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September 23, 2004
Booking a hotel online
I just booked a hotel online for the first time in my life. As you may have read, I flew to America last minute for a funeral so the connections and everything aren't perfectly smooth. Unlike JAL, when you have to spend a night in Tokyo and you're flying American Airlines, you make and pay for your won reservations.
First I went to Priceline, but my first offer was too low and no one accepted. I tried to raise the price but Priceline also makes you change the date or location (or wait 72 hours). Can't really do that, so I'm not using Priceline. This seems like a stupid system to me and Priceline should do something more user friendly.
Then I tried Hotel Club. Of course I told them there were two people traveling and they returned Holiday Inn at 8,875 yen including taxes. I compared this to the Holiday Inn web site and they were 8,162 yen excluding 5% tax and 10% service charge so I went to book through hotel club and found that it was for a single room. Why do they show me single room prices when they know I'm traveling with 2? About as stupid as Priceline. The double was 11,000 through them so I went back to Holiday's Inn web site and made the reseravtion there.
Oh yeah, I tried Yahoo's beta travel search, but they couldn't find any hotels in Narita!
September 21, 2004
American Airlines
I'm in New York because my grandfather passed away. When I learned about it, we started looking online at different airlines. Some were expensive (Korean Air, Asiana, Delta) and some were more reasonable (Continental, American Airlines, Japan Airlines, Singapre Airlines).
We usually fly JAL, but they usually make us stay overnight in Toky and there was no time for that. We called Continental and told them about the emergency. They weren't interested in helping us. We called American Airlines and they helped us. We got to New York the night before the wake.
The flight was pleasant enough too. Like JAL each seat had a persaonl movie screen and the food was good. There seemed to be fewer flight attendants and snacks, but that's not the end of the world. I'm not one of those people that makes a fuss on the airplane and needs lots of attention from flight attendants. And they were kind - finding us a new headphone since one of ours was missing the thing that goes around the plastic, bringing us the customs slip when we asked for it (we were sleeping when they were passed out), etc.
If I have a complaint it's that they messed up my wife's vegetarian meal (we expected them to be more efficient since the ticket said "vegetarian" on it). It has also been hard getting a straight answer about bereavement fares. We asked in Japan but they said there weren't any. I called the 800 number today and they said the only price break was that we got the rate for buying two weeks in adavnce even though we bgouht the day before. I should have asked in Korea, where they really really helped us and probably knew what they were doing better than any of the other AA people I've talked to.
September 8, 2004
Yahoo! Travel search beta
Yahoo! is beta testing a travel search engine. The service is supposed to search 150 travel sites, compare the prices, and send searchers to the actual site. Kind of reminds me of mobissimo.com which allows users to search for cheap airfare.
If you're wondering whether there's a need for this kind of search, consider that there a lots of options cheaper than Expedia, Travelocity, and Orbitz (which get 75% of online travel business). This article suggests "Some well-known travel search engines include SideStep, Mobissimo, Qixo (which adds a $20 fee) and Yahoo!, which recently bought the aggregator FareChase."
September 5, 2004
Train travel
Here's an interesting story about a train ride but will I have a chance to take it before it's too late?
Portland & Western Railroad, which operates the state-sponsored excursion train, because the Explorer makes its last run between Linnton and Astoria on Monday, Sept. 20. Service is scheduled to resume in May 2005 for one last season, so if you've intended to make the trip, now's the time to buy tickets, at 800-872-7245.
No, I don't get any money for this endorsement (and this sin't really an endorsement since I've never taken this train) but I've been on a few train rides, and I firmly believe that train travel is better than car travel. And on this train ride, you can elarn about history and see bald eagles.
Great Olympics travel story
These guys no how to travel cheap: they camped out on a beach in Athens (sounds like a vaction in and of itself), bought cheap seats to Olympic events, ate cheap, and drank wine. I guess Greece is like Italy, in that wine is cheaper than bottled water...