns in North America, and another 1700 in the rest of the world. The listings call out "ski resorts" separately and provide details on dozens of them. Additionally, this site provides maps, weather, a currency converter, frequent traveler information, and seat maps for a dozen airlines.
Yahoo Travel travel.yahoo.com provides the same basic services (plane, rental car, and hotel search and bookings), but it looks like an excellent place to window shop--to poke around for ideas when you know that you want to travel, but aren't sure where you want to go. Here you can search by "lifestyle," which includes: business, family, lesbian/gay/bisexual, Jewish, naturalist/nudist, singles, seniors, special needs, women, and vegetarian. You can also research your trip by destination, including by country or activity of interest (arts and education, cruises and adventure tours, resorts, and sports and outdoors). You'll find tremendous variety here--from safaris to whale watching to paranormal phenomena. Here, too, you can join scheduled chats on travel topics or open-ended chat sessions, or participate in message boards (forums) organized by activities and interests, destinations, and lifestyles.
Travelbase Internet Travel Planning www.travelbase.com lets you search or browse through its database of 30,000 hotels, 1500 of which have Web sites. You can click on a state and then on a city or area; then select either only hotels with Web sites or every local hotel. Some of the hotels allow you to book online. This is a good place to check if you want to see the Web site of a hotel but don't know if it has one or what the Web address is. You need to sign up and get an ID and password to use Travelbase's airline and car rental system. This Web site also has a toll-free phone number to call for help.
In addition to the usual do-it-all travel-site capabilities, The Trip.com www.thetrip.com has some very interesting "guides and tools." For instance, with its "flight tracker," you can pick a particular flight that is now in the air and see its plotted course on a small-scale map, then view its current position over a large-scale map, and also see its present speed, heading, and altitude, together with the takeoff time and scheduled landing time. You can also request email notification when a particular flight lands.
Trip.com's "airport guides" offer airport maps, regional maps, and terminal views for all major airports. You can sign up for "trip.com," a free weekly email newsletter with tips, trends, and deals, or for "Deals-2-U," which is email notification of special low fares on routes in which you are interested.
A downloadable "world clock" makes it easy for you to display on your PC the current time at any cities of ongoing interest to you. For travel-related information and articles, you can check its online magazine, "The Complete Traveler," or Trip.com's "news and community" section.
Preview Travel www.previewtravel.com claims to have over 6 million registered users, which is probably due in large part to its extensive destination guides. This travel site makes available online, for free, lots of content from Fodor's Travel Publications. For each major destination, you can read about: attractions and activities, accommodations, restaurants, when to go, arriving and departing, getting around, practical information, and special interests. In addition, you can take a look at a photo gallery, a video clip gallery, and related vacation packages for each destination. Preview Travel also lets you create your own custom mini-guide, with selected portions of its online content packaged neatly for you to print out and take with you on the trip. (By the way, you can also go directly to Fodor's at www.fodors.com).
If you aren't sure where you want to go, you can use Preview Travel's "vacation finder" to help make up your mind. You can check a wide range of vacation and cruise packages by region.
Getting ready to go, you can check Preview Travel's packing list suggestions, for each of about a dozen categories of trips. If you want to buy any clothing or luggage online or toll-free by phone, you can do so from the site's TravelSmith store (travelsmith.previewtravel.com). Preview Travel's "business" travel section provides you with a different arrangement of the same underlying tools and options.
Are you getting a little overwhelmed with the wealth of possibilities? It's not over yet. Take a look at Travel.com www.travel.com. There you'll find the usual 500 airlines, 33,000 hotels, 50 rental car companies, 3,000 bed and breakfasts, and miscellaneous cruises and vacations. But here, too, you'll find links to other travel-related Web sites, carefully arranged in 3,500 categories. You'll also find links to non-Microsoft guides to New York City, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Chicago, and St. Louis. From this site, too, you can access the "discounted hotel inventory" provided by Hotel Reservation Network. And, of course, you can access maps, get email notification of drops in airfares, and read an online travel magazine.
Atevo www.atevo.com offers "content, community, and commerce," including the usual suspects (airlines, hotels, and destination information). This site's National Parks section, organized by state, provides a wealth of detail on U.S. parks. Atevo also makes it easy to interact with fellow travelers, offering you free personal Web space to set up as "Your Travel Page," in addition to the opportunity to participate in travel-related message boards (forums).
