Stress busters for summer travel
Memorial Day marks the start of what could be one of the most unforgettable summers for traveling. Unforgettably bad. Consider that nearly a third of all domestic air travel will take place between Memorial Day and Labor Day, according to the Air Transport Association.
Psst! three secrets of the laptop traveler
Maybe your company handed you a laptop computer when you started traveling. Maybe you bought or borrowed one. Either way, you probably ended up hauling a lot of technology around during your first few months as a road warrior - PCs that probably weighed too much and didn’t always work right.
Reservationists lie
I can’t think of a more fitting season finale than this week’s column. Reaction from a controversial Consumer Reports Travel Letter poll continues to pour in. Two weeks ago, I berated the survey, which suggested almost half of all travel agents lie to clients when asked about the lowest airfare. Then a reader countered that [...]
Technology that makes you less dependent
Let’s start at the end this week - the end being the joyful moment when we power down our PCs, switch off our PDAs or flip our cell phones shut. Kinda brings a smile to your face, doesn’t it? When I mused about the difficulty of disconnecting a few weeks ago, many of you agreed that the jet set can’t effectively sever its connection to technology.
Agents lie
Q: I’m writing about the recent Consumer Reports survey that suggests almost half of all travel agents lie to clients when asked about the lowest airfare. I saw your commentary that dismissed the study, but I have another perspective.
I work for one of the three largest hotel chains in the country. I speak regularly with [...]
Road trip
The 1,240-mile drive from Tacoma, Wash., to Durango, Colo., can be a grueling one, especially in the dead of summer. So when Randy Balogh and wife Marisa decided to make the trek with their two teenagers, they wanted a pleasant, well-planned route. And, they had a mission. “We were interested in seeing as many national parks along the way as we could,” says Balogh, a computer consultant in Tacoma. “Finding them on a map was easy, but getting the kind of information we wanted wasn’t.” Coordinating a three-week driving schedule meant he needed park hours, lodging options and details about park attractions. Balogh turned to the Web and eventually found the National Park Service’s ParkNet site, which offers detailed information on everything from the Aleutian World War II National Historic Area to Zion National Park. The site includes helpful tips for motorists who want to take a detour into one of the parks, with information on locations and admission costs. “It made planning our vacation convenient,” he says.
A cure for PDA sync-shyness
Eric Christ blamed his personal digital assistant’s sync-shyness on the software. PocketMirror, the syncing application that shipped with his Palm Pilot, didn’t reflect the Atlanta manager’s needs. “I wanted something that kept everything in sync, but I also needed something that could work on the Web,” he says.
Who’s to blame?
Last week’s column about intoxicated airline passengers went over like a proverbial lead balloon. Numerous readers were upset that I suggested gate agents should ultimately be responsible for either allowing drunken travelers on the plane or denying them boarding. Here are two of the responses:
Q: The bottom-line issue here is one of responsibility. I’m now [...]
Ouch! Mobile users zap columnist
I wasn’t kidding. I really do believe portable phones should be restricted at airports, if not banned altogether, as I suggested in last week’s column. I think phone-free terminals will make airports safer, saner places, and I’m not going to back down from my conclusion that curbing loudmouth wireless callers is a reasonable idea.
DUI in the sky
Q: On a recent flight to Las Vegas, I noticed a gentleman a few rows ahead of me getting a bit loud and vulgar. It was clear he was drinking more than he could handle. About 30 minutes before landing, a female attendant from first class came and spoke the man. With the cabin noise [...]
Travel content: dead or alive?
This week’s online travel news, as cartoonist Walt Kelly might have put it, is us. Not only is this column ending after more than five years of covering the interactive travel business. So is its competitor, The Industry Standard’s Tech Traveler newsletter. When you consider the anemic demand for travel-related information in general, you’re left to wonder if the battle between commerce and content hasn’t been won. Should the likes of Morris Dye, Michael Shapiro and me just pack our bags and go back to writing puff pieces and how-to books? Should travel Web sites discard the rest of their news operations in favor of ads, as two prominent travel dot-coms recently did? Maybe not.
A better way to find a cheaper fare
Everything was in place for Karen Wlodarski’s California vacation - except for a rental car. A Hertz reservations agent had offered her a weekly rate of $300 from Los Angeles over the phone, but she thought she could do better than that. Wlodarski, a Johns Island, S.C., real estate agent, remembered reading about a software program called SideStep that scours the sites of nearly 100 travel suppliers. The tip was right. SideStep found an identical car for $140 on Hertz’s Web site. And when Wlodarski returned the rental, she discovered that the price was $20 less than that. “Even the Hertz representative asked me, `Where did you get this rate?’”