Travel

TRAVEL
for the classes of Prof. Richardson

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last updated 2003 Feb 11 th
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Travel

"More and more Web sites offer new technology promising the lowest air fares"
is the title of a story in The Globe and Mail by Paul Grimes in November 2000

Orbitz (http://www.orbitz.com), an on-line agency created by United, Delta, Continental, Northwest and American Airlines. It's scheduled for launch early next year [2001]

Travelocity's Best Fare Finder www.travelocity.com

The discounter OneTravel.com www.onetravel.com

Travelbyus www.travelbyus.com), a travel conglomerate with more than 2,000 agency members.

"FareChase (http://www.farechase.com): This New York-based site, in the test stage at this writing,[Nov 2000] promises the best in comparison shopping." says Grimes

AirlineGuides (http://www.airlineguides.com): based in New York, surveys other sites for the best fares.

Savvio www.savvio.com: Deep discounts...visitors to the site can watch fares fall says Grimes

"Intellitrip www.intellitrip.com: This long-time offering of the on-line agency Trip.com (http://www.trip.com) pioneered in scanning other sites for lowest fares. At this writing, it has access to fares of nine airlines. However, Continental, Northwest, America West, Southwest were missing"

Web sites like Intellitrip work based on two basics types of www business models
1. subscription fee based
2. advertising based

1. in the subscription based model, they ask you to join as a member and pay a fee to access information they have gathered from various sources. They explain this material is not available on other sites and that you will achieve cost savings by paying to buy access to this info.

2. in the advertising based model, all access to content on the site is free, but the material is cluttered among many banner ads trying to attract your attention. In some cases you have join as a "free member" so that they can get your real email address. Your risk is that they will sell this email address to other marketing companies who will then send you spam email

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author of this helpful article, from which the above quotes were sourced, is paulmark@aol.com.

Travel

iTravel2000 www.itravel2000.com: Based in Mississauga, Ont., this site promises lowest air fares worldwide, priced in Canadian dollars

itravel 2000 has had a website up since 1996 and therefore is one of the oldest established online travel companies.

They have a huge call centre in Mississauga and price all their services in Cdn dollars.

Travel

booking
travel
online

CNN has a good article about booking travel online - but, it is very positive.
A sceptical person might wonder if CNN could say anything negative about online business since its parent company is TIME-Warner. TIME-Warner was bought last year by the giant internet company AOL.

read the entire article online at
http://www.cnn.com/TRAVEL/ESSENTIALS/ADVISOR/9810/online.booking/

Security Considerations

One of the biggest issues about booking travel online is people's concern about the security of using a credit card. The writer of the CNN article, Marla Edwards, says
"Many travelers are nevertheless nervous about using their credit cards to book online"

Are there precautions taken?

"Online travel agencies such as Travelocity, Preview Travel, Microsoft Expedia and Internet Travel Network (which powers CNN Interactive's Reservation Desk), typically switch their customers' Internet browsers to secure mode when credit card numbers are entered. Most popular browsers, including Netscape and Microsoft Explorer, use Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) technology. That technology takes the credit card numbers and encrypts them, making them unreadable to humans and most computers. The browser then sends the information across the Internet. The online travel agency's server receives it and has the ability to decode the data. Encryption allows the transmission of sensitive information, such as credit card numbers, without much risk that someone will access it."

Cost Savings Considerations

"If you know how to research the Web and use the Web, there are definitely opportunities to decrease your costs." The reason why there are lower prices available online is simple: "Basically, the Web presents travel vendors with an opportunity to sell their product at a lower cost. If they can sell it at a lower cost, they can also pass on those savings to the consumer,"

"... last-minute airfare bargains will continue because it's less expensive for airlines to put their flights on the Internet or send e-mail to interested travelers than to buy television or radio time to advertise ... Airlines need to sell seats"

When you think of the "Internet and its Impact on Society", one of the biggest impacts is the empowerment it has given to people to have their own spot in cyberspace to sell a product, spout off about a cause, gather support for an issues, teach some subject etc.

Therefore more and more everyday people are wanting to have their own personal website, including their own domain, for a wide variety of reasons, sooooooooooo, we will explain, and discuss how to get a domain name and your own website.

WTGR

Travel

Airline
websites

Every large and medium sized airline has a website to provide information to potential customers about routes, times and ticket prices. Some of the sites are helpful, some are a bit difficult to use. Travel Agents DO NOT want people using airline sites because it means they will lose less customers. The airlines do not want to antagonize the agents because that is still and important source of ticket sales so there is some conflict.

