Online Travel by Ed Perkins

From the Publisher

Where are the best travel deals on line? How can you traverse the fine print of travel industry rules and restrictions to your advantage? Where can you get the most reliable advice? No mere Yellow Pages of travel-related Web sites, Online Travel focuses on helping do-it-yourself travel planners thoroughly understand and exploit their best options on line. Written by syndicated national columnist and travel expert Ed Perkins, Online Travel takes readers inside the travel industry before unloosing them on the Internet. A winner of the Traveler's Advocate Award from the American Society of Travel Agents, Perkins decodes much of the arcana of industry terminology and practices, arming consumers with the whats, whys, and how-to's for getting the best deals-and avoiding mistakes. He guides the Online Travel buyer through recommended resources-everything from sites for individual airlines and hotels to independent booking services, including Expedia.com-explaining their advantages and limitations, and offering "Inside-the-system" tips for getting the best service and prices. With Online Travel, anyone can plan and book their next excursion like a pro!

Library Journal

Perkins, a syndicated newspaper columnist on travel and the founding editor of Consumer Reports Travel Letter, calls this work a travel book with an Internet focus and not an Internet book about travel. Emphasizing how the Internet can facilitate one's traveling, the book includes chapters on various sites for travel and guides to different parts of the world, airline tickets, hotels, cruises, vacation packages, trains, car rentals, scams, and complaints. In addition, Perkins also includes an appendix with an extensive list of web sites for airlines, hotels, rental cars, ATM locators, telephones, and events. Although this is a useful guide, one wonders how much of one's time one wants to spend to save what may only be a few dollars. But the search can be fun. Recommended for public libraries.--George M. Jenks, Bucknell Univ., Lewisburg, PA Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.

Product Details

• Table of Contents
• Read an Excerpt

Table of Contents

Read an Excerpt

Chapter 1: Internet Travel: The World at Your Fingertips

In this chapter, I introduce some terminology that I use throughout the book and introduce the types of sites you'll encounter as you explore the world of online travel. But first, I show why travel quickly became one of the Internet's early success stories.

Made for Each Other

The Internet and travel are a natural fit. The Internet provides quick access to almost limitless information about almost anywhere you're likely to want to go or about any activity that's likely to appeal to you. But the Internet's potential as a marketplace for travel services eclipses its potential as an information resource. Travel services are ideally suited to the sort of instantsupply-demand matching that the Internet can provide:

• The Internet permits the equivalent of a real-time auction of travel services. Without changing list prices, suppliers can continually reassign the quantities of rooms, seats, and cabins they allocate to each of their various list-price categories. As a consumer, you can buy when you find an attractive price; if you don't find a price you like, you can try another supplier or wait for a shift.
• The Internet allows suppliers to unload unsold seats, rooms, and cabins at last-minute prices without disturbing the normal marketplace. This ability has opened the door to new services available only through the Internet, most notably the Internet-only, shortnotice weekend airfares and associated hotel deals.
• The Internet gives you immediate ownership of a travel service you have bought over the Internet. When you buy merchandise over the Internet, you have to wait for the product to be shipped-and possibly pay extra for delivery. But you don't have to wait for an e-ticket or for instant e-mail confirmation of your travel purchases.

Because the Internet is a cheap way for suppliers to sell travel services, consumer use of the Internet helps keep costs and prices under control. The big U.S. airlines averaged only about 10 percent of their ticket sales over the Internet in 1999, but Southwest sold 25 percent, and the British low-fare airline easyJet sold more than half of their tickets that way. Many others are targeting similar figures over the next few years. And where the airlines have led, other travel suppliers will likely follow.

Nobody's Perfect

But the story of travel on the Internet isn't all positive. If you want to buy travel online, you will still run into these barriers:

• Many of you still worry about giving out charge card numbers to an Internet site. Consumer resistance remains high even though the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) reports that misuse of charge card numbers on the Internet is not widespread, and even though Internet suppliers are vigilant about security precautions.
• Nobody polices the Internet for crooks and scamsters. While you might feel secure dealing with sites maintained by giant airlines and hotel chains, you might be somewhat less comfortable dealing with an intermediary agency you don't know. After all, a seller needs to be skillful to put up a great looking Web site, but not necessarily honest. Whereas newspapers and magazines generally require at least a minimum of information from anyone who wants to place a print ad, and radio and TV stations screen companies looking to air commercials, no agency performs any such function for Web sites. Consumers are therefore justifiably concerned.
• Some Internet sites require that you register before the site will do anything useful for you. Registering, in this case, means entering your name and e-mail address as a minimum; sometimes you even have to supply a charge card number. That's a real turnoff-like having someone stand at the entrance to a department store and demand that you swipe your charge card before he or she will let you through the door. Several important sites-including Expedia and United Airlines-have abandoned the onerous registration requirement. But, turnoff or no, all too many sites still demand it.
• For the most part, Internet sites don't offer personal interaction with a knowledgeable person-a feature any travel agent can offer. Sure, on some sites, you can e-mail a question, but that's no substitute for a person-to-person discussion.

Plan B Deficit is one example of what happens when there's no personal interaction: Nobody is available to suggest an alternative (a Plan B) if your normal choice doesn't work. Say you want to fly from the West Coast to Philadelphia. A "lowest fare" search engine might come up with a $600 round-trip fare as the best deal available. What the search engine can't tell you is that by flying to nearby Baltimore you can take advantage of a $200 sale-fare on Southwest. You can find similar situations all around the United States. Fares to and from Milwaukee-some 80 miles north of Chicago-are often much lower than those to Chicago O'Hare. Sites are starting to attack the Plan B Deficit with text messages such as "if the fares to your first choice airport seem high, try a nearby alternate airport," possibly with specific examples. Still, the Internet is not ever likely to provide Plan B suggestions as well as a knowledgeable person can.

Travel Agents: A Dying Breed?

III-Informed observers of the travel scene afire fond of pronouncing travel agents dead-killed off by the Internet. In fact, the whole "Internet versus travel agents" issue is what logicians call a false dichotomy. Most Internet travel sellers are travel agencies, performing their traditional role via electronic media rather than-or in addition to-storefront locations. Sure, the agency business will change. But travelers don't always want to be confined to dealing with a single supplier. And as long as at least some consumers need a knowledgeable person to assist them in making the right travel decisions, storefront agencies will be with us. (See the Endnote for more information on workirig with travel agencies...