Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
prices are often less than what it would
cost for individual tickets for the
whole family. At hotels and motels,
children usually stay free if they share
their parents' room and no extra bed is
required, and sometimes they also get
to eat for free in the hotel dining
room. Be sure to ask.
Frommer's Family Vacations in the
National Parks
(Wiley Publishing,
Inc.) has tips for enjoying your trip to
Olympic National Park.
Note:
If you plan to travel on to
Canada during your Seattle vacation,
be sure to bring your children's birth
certificates with you.
9 Planning Your Trip Online
SURFING FOR AIRFARES
The “big three” online travel agencies,
Expedia.com, Travelocity.com, and
Orbitz.com, sell most of the air tickets
bought on the Internet. (Canadian
travelers should try expedia.ca and
Travelocity.ca; U.K. residents can go
for expedia.co.uk and opodo.co.uk.)
Each has different business deals with
the airlines and may offer different
fares on the same flights, so it's wise to
shop around. Expedia and Travelocity
will also send you e-mail notification
when a cheap fare becomes available
to your favorite destination.
Also remember to check
airline
websites,
especially those for low-fare
carriers such as Southwest. Even with
major airlines, you can often shave a
few bucks from a fare by booking
directly through the airline. Most air-
lines now offer
online-only fares
that
even their phone agents know nothing
about. For the websites of airlines that
fly to and from your destination, go to
“Getting There,” below.
Great
last-minute deals
are avail-
able through free weekly e-mail services
provided directly by the airlines. Most
of these are announced on Tuesday or
Wednesday and must be purchased
online. Most are only valid for travel
that weekend, but some (such as
Southwest's) can be booked weeks or
months in advance. Sign up for weekly
e-mail alerts at airline websites or check
mega-sites that compile comprehensive
lists of last-minute specials, such as
Smarter Living
(smarterliving.com).
Frommers.com: The Complete Travel Resource
For an excellent travel-planning resource, we highly recommend
Frommers.com (www.frommers.com). We're a little biased, of course,
but we guarantee that you'll find the travel tips, reviews, monthly vaca-
tion giveaways, and online-booking capabilities indispensable. Among
the special features are our popular
Message Boards,
where Frommer's
readers post queries and share advice (sometimes we authors even show
up to answer questions);
Frommers.com Newsletter,
for the latest travel
bargains and insider travel secrets; and
Frommer's Destinations Section,
where you'll get expert travel tips, hotel and dining recommendations,
and advice on the sights to see for more than 3,000 destinations around
the globe. When your research is done, the
Online Reservations System
(www.frommers.com/book_a_trip) takes you to Frommer's preferred
online partners for booking your vacation at affordable prices.
