Have modem, will travel - booking hotel and airplane reservations over the Web - Internet/Web/Online Service Information

Home Office Computing, July, 1997 by Charles Pappas

Where to Surf for Dirt-Cheap Air, res and Hotels With Business Amenities

If you haven't yet planned your vacation, it's time to get cracking. Thanks to online hotel reservationists and low-cost airfare finders, your dream getaway is just a keystroke or two away. Even better, with so many hotels today starting to cater to business customers with technology and Internet access, your clients won't have to know you've left--unless you tell them. To help you plan your dream vacation, we sent our intrepid reporter to plan a trip--using only his wits and his modem.

Having set my sites on New Orleans (see last month's Personal Business for more details), I now had to find an Internet-friendly, affordable hotel (at around $100 a night) and a dirt-cheap airfare: (I'd take a midnight flight if necessary, and I'd like to spend less than $200 roundtrip). I have a laptop, but I'd prefer to rent a PC from the hotel and access the Net from my room. Having an accessible phone jack where I could connect my own modem would be an acceptable alternative.

I found a clutch of hotels in my price range through Fodor's Personal Trip Planner (www.fodors.com). I searched for hotels in New Orleans that advertised business services, but none of the listings ever specified what kinds of services were offered.

Bedside Bytes Finding lodgings with all the amenities I required wasn't as easy as I'd expected. Using the search engine Excite (www.excite,com), I entered "hotels" "Internet access" to begin my quest. I was led to Net on the Road (www.xmission.com/~gastown/ebb/ global.htm), which claims to list all the places that offer Internet access (cybercafes, hotels, libraries, universities, and so on). Unfortunately, its destinations were limited to Las Vegas, Bali, and a few other mostly foreign ports of call.

Another site Excite pointed me to was Hotel Net (www.hotelnet.co.uk/). Here you can find out if a place has everything from croquet lawns and four-poster beds to recreational shooting, but there's no information about whether the rooms have Net access. The Mobile Resource Center (www.symantec.com/reference/mobile/ index.html) will tell you which hotels have Net connections, the access numbers they use to log on to America Online and CompuServe, as well as the charges for using modems--in a very limited number of cities.

A search for "modem lines," "hotels and modems," and "hotels and business services" at Hotels & Travel on the Net (www.hotelstravel.com/homepage.html) also yielded a big zero. By now I was feeling as lost as my Samsonite suitcases usually are when I fly.

Suddenly, it dawned on me: I was trying too hard. I was being far more specific than necessary. So I keyed in "Hotels and Travel" "Louisiana." By scrolling down the list that came up, I found what I was looking for. Hotels in this listing specified exactly what amenities are offered. OK, I had to do the digging rather than have a search engine root out my nugget of technological advancement. But at least I found a Net-ready place to stay: the French Quarter Hilton.

Well, almost. With the Hilton's $270-a-night cost far exceeding my blue-plate-special budget, I wasn't through yet.

Once More, Into the Breach Asking Travelocity (www.travelocity.com/) to find a room with a promotional rate in the city, I received a bounty of more than 30 hotels, ranging from $35 a night to $350. The Omni Royal Crescent was a perfect choice. Not only was it better situated than the Hilton (just a few blocks from the French Quarter), it offered computer rentals and access to on-line services. But even though I could choose my room type and reserve it within minutes by sending credit card info online, the cost for a standard room--$225 a night--was way out of my price range.

That was it. Something inside me snapped like a potato chip. I fell off the (online) wagon, picked up the phone, and called 800-THE-OMNI-I, where the reservationist informed me that on the dates I'd selected (a Saturday and a Sunday night), I could have a room for $145 the first night and $99 the second. I'll admit, sometimes online information doesn't come out on top.

Hitching a Ride on the I-Way If finding a hotel with a modem was as much fun as a Pauly Shore film festival, searching for round-trip airfare from Huntsville, Alabama, to New Orleans was much less painful.

Like an auction in reverse, I was trying to buy at the lowest price from several sellers. First, I subscribed to the Fare Tracker at Microsoft's free Expedia (www.expedia.msn.com/) travel service. I keyed in which air routes I wanted, my preferred departure times, and type of service (coach). Then, delivering on its promise to update me within 48 hours, the Fare Tracker began lobbing me e-mail bulletins on cheap airfares; the best was $123, on Northwest.

But I still wasn't satisfied. After entering the usual data at PCTravel (www. pctravel.com)--its system took just 25 seconds to give me a choice of two flights out and two back. The result: $147 on Delta. Plodding onward, I accessed TravelWeb (www.travelweb.com). Out of the 16 choices this service offered, I picked one with a leisurely schedule, for a total "rockbottom" price of $855.50. Maybe its Check Lowest Fare button was taking a vacation of its own. Agreeing to catch a Friday night red-eye and grab an early-morning flight on Monday, it came out to $147.