Kayak Makes Airfare Searches Flexible

There are plenty of Web sites where you can search for the best airfares, but my favorite is Kayak.

Habit has something to do with this, no doubt. Kayak was among the first fully featured metasearch engine for airfares. And it remains among the strongest, particularly for flights originating in the United States.

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Airfarewatchdog: An Essential Site For Budget Travel

I’m preparing a presentation on the five best Web sites for budget travel, and it’s not easy to choose them. I use dozens of  sites to search for bargains, and they all have their good points.

But there’s no way that I could leave Airfarewatchdog.com off the list. At its core is a powerful database of the lowest fares from airports around the United States and Canada to destinations both domestic and foreign. Just go to the home page and type in your airport’s city or code and you’ll get a list of bargain fares.

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The Value Of TripAdvisor

I’m preparing a presentation on the five most valuable Web sites for bargain travelers, and one of them is the hotel review site TripAdvisor.

I’m well aware of the controversy about the reliability of the reviews that TripAdvisor aggregates. No less an authority than Arthur Frommer has been leading the charge, criticizing TripAdvisor’s response to false reviews on its site. He and others, including travel ombudsman and blogger Chris Elliott, have raised reasonable questions about fraud and manipulation of reviews, questions that ought to be answered. 

And yet, despite these problems, TripAdvisor has accomplished something revolutionary. It has empowered the travel consumer to share experiences and to point the collective finger (whichever finger seems appropriate) at hotels that rip travelers off. The callous and casual exploitation of the stranger in town, an unfortunate tradition over the centuries, has been suddenly set back on its heels, thanks to the power of crowd-sourcing and the Internet. No fleabag hotel on this planet is safe from TripAdvisor.

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Dirtiest Hotel List Released

When is a hotel bargain not such a bargain? When your room is filthy, for sure.

TripAdvisor has released its list of the dirtiest hotels in the United States and the rest of the world per its visitors’ reports. The reviews make entertaining reading, for example: “Do not stay in this decrepit facility unless you’re homeless! Even then, I would try to find a refrigerator box first.”

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New Blog: Fun With Carbs

Leeanne Griffin

My former colleague and very good friend Leeanne Griffin has started a wonderful new blog called Fun With Carbs.

Leeanne is an accomplished and open-minded cook, an adventurous and knowledgeable eater, and a lively, talented and entertaining writer.

Leeanne also likes to travel. That’s her at left, hiding behind a big glass of white wine on her recent honeymoon on the Greek island of Santorini.

Please check out the blog. And get a plastic cover for your keyboard because her food photos will make you drool.

Terminal Man: 40 Cities, 30 Days, No Hotels

Who would try to fly to 40 cities in 30 days on a one-month JetBlue pass without ever staying in a hotel? His name is Brendan Ross, aka Terminal Man, and you can read about his adventures on Wired’s Autopia blog. Just by attempting this he proves himself to be way tougher than the average travel blogger. I bow to him.

Blogging From The Tracks

If you don’t have enough blogs to read, have a look at Derailed: One Man’s Story Of His Life On (And Off) The Rails. It’s by Bobby, an Amtrak conductor, a keen observer of the human condition and a good writer to boot.

Arthur Frommer Stirs Things Up

I just looked at Arthur Frommer’s blog entry from last week about the possibility of a boycott against tourism to Arizona because protesters carried guns to an appearance by President Obama in Phoenix. The entry had 1,123 comments at last count.

After two and a half years, my blog has 1,169 comments. Total.

New Site, ctwatchdog.com

I haven’t been slacking off on my blogging, exactly, but I’ve been on the road. And I’ve been working with my partner in the Digital Media Cooperative, Tom Twitchell, and our former colleague at The Hartford Courant, George Gombossy, on George’s new site, ctwatchdog.com.  George is an investigative consumer columnist who writes on a wide range of topics, including travel. If you haven’t seen his site yet, you should check it out.

An Appreciation Of USA Today’s Travel Industry Coverage

Doubletree brought me a copy of USA Today this morning and it served as a reminder that the Gannett flagship is still providing the best and most comprehensive coverage of the travel industry.

Today the stories include a thorough look at the troubles at Boeing,  a story about the soaring prices of taxi licenses in New York and a story about the expansion of the Panama Canal. Several other stories are of interest to travelers, including one about credit card fees. Online, the travel section is full of interesting wire stories and blog posts, including one about a woman who paid $32,000 to fly her dog in first class, another about cost-cutting at hotels and another about  celebrities who like to cruise

If you think it’s OK for newspapers to die because you’ll still be able to get this level of coverage online, think again. These stories and blog entries were written by newspaper reporters, sort of an endangered species right now. The fewer of them that newspaper employ, the less news you’re going to get.