Electronic Highways

Sites to See Before Sightseeing

You can be your own travel agent with a little help from travel Web sites like Travelocity http://www.travelocity.com/ and Yahoo!Travel http://travel.yahoo.com/. Travelocity includes a reservation service, destination guides, maps, weather/safety updates, and special fare bargains. Yahoo!Travel is similar, but provides currency conversions and slightly longer guides. Yahoo!Travel also offers information organized by "lifestyle" and activity/interest categories, including travel sites for seniors, the disabled, vegetarians, and gay and lesbian travelers, as well as links for those interested in storm chasing, ecotours, kayaking, etc.

Several sites provide online counterparts to print travel guides, such as Fodor's Travel Online http://www.fodors.com and Lonely Planet On-Line http://www.lonelyplanet.com/. Fodor's lets you create customized miniguides to 99 vacation destinations. The miniguides include information on transportation, packing, money, best time to travel, dining, lodging and attractions. Lonely Planet focuses on budget travel. While the online site does not match the extensive coverage of the Lonely Planet print guides, it does provide special sections on women's health and food/drink abroad, as well as links to ecotravel, packing hints, offbeat travel and travel writing. Another useful guide page is the National Park site Parknet http://www.nps.gov/parks.html, which provides phone numbers and addresses, along with park maps and information about fees, reservations and discount programs.

The Web also can be useful in locating bargain airfares. Travelocity has "fare watcher" email that sends low-fare updates to your email, Microsoft's Expedia Travel Agent Service http://expedia.msn.com provides links to airlines' lowest published fares (click on "Travel Agent") and the Mining Company's Web Guide to Air Travel http://airtravel.miningco.com/ offers the latest news on fare wars -- click on "Hot! Fares & Cyberdeals" for the latest news. Strangely enough, the best deals are available for last-minute travelers; many airlines offer Web-only specials or email lists of last-minute bargains. You can subscribe for free to US Airways E-Savers Program http://www.usairways.com/travel/fares/esavers.htm, for example, which will notify you of special weekend getaway fares on USAirways. For similar email deals on other airlines, check the Mining Company's Web Guide to Air Travel, which maintains a list of airline Web sites.

Please note that several of the sites mentioned above require registration, but all are free. Check the UB Libraries' Reference Sources on the Net page http://ublib.buffalo.edu/libraries/e-resources/selected.html under "Travel" for more travel-related sites.

For assistance in connecting to the World Wide Web, contact the CIT Help Desk at 645-3542.

-Austin Booth and Nina Cascio, University Libraries