Whether you’re planning a honeymoon, a family vacation, a business trip, or a voyage around the world, the Internet provides instant access to thousands of travel resources, all from the convenience of your own home. From researching destinations and accommodations to making reservations and booking fares, the Web can ease the pains of trip planning, freeing you to concentrate on the really important question: what to pack!
Destinations
Travelers have been relying on guidebooks for as long as they've been leaving home to see the world. A well-researched, comprehensive guidebook will help you decide the best way to reach your destination, where to stay, and what to do while you are there.
Now many of the best-known travel guides, like Fodors and Lonely Planet, offer the content of their guidebooks online for no cost. It's easy to point and click your way through the sites to find just the information you need, with the advantage of not worrying about having an outdated edition of the book. The contact information is current, and the official reviews are enhanced by comments from visitors like yourself.
The Internet provides access to many other resources such as newspapers, local tourism boards, and embassy and consulate sites. These are particularly useful if you're heading off the beaten track and no guidebook is available. Letsgo.com, another publisher of guidebooks, offers a "linkbank" of more than 10,000 travel-related websites, categorized by region, to help you plan your travel. Travelsearch.com provides another large collection of travel-related links, but any search engine can lead you to useful and informative sites to assist in your trip planning.
One site that you will definitely want to visit before traveling abroad is the U.S. State Department Travel Warnings and Consular Information Sheets, where you can find information on travel in foreign countries, as well as warnings regarding locations that might be unsafe to visit.
To find out about special preparations you should make to protect your health while traveling abroad (immunizations to protect against disease, for example), you can visit Travel Health Online which lists information both by destination and by condition, as well as supplying a list of providers of pre-travel medical care.
Accommodations
While guidebooks and general travel sites can provide brief reviews of the accommodations available at your destination, when it's time to choose where you'll stay you may want to do some more research. Most hotels and inns now have their own websites that elaborate on the amenities available and the cost and availability of rooms.
Being able to view actual photos of the hotel (including pools, meeting rooms, and guest suites) may prove a deciding factor in choosing your accommodations, particularly when you are traveling abroad where standards may differ from those in the United States. Large chains (such as Four Seasons, Holiday Inn, or Sheraton, just to name a few) list information on all their locations and allow you to make reservations online.
If you prefer more unique accommodations, Bedandbreakfast.com provides links to bed and breakfast lodgings throughout the world. The Web's all-hotels.com is a great resource for locating lodging worldwide and also offers reservation services, frequently with discount rates.
Web directories such as yahoo.com can also help you find lodging, especially if you are looking for something specific, such as murder mystery weekends, hunting lodges, hostels, farmstays, or home exchanges.
Transportation
Airline websites allow you to plan your flight itinerary online, including choosing the times and fares that best suit your needs. You can usually find special deals listed on the airline's website, check your frequent flyer mileage, and find answers to questions about the service provided (how to order a special meal, for example).
If you've decided upon a more leisurely form of travel, train and bus tickets are also available online. The Amtrak website, offers details on their routes in the United States, features special deals, and lets you book reservations. Greyhound offers similar service for bus travelers, while the Trailways site, allows you to research fares and schedules for a number of regional bus companies in the United States, but it does not allow you to make reservations.
If you're traveling to Europe, Euro Railways, and Europe on Rails, both offer information on buying rail passes for European travel. . Information on bus and train travel in other foreign countries can be found online as well with the help of a search engine.
All-in-one travel sites
If you're feeling overwhelmed by the number of travel resources available, or you don't need or want to spend a lot of time doing research yourself, you will find the task of travel planning greatly simplified by calling your travel agent or using one of the many "all-in-one" travel sites that are available online. Sites like Travelocity, Priceline and Microsoft's Expedia allow you to make reservations for airlines, hotels and car rentals all at once, and to pay for them on one bill.
The biggest advantage of these sites is being able to compare schedules, fares, and rates from competing companies without having to hop from site to site. Additionally, they frequently have discounts that are not available elsewhere. If you're looking for another option to plan your next trip, using the Internet is the way to go.
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