Flifo www.flifo.com has an international flavor. This site gives you a choice of having your tickets delivered in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, or Australia. With this site, too, you can book flights, hotel rooms, and rental cars; but Flifo offers very little else--none of the usual destination information and related links. Flifo, however, does offer discounted rates on flights abroad.
TravelScape www.travelscape.com is a subsidiary of Las Vegas Reservation Systems, and has special relationships with hotels in that city, in addition to offering the typical do-it-all travel-site services.
Travel Quest www.travelquest.com has all the usual services, plus a Rail Services section with links to Amtrak, to the train that links England and France through the Chunnel, and to specialty train services. Don't be intimidated by the registration form on the home page. If you are still window- shopping, just click on one of the choices in the left column, and you'll bypass the registration area.
The Internet Travel Network www.itn.com boasts over 4 million registered users. Along with vacation packages and deals, they offer travel guides to over 4,000 destinations, known as "Rough Guides." From there, you can choose "Rough Takes," which consists of biweekly updates on travel events and trends. Why does the Internet Travel Network get so many users when there are so many other sites providing similar services and information? By offering a variety of reservations systems, designed for both large companies and small companies--making it easy for employees to book travel and get the best corporate discounts. It also offers reservation services to other companies that operate networks of travel agencies. In addition, the network partners with non-travel companies that want to offer travel-booking services from their Web sites. If you run a Web site, just plug in their reservation services and you're in the travel business. Visitors to your site can book their flights and hotel rooms without leaving your site. Apparently, Uniglobe, CNN, and Ticketmaster all use this service.
The biztravel.com site www.biztravel.com acts as a do-it-all site for the frequent business traveler. This site helps you maximize your frequent flier miles and your credits in frequent "stayer" programs by guiding your choices in booking flights, hotels, and rental cars. It also helps you keep track of all your credits in those reward programs in one place. The Cityinfo section serves as a guide to hotels, restaurants, airports, weather, etc. in major U.S. and international cities. If you need to plan meetings, conferences, and shows, "Event Source" lets you search through a database of 9000 meeting hotels and sites worldwide.
Biztravel.com's "Pager Alert" service lets you receive flight status, gate info, and weather conditions at your destination by email delivered via any pager service that provides an email interface. You can sign up to receive automatic upgrades from coach if and when you are eligible. You can also use its services to track flights in route, plan a group event, find a trade show, charter a flight, and read world travel warnings. It also has a page of great travel-related links with useful descriptions. To access these travel-related links, click on the Other Valuable Sites option from the Biztravel home page.
More? Yes, don't stop now. The variety and richness of these sites is amazing. 1travel.com www.1travel.com provides a large collection of classified ads posted by travel agencies and travel providers. You'll be delighted at choices you never knew you had. Want to stay in a log home? Want a tour to the Seychelles Islands or to the Czech Republic? How about an Alaskan cruise or language study trip or a casino vacation? This site offers discounted fares on international reservations departing from 21 countries, from a database of over 3 million fares. They also offer special service if you are planning a multi-city (five or more, multi-country (three or more) trip.
How would a newcomer ever hope to get a foothold in a market so remarkably well served as this one? When Travelzoo.com www.travelzoo.com launched its "do-it-all" travel site in April 1998, the Travelzoo management offered visitors part ownership in the company, just for visiting. As the company's senior management explains, "Travelzoo.com soared in popularity this summer (of 1998) by adopting a unique, never-before-seen ownership concept. Netsurfers were invited to become co-owners of the Travelzoo.com site. And within three months, 700,000 people had signed up. And with that, the company's ownership goal was reached. As co-owners, these 700,000 netsurfers have an incentive to visit the site again and again, and to encourage others to do the same. This has led to a major boom in visitor traffic to Travelzoo.com. And as the number of hits increases, so do the advertising dollars the site can command." www.travelzoo.com/Story.htm
TravelHUB hosts a worldwide directory of travel agencies, categorized by specialty. The specialties include: airfare only, adventure, business, cruise, eco tours, family, alternative lifestyle, handicap, seniors, singles, sports, student, specialty travel, and by geographic location. (If you want to travel in New Zealand, you might want to have a local agency plan the details for you.) They provide the address and phone number of each agency, plus a link to the agency Web site, and a button to click to bring up a form to request their services.
TravelHUB also brings together in one place the travel specials of over 500 travel agencies, and lets you sign up to receive daily travel-special alerts by email.
