Metro West Regional Library
Network
Basic Travel Information
On The Web
and
In Print
Developed by:
Katherine L May
Reference Librarian
Newton Free Library
Funded by;
Metro West Regional Library Network
Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners
Travel Resources Online and In Print
Goal: Demonstrate to audience a variety of travel resources on the
Web and in print and evaluate these resources. Use "hands-on", "live"
searches to demonstrate how to evaluate web travel resources.
Print Resources
Call no's for travel guides:
914 Europe
916 Africa
918 South America
915
917
919
Maps and Travel Brochures
Asia
North America
Other areas i.e. Australia,
Easter Islands, Antarctic
Travel Magazines (available at the Newton Library)
Arthur Frommer's Budget Travel
Conde Nest Traveler
National Geographic Traveler
Travel & Leisure
Orient Express (UK Publication)
Special Interest Magazines
Adirondack Life
Arizona Highways
National Parks
Vermont Life
Alaska
Down East (Maine)
Explore Natural New England
Yankee Magazine
Newspapers
Boston Globe Travel section - Sunday and Wednesday
New York Times Travel section - Sundays (subscribe to E-mail
alerts or RSS)
Online Databases through Minuteman Library Network
INFOTRAC General Reference Center Gold - full text
articles from travel magazines.
Subject Directories (Web sites/Travel topics)
About.com
http://www.about.com/travel/
Recently acquired by the New York Times Co., this commercial site
offers a wide variety of travel information, organized geographically. It
has a partnership with Kayak.com to enable users to make travel
reservations from the site.
FirstGov
http://firstgov.gov
Everything you need to know about travel. Non-commercial and no
advertisements.
Librarian’s Internet Index
http://lii.org/pub/topic/travel
Excellent site. Created and updated by librarians. The date reviewed
and selected is posted for each site to assure currency.
Webrary.org Morton Grove Public Library
http://www.webrary.org/ref/travelres.html
Comprehensive site managed by librarians. Currency may be a
problem.
Airline sites
Airline toll free numbers and web sites
http://www.geocities.com/Thavery2000/
American Airlines $5.00 fee for booking via their 800
tel. no. $10.00 for buying ticket at the airport
http://www.AA.com
Southwest Airlines Discount airline flies out of
Providence, RI and Manchester, NH.
http://www.Southwest.com
JetBlue is a discount airline. It is expanding its’ service
out of Boston. Currently flies Boston to Florida and a few
other points. Will be flying non stop to Seattle starting Nov
3, 2005. http://www.JetBlue.com
Travel by train
Amtrak http://www.amtrak.com
BC Rail http://www.bcrail.com (Canada)
Rail Europe http://www.raileurope.com
International travel
Background Notes US State department
http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/bgn/
Portals to the World Library of Congress
www.loc.gov/rr/international/portals.html
Web sites selected by LOC librarians. You will need to
translate some of the websites.
Currency Converter Sites
Yahoo Finance Http://finance.Yahoo.com/currency
The Universal Currency Converter
http://www.xe.com/ucc
Weather Forecasts
Weather Underground http://www.wunderground.com
When planning your trip, you can see the history of the weather
in 60,000 cities in advance
Special Interest Travel Information Web Sites:
(See attached chart)
Types of Online Travel Reservation Services:
(see attached chart)
Aggregators/meta search engines Search multiple
travel sites i.e. Airlines, Orbitz and Expedia. "Crawls” the web for
the best prices.
Online Travel Reservation sites Discount airlines
Southwest and Jet Blue do not list their airfares on these travel
sites. Never assume that you have the best deal using only one
travel site. Check more than one site and check an airline site
and a hotel site before you purchase your airline ticket or book a
hotel room.
Opaque sites Select and pay for you travel packages without
seeing the actual airline, hotel or car rental company. Offers
significant discounts.
Some questions to ask when you use a travel web site.
What do the prices include? fees and taxes?
Are quotes per room or per person/double occupancy?
Does the site cover all the airlines, hotels and car rental agencies?
Does the web site have preferred travel partners?
Does the site direct you to these "preferred" travel partners?
Hotel sites
Many hotel sites have "a lowest rate guarantee" if customers use
their web site or book directly by phone with the hotel. Some
report that you get better treatment from hotel if you book
direct rather than using an online travel site. You may also be
able to negotiate a better rate over the phone with a live person.
Hotels.com Reservation service with added guest reviews.
venere! International reservations for hotels, B&B’s and
Apartments. Focus is on Europe. Site can be read in English,
German, Italian, French and Spanish. Includes traveler’s
reviews and ratings.
http://www.venere.com