Here is a scan of an April 2002 article by

travel writer Mark Atchison

click on the small pic to see the larger image.

Travel

Before the days of the WWW, most information people obtained was from TV, newspapers and magazines.
Because the process of publishing articles, or broadcasting a story goes through an editorial review, it is a fair assumption that a majority of the information people say on TV, and read about in the newspapers was based on some facts and even if it was not 100% accurate, it could be accepted as basically true.

Since the WWW allows anybody to publish a web page - you have to be more circumspect about looking at the information in the Web, and reflecting on whether it is true, or has a bias.

In the case of WWW information about travel, there are a number of people concerned about allowing you to know the truth and this story below discusses that.

This article by McArthur mentions the website HotelShark
www.hotelshark.com
with the power of the World Wide Web to gather opinion and comment, sites like www.hotelshark.com give consumers an advantage they never previously had.

Go to www.hotelshark.com and have a look.

.	So, a site like hotelshark.com goes up, and people think they have a chance to exchange "real opinions" about some travel situations - but, in fact, how can we be certain these are real travellers, and not just marketing people writing in anonymously about their own properties?.

Travel

All the major newspapers have travel sections and experienced travel writers creating many articles on different destinations and packages. Most major newspapers have search sections where you can find past travel stories and this can be a helpful source for people looking to plan a trip.

Travel

Many major hardware and software vendors have sections on their websites about "how to do"...
The reason being that in the process of doing ..., you may use more of their product..

This screen capture to the left takes you to a website from Hewlett-Packard

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One of the good points made by this site is "Beyond the information provided by the travel guides, the Internet provides access to many other resources such as newspapers, local tourism boards, and embassies and consulate sites."

Accommodations
"While guidebooks and general travel sites can provide a 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 US."

Travel

http://www.arts.uwaterloo.ca/ACCT/courses/acc646/projects2002/americanvsaircanada/impact.html

This screen capture to the left takes you to a website from the University of Waterloo

this is from the Projects List in an e-commerce course, ACC 646 in the School of Accountancy

"One of the more promising trends for airliners is the switch from travel agent bookings to electronic or internet bookings. This could have a profound effect on the industry cost structure. AMR runs the Sabre Groups Travelocity electronic booking service. Many other competitors have followed suit to form alliances and implement new ticketing systems. Users of Internet bookings are typically well-educated, affluent, computer literate, and intend to maximize convenience and savings. Airlines must compete on price to attract these travellers and there is very little brand loyalty to a particular airline for such a segment."

"on-line travel is the most frequently used e-commerce medium on the Internet. "

Travel

high-tech
solutions
for
checking
in

The "Impact of the Internet" on Air Travel

Air Canada introduced its self-service check-in kiosks in 1999.

article by Carolyn Green
"Plugged-in flyers jump the queue:
Airlines offer more high-tech solutions for checking in"

"Sara Crockett, Air Canada's director of e-commerce strategy and innovation for customer service, says use has grown substantially to one- to two-thirds of customers, depending on the location, the time of day and the percentage of high-frequency travellers -- and it is increasing monthly. Although kiosks are the primary tool carriers use, some are tinkering with other mediums. These include telephone, Internet and WAP (wireless application protocol) check-in, as well as portable agent work stations (PAWS). The wireless devices are strapped to roving agents who carry out the functions of a traditional agent, except for handling baggage."

British Airways has introduced Internet check-in for Canadian members of its Executive Club program. In addition to choosing seats online, passengers can change pre-selected seats. Upon arrival at the airport, they go to the airline's eService desk to pick up their boarding pass. Airport arrival time is cut to 30 minutes for passengers with carry-on luggage and 45 minutes for those with baggage to be checked.

Travel
Airline travel bonus points

Airline travel bonus points

Airline travel bonus points.

http://www.aircanada.ca/aeroplan/partners/ac.html#reward

In the 1980's when the airlines began issuing airline travel bonus points, one thing that became a major headache was having to hire extra staff to handle phone calls with people calling about questions related to airline miles.

Now, the web sites, airlines can provide a lot of this information less expensively, and in more detail.

have a look at http://frequentflier.com/

http://www.traveldirt.com/MileagePrograms/airlinemileageprogs.htm

Travel

Airport
Info

One of the things that the Internet can be helpful for is information related to airports - such as where to park, picking up incoming travellers, flight arrival times, etc.

Toronto has a fairly good web site for the GTAA
Greater Toronto Airport Authority