Know Before You Go - Travel Research Tips

With summer here, I thought it might be a good time to write about some travel sites. Whether you're traveling for business or pleasure, the Internet provides fantastic resources for travelers. When I think back to the pre-Web 80's, I remember how much more difficult it was to travel. Booking flights and hotels required sitting on the phone with my travel agent. Getting directions from one meeting to the next was often a nightmare, and since most of my travel was for business, I rarely had a travel guide to tell me anything interesting about the cities I visited.

The International Food Wine and Travel Writers Association have a useful page of links to a variety of travel resources at http://www.ifwtwa.org/travel.htm. This page links to obvious categories like "Air Travel", but also has links to resources like a cyber cafe' search engine.

Below are the main sites I use for information when I travel. If you have any you think are better, let me know, and I'll link to them from next months article. Send any tips to editor@askSam.com.  

Booking Travel and Accommodation

I book most of my flights on Orbitz and most of my hotels on Expedia. I have friends who prefer Travelocity. I don't have strong feelings about which service I use, but I find booking travel on-line extremely convenient. I wrote a comparison of the three on-line travel services which you can read on our Web site, it's a bit dated, but still relevant.

Driving Directions

Before I leave my office, I always make sure that I'm armed with directions. I use Mapquest to get my driving directions. I'm not certain if it's the best, and I'm a little wary of my on-line directions. I've had several instances where the directions were either not 100% accurate or where the route was ridiculous. Despite these bad experiences, I'm very dependent on Mapquest. I normally verify with a map or with the folks I'm meeting that the suggested route is accurate. The best thing about on-line directions is that they come with street names and mileage. Often directions I get from the folks I'm visiting don't give me an idea of whether I'm on a road for 1 minute or 1 hour.

Restaurants

Living in Perry, affectionately known by fellow askSamers as the Silicon Swamp, we have a very limited selection of restaurants. Outside of the usual suspects (McDonald's, Burger King, Wendy's, and Pizza Hut), there's not much to choose from. So when traveling I take advantage of my trips and try out some good restaurants. Normally, I'll check out the Zagat Guide and see what they recommend in the city I'm visiting. If the city is too small to be listed in Zagat, I check out the local newspaper's Web site to see what they recommend.

General Travel Information

On-line travel guides give you a great overview of an area. I'm partial to Fodor's (a hangover from my use of their guidebooks when I backpacked through Europe), but CitySearch, Frommer's, Lonely Planet, and others are also quite good.

As a frequent traveler, these sites have made my travel more convenient and fun. I hope they make your summer travels more enjoyable too.

Phil

Related Links:

Travel Links from International Food Wine and Travel Writers Association

http://www.ifwtwa.org/travel.htm

Travel Sites

Orbitz - http://www.orbitz.com/

Expedia - http://www.expedia.com/

Travelocity - http://www.travelocity.com/

Mapquest - Driving Directions and Maps

http://www.mapquest.com/

Zagat's Restaurant Guide

http://www.zagat.com

General Travel Guides

Fodor's - http://fodors.com/

CitySearch - http://www.citysearch.com/

Frommer's - http://www.frommers.com/

Lonely Planet - http://www.lonelyplanet.com/

If you have any thoughts about the content of future articles in the askSam Surf Report, please share them with me in an email to editor@asksam.com . Thank you.