Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
equipped with wheelchair-accessible
rooms, and tour companies provide
many special services. The
Hawaii
Center for Independent Living,
414
Kauwili St., Suite 102, Honolulu, HI
96817 (
&
808/522-5400;
www.hcil.
org), can provide information.
The only travel agency in Hawaii
specializing in needs for travelers with
disabilities is
Access Aloha Travel
(
&
800/480-1143;
www.accesssaloha
travel.com), which can book any-
thing, including rental vans (available
on Maui and Oahu only), accommo-
dations, tours, cruises, and airfare.
For more details on wheelchair trans-
portation and tours around the
islands, see “Getting Around” in the
island chapters.
For travelers with disabilities
who wish to do their own driving,
hand-controlled cars can be rented
from
Avis
(
&
800/331-1212
) and
Hertz
(
&
800/654-3131
). The num-
ber of hand-controlled cars in Hawaii
is limited, so be sure to book at least a
week in advance.
Vision-impaired travelers who use a
Seeing Eye dog can now come to
Hawaii without the hassle of quaran-
tine. A recent court decision ruled that
visitors with Seeing Eye dogs need
only to present documentation that
the dog has had rabies shots and is a
trained Seeing Eye dog. For more
information, contact the
Animal
Quarantine Facility
(
&
808/483-
7171;
www.hawaii.gov). The
Ameri-
can Foundation for the Blind
(
&
800/232-5463;
www.afb.org) also
provides information on traveling
with Seeing Eye dogs.
8 The 21st-Century Traveler
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 www.expedia.ca
and www.travelocity.ca; U.K. residents
can go for www.expedia.co.uk and
www.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.
You can often shave a few
bucks from a fare by booking directly
through the airline and avoiding a
travel agency's transaction fee. But
you'll get these discounts only by
booking online:
Most airlines 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 serv-
ices provided directly by the airlines.
Most of these are announced on Tues-
day or Wednesday and must be pur-
chased online. Most are only valid for
travel that weekend, but some can be
booked weeks or months in advance.
Sign up for weekly e-mail alerts at air-
line websites or check mega-sites that
compile comprehensive lists of last-
minute specials, such as
Smarter Liv-
ing
(www.smarterliving.com). For
last-minute trips,
site59.com
in the
U.S. and
lastminute.com
in Europe
often have better deals than the major-
label sites.
If you're willing to give up some
control over your flight details, use an
“opaque” fare service
like
Priceline
(www.priceline.com; www.priceline.
co.uk for Europeans) or its smaller
competitor
Hotwire
(www.hotwire.
com). Both offer rock-bottom prices
in exchange for travel on a “mystery
airline” at a mysterious time of day,