In addition, TravelHUB purports to have the "largest online database of international discounted airfares (consolidator fares)." According to TravelHUB, "consolidator fares" are airline tickets purchased by airline wholesalers and resold to travel agencies at discounts of up to 70% off regular rates. Some of these fares are for charter flights, but most are with regular airlines. They recommend that you first check the latest deals on scheduled fares, then come here to see if you can do better with a consolidator rate. They also warn that cancellation fees for consolidator fares are high--up to 50% of the fare price; so make sure your plans are definite before buying tickets this way.
Uniglobe Travel www.uniglobe.com runs a retail travel franchise with 1100 locations. The Web site allows customers to book their own flights, pick vacation packages, etc., with the local agencies getting credit for the sale. Visitors can search for affiliated agencies in their area. Uniglobe also runs a proprietary intranet Web site, which links these agencies, so that they can work together to assemble unique travel packages.
Some of the larger agency Web sites, like Global Online Travel www.got.com provide the same kinds of services as the do-it-all sites, letting you book your own flights, hotel rooms, and rental cars. But they focus on their special deals, vacations, and cruises; and they also provide phone numbers for you to talk directly with travel professionals, if you'd like. (Global is backed by Signature Travel Services, a chain of travel agencies). The do-it-all sites list specials and packages, too; but with nowhere near the variety of choice that the agencies offer, and without the option of direct contact that the agencies are equipped to provide.
Traveler's Net www.travelersnet.com provides do-it-all site type resources, acts as an agency, and gives you a rebate on agency fees that they receive from travel providers. As explained at the site, "When you do the planning and furnish us with the information necessary to book your trip, we share the commission that is paid to us by travel suppliers." They have detailed tables showing you how much you get back on the purchase of airline tickets and vacation packages, based on the price. The sums are not princely--but this is "found money" -- money back after you paid the best price you can find. Their lists of travel links www.travelersnet.com/links are also quite rich, and well worth exploring.
Many agencies seem to focus on vacation travel, putting together a unique variety of packages in which they have worked out all the details and negotiated discount prices with all the vendors.
Bon Vivant www.bvt-usa.com is a travel agency headquartered in Pennsylvania. It specializes in vacation packages, and has a wide variety of offerings. For instance, under "exotic," you can choose among Africa, Galapagos Islands, and Antarctica. Under Africa, Bon Vivant has 16 safaris to choose from. And under Antarctica, you choose from among four different itineraries. Bon Vivant provides preferred discount rates at 12,000 hotels and inns.
Internet-Travel Services www.internet-travel.com is an online travel agency that specializes in "dream vacations" and "hassle-free business trips." When you click on "air travel," you connect with Priceline for airline tickets and hotel rooms. Major areas of this site focus on: the Bahamas, Bermuda, the Caribbean, cruises, Florida, Hawaii, Mexico, and singles.
The Travel Network agency www.travelnetworkinc.com operates out of Florida and has a franchise business in 15 countries. Their site includes: cruises, honeymoons, packages and tours, and specials.
For escorted tours at discount rates, check Pennsylvania Travel www.patravel.com. On its opening page, it is explained how the discounts work--basically, you get back part of what would have been the booking commission.
For a two- to four-week European vacation based in "your own private apartment or house," check Untours www.untours.com. According to the site, "Before your trip, our well-trained staff helps you select the right country, area, apartment, and length of stay, (and) reserves and purchases the most convenient and economical air and ground transportation... Upon arrival our carefully-selected European staff meets you at the airport upon arrival (standard group arrivals only), escorts you or gives you detailed self-escort directions, to your apartment, invites you to a group orientation session to help you decide what to do during your stay and how to do it, host a special group event..., and is available by telephone throughout your stay if you need additional assistance."
Priceline www.priceline.com takes a unique approach to pricing. You post a request for air travel with them, indicating where you want to go and when and how much you are willing to pay. You guarantee your offer with a major credit card. Then Priceline seeks a seller willing to fill that request. With Priceline "there is no auction, no bidding and no back and forth. Simply name your price and let Priceline find a seller." Recent advertising blitzes by well-known personalities like William Shatner and Rush Limbaugh have made Priceline a well-known online travel service. Priceline has also recently added hotel rooms to its online offerings.
Here are the addresses of the major U.S.-based airlines. You'll note that unlike most stores, where the address is basically the company name, these companies tend to have unexpected URLs that you probably couldn't guess.
If you are a collector of frequent flier miles, then you can and should consider a few new reward programs linked to your online behavior. On the Internet, you can get credits, which can be exchanged for frequent flier miles, by signing up at ClickRewards www.clickrewards.com and shopping at associated online stores. You can also sign up at Bonus Mail www.bonusmail.com or My Points www.mypoints.com and earn rewards (exchangeable for frequent flier miles) for receiving and reacting to email ads.
