Features a reservation system that is easy to use. Uses the Internet Travel Network (ITN) to make reservations. User must register and establish a profile. |
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Features a travelers' bulletin board, destination highlights, and electronic postcards; well-organized. Also uses the Internet Travel Network reservation system to give price quotes and book reservations. You don't need to register to use but registering allows you to specify flight preferences, meals, etc. |
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Comprehensive tourism information and online travel agency. Includes air and hotel reservations, flight schedules, and e-mail updates on fares to selected locations, video tours of popular destinations, travel tips from experts, and feature articles. Also has a currency converter, an extensive hotel guide, links to worldwide weather reports, and an enormous directory of links for specific locales around the world and other travel information. |
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Owned by the SabreGroup, which maintains the largest worldwide reservation system (e.g. used by travel agents). Good for checking best current fares. Can also sign up for email fare bulletins. With its merge with Preview Travel, it's now the largest travel site. |
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Good for hotel searches and reservations, particularly large hotel chains. Can search or browse. |
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One of the better business travel resources available on the Web. Covers making air and hotel reservations, ground transportation, interactive city maps, special articles, etc. |
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Includes links to online guidebooks, local attraction, for more than 230 countries. |
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Menu approach to travel information. Includes more than 40 subheadings under travel. |
Provides guides and travel information on numerous cities, mainly in the U.S. |
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Travel news and resources. Offers feature articles, a "random destination finder," city guides, exchange rates, hotel, car, and air reservations, and annotated links for travel preparation. |
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Cond� Nast's online travel magazine focusing on deluxe and exclusive tourist attractions. Includes descriptions of hotels, a bed-and-breakfast finder, city and restaurant material, and information on great escapes, romantic getaways, the best routes from major airports to the central city, and weekly airfare specials. |
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Broad-ranging, high-quality information on travel throughout the world. Includes articles on selected destinations and places to stay and dine, cruises, and sports and adventure tourism. Offers hotel and restaurant indexes, a weekly radio travel show, chat rooms, and a directory of Fodor's guidebooks. Includes a section on Smart Travel Tips to assist in making your travel cheaper and easier. |
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Features an encyclopedia of major tourist sites and a daily news update. Also includes 'deals', off-beat/alternative travel, and Arthur Frommer's answers to your travel questions. Has a section on travel for special people (senior, gay and lesbian, vegetarian, and more) |
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Everything you ever wanted to know about outdoor activities around the world. Specializing on the U.S. it has a enormous amount of information about national parks, forests, wildlife areas, monuments and more, plus information on trips and all the gear you'll need to go on one. |
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Sponsored by Cornell University's School of Hotel Administration. Links to web resources for hospitality research that are free or open to the public, that HOSTLINE's librarians have organized and reviewed for quality of content. This is a good starting point for checking out eco-tourism and adventure tourism programs. |
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Source for unique vacation opportunities. |
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Excellent online travel guides to all types of sites; travel reports from authors; photographs. |
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National Park Service's comprehensive site for national parks, recreation areas, reserves, scenic rivers, seashores, historic reserves, monuments, memorials, and historic sites. Listed both by location and alphabetically. |
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L.L. Bean's site includes information and photos for nearly 1,500 parks in the United States. |
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Easy to navigate site providing travel information for locations around the world. Their evaluations of hotels and restaurants are concise and well written. The guides have a bias towards the adventurous, however the accommodations and activities profiled range from budget to luxury. |
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Good coverage of major cities -- includes an overview, accommodations, sightseeing, entertainment, eating and drinking, shopping, attraction for kids, gays and lesbians, and city links. Based in the UK, geared toward a young, hip market. |
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Lists official government tourism offices, convention and visitors bureaus. No travel agents, tour operators, hotels, etc. |
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Travel materials from Time Warner and its publications. Offers reader's selections of the world's best destinations and travel service providers. |
Includes over 14,000 hotels, inns, bed and breakfasts, and resorts around the world. Can limit by price, activities, type of accommodation. |
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Directory for over 60,000 hotels around the world. Search by city, state, or country. |
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Hundreds of listings for bed & breakfasts, country inns, small hotels, and vacation rentals. Complete with photographs, detailed descriptions, rates and reservation information. |
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User-friendly, up-to-date information on bed and breakfasts and inns. Over 23,000 listings for bed & breakfasts and inns around the world. |
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Directory of listings for inns in the United States, Canada, Mexico, and the Caribbean. Includes recipes under "Favorite B&B Inn Recipes." |
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Contact information, including address, phone, fax, and e-mail, for thousands of hostels in over a hundred countries. Search by country. |
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Hotels, airlines, airports, references, and services (rentals, exchanges, business travel, tours, travel agencies, etc.) There's a great collection of links to maps for each geographic site. |
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Offers rooms at good hotels usually at up to 60% off the rack rates walk-ins get quoted. |
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Information on facilities available in over 14,000 campgrounds in the United States, Canada, and Mexico. Listings are primarily aimed at RV campers. A search engine provides for searching by state, city, or name of campground. Most records include the location, facilities, recreation, rates, dates open, and a phone number. |
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This handy site lets you create your own wallet-sized currency conversion table for each of 164 currencies. |
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Provides an easy way to convert between any two currencies. |
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ATM Locator (Mastercard, Cirrus) |
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ATM Locator (Visa) |
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Includes a free map-maker as well as other information about your route. |
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Calculates distances between thousands of U.S. and hundreds of international cities. |
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Online mapping service that gives you door-to-door directions between any two addresses in the U.S. |
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Enter an address and receive the best route (maybe!) to get there; good for road trips. |
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Provides links to construction related, traffic conditions, transit related, and weather/road conditions sites, as well as to state departments of transportation. |
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Includes a list of user-submitted reviews of restaurants in the U.S. and Canada. |
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Handy listing of thousands of restaurants (both chain and local) in hundreds of U.S. cities. Search by city & zip or area codes with option to narrow your search by type of cuisine. Some entries include menus and have reviews which are ranked by food, service, atmosphere, value, and overall experience. |
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Top restaurants chosen by editors of Gourmet magazine. |
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Provides an impressive array of restaurants throughout the country and for a few foreign cities. Includes ratings. |
Listings for nearly most airlines (many have links to webpages). Updated Regularly. |
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For train travel in North America |
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Provides very broad access to information on numerous airlines and choices of flights. Developed by several of the major airlines in cooperation with one another. Also includes information on hotels, car rentals, cruises, etc. |
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You set the price you'll pay for plane tickets, and Priceline.Com will try to find it for you among the numerous unpublished fares supplied by U.S. and international airlines. The search takes one hour for domestic flights and 24 hours for overseas. Requires that customers be willing to depart on any available flight between 6 a.m. and 10 p.m., and flights may include one stop or connection. |
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Tips for safe travel overseas from the U.S. State Department including Consular Information Sheets. |
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British Consular Division Foreign & Commonwealth Office- Sometimes a bit more blunt than the U.S. Advisories |
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An association of private and government organizations dedicated to protecting American business interests. |
Cover all options -- selection varies from one travel service to another, so try several different travel web sites. Also note: online rates may not always be the cheapest fare available. Call airlines and travel agents as well.
Read the fine print -- quoted rates often will not include taxes and surcharges.
Confirm all reservations made online -- this step helps to minimize the chance of booking errors or miscommunications.
Check out individual airline web sites -- can be particularly useful if you travel one airline with regularity. Look for direct bookings, frequent flyer bonuses, and personal seat-selection maps. Several airlines will also notify you of special deals from airports near you
