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Online travel sites
Julie E. Houston • Bankrate.com
Planes, trains and automobiles can get you to your
vacation destination, but first, you've got to make travel and hotel
reservations, learn about attractions and find the best deal. Luckily,
there are Web sites to help you plan your trip and compare prices.
We selected three of the most popular online travel
sites: Travelocity.com,
Expedia.com
and AOL Travel (AOL
Keyword: travel) and tested them for usability, the most travel
options and best prices for a trip to Las Vegas, using a budget
of $2,000 for two people.
After much research and a couple of ill-fated attempts
to convince the boss to let us actually take the Vegas trip ourselves,
we selected Travelocity.com as our online travel site "best pick."
Travelocity.com -- "Best
Pick"
Surfing Travelocity.com's cool-looking site gave us
a little vacation from the whir of the fluorescent lights in the
cube farm. Navigating through the site was much easier than navigating
an airport, and we could even select a seat on the plane with handy
airplane seat maps.
Some of the great features of this site include daily
deals, online reservations for cars, hotels, flights and cruises.
Our favorite feature is the site's Dream Map; Tell Travelocity.com
your budget, and it will give you a map of where you can go.
If travel to a particular paradise will bust your
budget, tell Travelocity's Fare Watcher and you'll be notified by
e-mail if great rates come up. The site's featured vacations and
hot spots section led us to our Las Vegas vacation options, and
boy, did we hit the jackpot! After specifying our travel plans and
budget, we received 12 pages of vacation packages for every popular
casino/hotel on and around the strip. The deals included links to
each hotel's Web site.
If your idea of a vacation involves leaving Las Vegas,
Travelocity.com highlights great fares to Europe for as low as $149.
For those prices, you'll be eating bangers and mash in London before
sundown.
Another great feature at Travelocity.com is the travel
news. Here's our final news flash: When it comes to finding a great
price easily, Travelocity.com has your ticket.
AOL Travel
AOL Travel offers lots of great information, features
and deals, but it failed to deliver booking information on our fantasy
trip to Las Vegas.
We tested AOL
Travel (Keyword: travel) as a member, but for non-members, AOL.com
has discount
travel information as well.
The channel has a simple and clean home page. Features
include the ability to search for lower fares and make reservations
for hotel rooms, air transportation and rental cars. Make your travel
plans or get ideas by searching by package, price destination or
activity (women's travel, adventurous travel or gay and lesbian
travel.)
AOL Travel suggested package deals for our trip to
Las Vegas, but we were on our own when it came to finding the price
and making reservations. AOL Travel didn't let us book online. The
site offered phone numbers, so we could call the resorts ourselves
and take care of the details.
This site has its good points. We got a list of rates
from several airlines. In fact, a quote from AirTran
Airlines beat the price available on the AirTran Web site. We'll
take those kinds of savings any day.
AOL Travel feeds the community aspect of America Online
with chats and message boards about travel concerns and destinations.
It has travel tips, a newsletter with deals of the week, even maps
and directions.
Overall, we were pleased with the services AOL had
to offer. But its emphasis is definitely more informational than
E-commerce, leaving those who want to make reservations online in
a holding pattern.
Expedia.com
Expedia.com has online information and booking for
flights, hotels, rental cars, vacations and cruises. But its site
is poorly laid out. Its features aren't visually highlighted. We
surf the Web a lot and want some eye candy to attract our peepers.
We found our Vegas plans through a link under "special
deals -- casino destinations." We were directed to the Las Vegas
Reservation Systems. It lists oodles of hotels and gives reservation
and pricing information on each.
Expedia.com follows the Priceline.com model with its
Flight Price Matcher. You enter how much you're willing to spend
on a plane ticket, and if Expedia.com can find you that deal or
better, your credit card is billed and you're on your way.
One thing we really like about Expedia.com is that
they have some great pictures, slide shows and a super-cool "featured
destination" channel that includes a 360-degree tour of the selected
cities. San Francisco was featured during our visit to Expedia.com,
and our tour gave us a nice view without our faces getting salted
with sea spray.
Also "In my travel" is a great way to keep track of
your travel itineraries, frequent flier miles and low travel fares.
Expedia.com has a lot to offer customers, but we weren't
impressed with its layout. A Web-friendly facelift would make us
reconsider using Expedia.com in the future.
Other options
There are several options available when planning
a trip, including local travel agents and booking directly through
the airlines. Read more about travel planning options in our story
"Flying on the
cheap." In the meantime, we're planning on reaching terminal
Travelocity for our next trip.
-- Posted: April 28, 2000
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