Also, there are a few hotel specialty sites that offer unique services. For instance,
Hotel Wiz www.hotelwiz.com lists 43,000 properties worldwide and offers up to 40% discounts on 15,000 of them. It has an easy-to-use search engine, and allow online booking. It also provides hotel reviews.
Hotel Express International www.hotel-discount.com/anglais/index3.htm operates as a hotel discount club, offering 50% off on accommodations in 3,500 hotels in 72 countries. Membership currently costs $200/year.
All Hotels www.all-hotels.com boasts links to tens of thousands of hotels worldwide--virtually all the hotels on the Web.
The large local branches of AAA Travel Services have their own Web sites, and some of them (like California at www.aaa-calif.com/travel/services.html) offer a wealth of information on line, such as local traffic reports. Call your local branch to find out if they are online, or do a search at AltaVista (www.altavista.com for AAA Travel Services and the name of your state, e.g.
Would you rather go by bus? Surprisingly, bus companies get short shrift or no shrift at all at travel-related Web sites. If you want to check this low-cost alternative, you can get a list of bus company Web sites at Yahoo dir.yahoo.com/Business_and_Economy/Companies/Transportation/Buses/Bus_Lines
Want to see some background on the travel company you are about to do business with? Then check the "scorecard" on 22 top travel sites at Gomez www.gomez.com.
Do you like ghost movies? If so, maybe you'd like a night at a ghost-infested hotel. travel.yahoo.com/Destinations/Activity/Cruises_and_Adventure_Tours/Paranormal_Phenomenon/
Want a list of all the essential numbers to help you do currency conversion in your destination country? Go to Cheat Sheet* for Travelers www.oanda.com/converter/travel
Need to phone home? Rent cellular and satellite phones, worldwide, at Action Cellular Rent-a-Phone www.globalphone.net.
Do you want the toll-free phone numbers of airlines, hotels, cruise lines, rental car companies, and tour operators? Go to the list of travel-related links at Traveler's Net www.travelersnet.com/links.
Might you be interested in a train ride through South Africa with a steam locomotive? Check a site run by individuals who want to preserve the tradition of train travel in South Africa www.ru.ac.za/departments/iwr/staff/daf/tt/timetabl.html.
Want to plan some special nights out at restaurants during your vacation or business trip? Check DineNet Menus Online www.menusonline.com for a national restaurant directory, with full menus.
Are you planning on traveling with kids? A few words of advice might turn a potential nightmare into a wonderful experience. Check the articles and tips at About.com travelwithkids.about.com. And from there, check their recommendations for "Top Family Vacations."
Are you over 50 and interested in exchanging your home with another family for a vacation? Then check Senior Vacation and Home Exchange www.seniorshomeexchange.com. They currently have over 600 listings in 30 countries.
Would you like to see wildlife in its natural habitat? How about an excursion to Mongolia? Check World Wildlife Fund Travel www.wwfus.org/travel.
Do you want to save postage on postcards? Go to Travel Preview (www.travelpreview.com) and send digital postcards for free from their site. The recipient gets email saying to check a specific URL where they'll find the photo you chose, together with your personal message. To be wickedly lazy, send the postcards before you leave on your trip--take care of your social obligations quickly and easily, and then you can forget everyone but yourself while you're gone.
For more resources, see the travel section of our Online Shopping Directory www.samizdat.com/shopping3.html#travel
The rest of the book (Shop Online the Lazy Way):
Part One covers aspects of online shopping that apply no matter what you want to buy.
Published by B&R Samizdat Express, 33 Gould St., West Roxbury, MA 02132, seltzer@samizdat.com
You can order the book Shop Online the Lazy Way directly from the author (seltzer@samizdat.com) or from Amazon.com If you buy it after clicking on this Amazon link, Richard will get some money back from Amazon as part of their Associates program, as explained in this chapter.
You may also want to check Richard's Online Shopping Directory www.samizdat.com/shopping.html, which has links to all the sites mentioned in the entire book, plus sites he has learned of since the book went into production.
You are also welcome to participate in Richard's weekly chat sessions about Business on the World Wide Web, Thursdays, from noon to 1 PM. For details and edited transcripts of previous sessions (dating back to June 1996) check www.samizdat.com/chat.html
Can we help you build an Internet business? Richard Seltzer is an independent Internet writer/speaker/consultant. Click here for details.
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